WRITING AS A LESBIAN

Twenty years ago, at the age of 16, I went with my parents and a neighbor to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Though the idea and organization of the march was initiated from and by the grassroots, it became the political football of the reformist leaders such as King, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin and Ralph Abernathy.

leader,

By that time radical black Malcolm X, was beginning to capture the imaginations of younger activists, many them mambers of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, of the major direct action --

one

sit-ins,

freedom rides, votor registration in the South units of the Movement in the early sixties.

At been

the first march, disillusioned

many activists had by the accommodationist tactics of the "Big Six: (a term coined by Malcolm X in reference to the reformist leaders.) Malcolm X was extremely critical of the "Big Six" for allowing the issues to be diluted and called the March a "big Picnic". time I though Malcolm a fanatic. integration as paramount. Thus, I did not see the "nightmare" of King's "I have a dream speech. I was too caught

up in the narcotic of his rhetoric.

At the I saw

Gay Rights was not even a thought, except as I was beginning to be anxious about my lack of sexual attraction to men. When I looked at the photographs of the March in Ebony and Look, it was the photos of Lena Horne, Diahnn Caroll, Josephine Baker that captured my imagination.

In 1965, I attended Howard University, which had become a "hotbed" of radical student activity as well as the catalyst for student activism on other black college campuses and white college campuses as well. I was deeply affected by this, and, needless to say, my politics changed drastically. I decided that America's version of integration was making me a cultural amoeba, reformist politics without a radical-progressive vision were suicide, and white people's institutions were bankrupt. I learned to appreciate Malcolm X as a rational, intelligent, powerful human being -- and King no less. And both their lives were aborted at the precise moments that they began to envision an international struggle for freedom that would cut But then across color and class lines.

there came the anger at how activists like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates were shunted to the background to give visability to the men. Anger at the emotional sacrifices black women in the later Black Power Movement made in terms of their Own political development So that black men could flash their manhood. and I wore a natural celebrated victory of the Vietcong.

the

The March on Washington,

August 29, 1963 and August 27, 1983

•

by Cheryl Clarke

In the seventies I became a feminist. Angela Davis captured my imagination, as did Assata Shakur a few years later. spurned black nationalism as regressive, oppressive of women, and fatalistic. I and sexual had examined politics confront how I repressed my desire for and my guilt about it. I looked

woman

philosophy

for a political my various

that would

encompass Altman's Homosexual, given me political gay tremendously.

black

needs. political by a man, helped

the

Gay

I saw the Black Movement, and Women's Movement, Movement as having more parallels than not. I discovered Manhattan, the Fire House, and Black Lesbians.

In the sweltering Washington, D. C. heat and humidity, I celebrated the anniversary of the 1963 March on August When I couldn't find the gay 27, 1983. and lesbian contingent, allegedly under a brown balloon, I went home to watch the rest of the event on the television. I wanted to see Audre Lorde, the Black Lesbian speaker who'd been asked in the 11th hour to represent the Gay Rights Movement. I neither saw on the t.v. or heard on the radio Lorde's address. However, it was broadcasted. The media same failed to give Lourde's speech the king of coverage they did to Harry Belafonte ΟΙ Jesse Jackson or Walter Fauntroy. A press conference had been held on Friday, August 26 at which the March coordinators, as individuals, voiced their support of Gay Civil Rights. But, as a group, representing the massive coalition of groups involved, they could not endorse the Gay Rights Struggle. And, it was not until Thursday, August

25,

when Gay activists sat-in at Rep. Walter Fauntroy's (D.C.) office, that the coordinators conceded to including a Gay speaker on the platform. Fauntroy, veteran Civil Rights activist, compared supporting Gay Rights supporting "penguin rights".

Twenty years later,

neither

I nor the 1983 march for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom The seemed to have the buoyancy of 1963. economic condition of Black Americans, according to a recent report cited in the New York Times (July 18, 1983), is as bleak as 20 years ago. For example, the median family income for

Blacks in 1981

reformist

was $13,266 compared to $23,517 for whites. This gap is wider than it was in 1960. In spite of the recent political gains in Philadelphia, poor Blacks surviving.

Chicago and

are

not even

CONTINUED ON PAGE 7