fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
After the first instance of racially motivated violence during Selma, I wanted to start shouting “Black Lives Matter.” I held my tongue, so as not to disturb others in the theater. But I wondered if others in the audience saw the obvious connections between the racial violence of 50 years ago and the violence we’ve…
They came out in Levis. They came out in flannel. Some wore dresses. Some wore fine suits. Some looked like they had just gotten off from work. People waited in long lines. Many waited with them, to witness the moment, to share the moment. A Boy Scouts troop brought some of them pizza. This was…
In one of my Civil Rights History classes way back when, the professor explained why the NAACP very specifically took up the case of Rosa Parks as a means of challenging the Jim Crow era bus segregation laws. She had been a secretary for the organization for a number of years and had an unimpeachable…
A friend in college hipped me to the Syracuse Cultural Workers’ Carry It On Peace Calendar. I’ve purchased them ever since. It features photos, art, and notable anniversaries from social movements both contemporary and historical. For June, they always do a nice spread for Gay Pride month. This year they are featuring the story of…
If you go back and look at the tape of then VP-candidate Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate, when he answered the question about same-sex marriage, you can hear in his cadence that he was following a script. Yes, he said, he and Barack Obama support equal rights for same-sex couples, but no, they…
