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Into the darkness: a Quare (re)membering of Los Angeles in a time of crises (1981-present)

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Content INTO THE DARKNESS: A QUARE (RE)MEMBERING OF
LOS ANGELES IN A TIME OF CRISES, 1981-PRESENT

by

Kai M. Green

________________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY)
December 2014

Green ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Until I was 14 years old my mantra was, “There will always be those who are against
me, but I still have to keep going despite those haters.” I met a person who encouraged me to
consider too, “There will always be people standing with you, by your side, rooting for you,
pushing you to be your best.” My worldview changed in that moment and I can say that my
team, a team of family, friends, and colleagues, all over the world, has blessed me
abundantly. This manuscript is indeed a testament to the love I have received (and hopefully
the love that I have shared too). I am grateful for all of those who have helped me, pushed
me, challenged me, offered me food, time, gossip sessions, jam sessions, hugs, hikes, and so
much more (it is difficult to recount a complete list of the things big and small that helped me
survive these graduate school years—it’s a long list that could be its own book). To everyone
and everything that held me during these last seven years, I thank you. If you are reading this,
I thank you.
I am forever obliged to all of the Black queer, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, heterosexual,
transgender, same-gender-loving and Quare Angelenos who shared your stories with me.
You opened your hearts to me and I am humbly honored. I know that this manuscript, as long
as it is, does not do justice to your unique stories and the lives that you live. I only hope that
you see a glimmer of some of the love that you offered me, tucked away in these pages. I
thank you for opening your homes and your hearts to me and my camera. This dissertation is
(y)ours, though I take responsibility for any of its deficiencies. I could not have completed
this project alone. I did not do this project alone. I thank every person that took the time to sit
with me and answer my questions about the life. Every magazine, every letter, funeral
program, every story that you shared—I thank you: Donald Norman, Claudia Spears,
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Vallerie D. Wagner, Terry de Grace Morris, Steven G. Fullwood, Curt D. Thomas, E. Jaye
Johnson, Alfreda Lanoix, Claudette Colbert, Sandra Tignor, Mark Haile, Joseph Hawkins,
Dale Guy Madison, Laura Luna, Jessica Pace, Alan Bell, Mignon Moore, Latrice Dixon/
Iyatunde Folayan, Valerie Spencer, Eko Canillas, O’Shea Myles, Andre J. Mollette, Milton
Davis, Imani Tolliver, Rodney K. Nickens Jr., Li Arnee, Daisy Lewis, Paul Scott, James
Hightower, and Cleo Manago. Thank you for trusting me with your knowledge—it is
valuable and so necessary.
C. Jerome Woods, this dissertation, if nothing else is my love letter to you. You
inspire me. You challenge me. You are an incredible teacher, friend, and scholar. I could not
have done any of this with your friendship and mentorship. Thank you for teaching me how
to listen. Jewel Thais-Williams, I thank you for all that you do. I thank you for being a
visionary. You have helped to build and sustain a community that was never meant to
survive. You provide medicine for everyone, but especially Black LGBT Angelenos and it is
incredible to be a witness to your fierceness. Thank you for being an example of non-stop
bad-ass-ness. Jeffrey King, thank you for always pushing me to be better. Thank you for
challenging me and giving me the opporitunity to be a part of Black LGBT Los Angeles.
Your love of Black life and Black people inspires me.
I would not have been able to complete this manuscript without the assistance of
these Los Angeles organizations: The Here to Stay Coalition, The Jordan Rustin Coalition, In
the Meantime Men’s Group, The Village Health Foundation, The Black AIDS Institute, The
ONE Institute, Mayme Clayton Library, William Grant Still Arts Center, Unity Fellowship
Church, The Minority Aids Project, BLU (Black Lesbians United), Alpha Omega Nu, and
BLK Enterprises, The Southern California Library. I thank you.
Green iv
I thank those who assisted me with interview transcriptions: Skylar Myers, Irina
Contreras, Erica Vasquez, and Anna Martine Whitehead.
I must also thank Cole B. Cole and The Brown Boi Project for always being there,
providing me with a listening ear, a writing coach, a life coach and so much more. I am
grateful for your enduring support.
I am thankful to have been supported by multiple fellowships throughout my graduate
career: Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship Dissertation Award, Davis-Putter Scholarship:
Funding Students Working for Social Change, King-Bredmond Scholarship, American
Studies & Ethnicity Travel Grant (USC), Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship Pre-Doctoral
Award, EDGE FIRST Summer Institute Fellowship (National Science Foundation), and
Mellon Mays SSRC Fellowship. I thank these organizations for believing in me and
supporting my research.
Of course this manuscript owes itself in part to the amazing mentorship that I have
received both inside and outside of my home department, American Studies and Ethnicity at
the University of Southern California. I begin by thanking my committee, Kara Keeling,
Robin D.G. Kelley, Lanita Jacobs, Laura Pulido, and Vicki Callahan—you have all been
supportive and I appreciate you sharing your brilliance with me. I’d especially like to thank
Ruthie Gilmore and Robin D.G. Kelley for rescuing me from the English department. Shana
Redmond, I thank you for your enduring friendship and mentorship. John Carlos Rowe, your
support from day one, has been invaluable. Jack Halberstam and Macarena Gomez-Barris, I
appreciate you for your assistance with early iterations of this manuscript. And though I have
not known you for very long, Nayan Shah, your support as department chair has been
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helpful—thank you. Jujuana Preston, Kitty Lai, and Sonia Rodriguez, I thank you for
keeping our program up and running.
I have been blessed enough to encounter some of my most influential teachers outside
of my department. For reading, editing, and encouraging me to keep going I thank mentors,
friends and now colleagues: Fred Moten, E. Patrick Johnson, Rinaldo Walcott, Marlon
Bailey, Maylei Blackwell, Roderick Ferguson, Cathy Cohen, Cheryl Hicks, Christina Sharpe,
Heath Fogg-Davis, Sharon Holland, Deb Vargas, Molly Magavern, Matt Richardson, Gaye
Johnson, Susan Stryker, LaMonda Horton Stallings, Jeffrey McCune, Juana Maria
Rodriguez, and Mireille Miller Young. Erica Edwards, I am forever grateful for you. You
have helped me to grow as a writer, scholar, overall human being—Thank you. You, with
your insight, are the person who first suggested ethnography to me as a method. I thank you
for your critical eye and loving heart. I want to especially express my gratitude for Clyde
Woods who walked me through the whole graduate application process, read and re-read my
application essays, and let me stay at his house when I could no longer take LA. Clyde was a
mentor and a friend and I know that he is with me today, asking the hard questions.
There is a special group of scholars, organizers, and artists that I must thank. These
people are brilliant. They are my dear friends and they provided me with some of the most
support. These are my friends who understand the graduate school grind (or just love me
through it), we have Skype check-ins, read each other’s work, call each other to yell, remind
ourselves that we are not alone, have brunch, go to the beach, and... Look out for these
superstars: C. Riley Snorton, Juli Grigsby, David Green, Jordan Camp, Anthony Rodriguez,
Patricia Torres, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Christina Heatherton, Tasneem Siddiqui, Deb Al
Najjar, Jolie Chea, David Stein, Emily Hobson, Darnell Moore, Patrisse Cullors, Mark
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Anthony Johnson, Kwame Holmes, Micha Cardenas, Zakiyyah Jackson, Uri McMillan, Ren-
Yo Hwang, Freda Fair, Amber Brooks, Anisha Warner, Eric Stanley, Haven Perez, Jasmine
Riley, Julia "Quicy" Bates, Jennifer Tran, Jonathan Gomez, Kavita Kulkarni, Tabitha
Chester, Charlene Carruthers, Alyah Baker, Sammy Lyon, Megan Benton, Lex Kennedy,
Aisha McDaniel, Krys Freeman, Kingston Joseph, Jay-Marie Hill, Chaney Turner, Micah
Hobbs, Felisha Thomas, Sarah Haley, Mari Morales-Williams, Carrie Kholi (My copy editor-
you are the best!), Julia R. Wallace (we tranifest <3), and Alexis Pauline Gumbs (My
PhDoula—thank you for helping me get through this in a healthy way. You are a blessing).
To Analena Hope and Treva Ellison, my dream team come true, y’all are my aces. I
thank you for listening to me talk and talk and talk and then challenging me to write. You
both help me to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, and I love you both dearly. I can’t
wait to see you both climb that mountain—you got this! We got this!
Anna Martine Whitehead, for your thoughtfulness, for your energy, and for your non-
stop go, I thank you. Thank you for joining me in the darkness. I thank you for long nights of
conversation and the time you took to read through so many run-on sentences. You
constantly, reminded me to eat, exercise, and take care of myself. And when I didn’t do such
a great job, you were there. I could not have done this without you pushing me and loving
me. I love you.
Finally I want to thank Oakland, the place I call home—the place I love and will
never stop wanting to return to. To my family—my mother, Fern D. Green and my father,
Darrell Lee Green, my aunt, Gwen Babaoye, my brothers, Dion Preston and Bobby Preston,
my nephew, Jeremie Preston and to all my cousins, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews and all
y’all—I thank you for giving me life over and over again.
Green vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ii

List of Figures ix

Abstract xii

Preface xii

Chapter 1
Introduction to the Darkness
1

Chapter 2
In The Streets—Marching Black and Gay for MLK
61

Chapter 3
In the Sheets—The Uses of the Erotic
114

Chapter 4
In the Sanctuary and of the Spirit
164

Chapter 5
In the Life and Off the Map
239
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Chapter 6
A Conclusion in Four Parts
289

Appendix 1
In the Presence of A Future Past
315

Appendix 2
Carl Bean on HIV/AIDS and Death
351

Appendix 3
Interview Schedule
360

Appendix 4
Interview and Event Directory
371

Appendix 5
List of Archives
374

Bibliography
375

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LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 1 Figures 58-60
Figure 1: “We Get Tested”
Figure 2: “Black Out”
Figure 3: “Can’t Stop Me”

Chapter 2 Figures 109-113
Figure 4: “Here to Stay”
Figure 5: “Onlookers 1: John 14:6”
Figure 6: “Onlookers 2: Brothers”
Figure 7: “Onlookers 3: Yaaasss!”
Figure 8: “Onlookers 4: Wave and Smile”
Figure 9: “Black LGBT Prop 8 Protest Flyer”
Figure 10: “Kai M. Green Marching and Filming”
Figure 11: “Black LGBT Parade Signs”

Chapter 3 Figures 153-163
Figure 12: “Katrice Jackson with Weights”
Figure 13: “Katrice Jackson Flex”
Figure 14: “Silence Equals Death”
Figure 15: “Back Flex”
Figure 16: “Images: Iconic, Insurgent, Divine, Decadent”
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Figure 17: “BLK Offices”
Figure 18: “Black Jack Newsletter, February 1988”
Figure 19: “National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference Ad”
Figure 20: “BLK First Issue Cover, 1988”
Figure 21: “Blackfire Covers”
Figure 22: “What’s Race Got to do with it?”

Chapter 4 Figures 228-238
Figure 23: “Church Map”
Figure 24: “Unity Fellowship Symbol”
Figure 25: “Loving Ourselves, Healing Ourselves”
Figure 26: “The Real Read #1 Cover”
Figure 27: “Message From Black Gay and Lesbian LA”
Figure 28: “The Black LGBT Project”
Figure 29: “C. Jerome Woods”
Figure 30: “My Life, My Story: Claudia Spears”
Figure 31: “Kevin Charles Spears (Funeral Program)”
Figure 32: “H.O.P.E. Ministry (Pamphlet)”
Figure 33: “Wellness at the Carl Bean House (Flyer)”
Figure 34: “Reverend Freda, Alfreda Lanoix”

Chapter 5 Figures 281-288
Figure 35: “BLK Guides”
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Figure 36: “Community Directory (1988)”
Figure 37: “Community Directory (01/1989)”
Figure 38: “Community Directory (02/1989)”
Figure 39: “BLK List (04/1989)
Figure 40: “BLK List (06/1989)
Figure 41: “Jeffrey King and Jewel Thais-Williams”
Figure 42: “Sexy DJ Claudette with Records”
Figure 43: “The Catch One”

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ABSTRACT
Into the Darkness examines the ways in which Black queer folk articulate, create, and
(re)construct, Quare space and place in Los Angeles from 1981 to the present. I use the term
Quare, a term coined by E. Patrick Johnson, as it is an act of (re)membering a simultaneous
articulation of blackness and queerness. Quare signals a range of possible subjectivities that
include and exceed the limits of LGBT. In 1981, the crises that Black people experienced in
Los Angeles because of rising incarceration rates, unemployment, drug addiction and gang
violence, were further compounded by the arrival of HIV/AIDS. While there was much
silence and stagnation in response to HIV/AIDS, there were Black queer folk in South Los
Angeles who provided knowledge, support, community, and life saving opportunities for
themselves and their communities. This dissertation reveals some of those Quare struggles in
South Los Angeles. Darkness is an instructive framework, a scale that helps us to understand
the relationship between place making and the production of identity and difference.
Darkness functions in three ways: 1) A physical embodiment (Blackness) 2) A type of place
(South Los Angeles) 3) The intellectual and imaginary site of (re)production of Black queer
knowledge. In order to complete this project, I utilize an interdisciplinary methodology that
combines historiography, ethnography, and ethnographic film. I have located much of my
archive from local community collectors who have amassed much of Black queer Los
Angeles’ histories without formal institutional support. This manuscript highlights my
investment in community-engaged scholarship and alternative sources of knowledge
production. By documenting events, stories and interviews digitally, I, too, have participated
in creating and extending Black queer and Quare Los Angeles’ archive.

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PREFACE
A Litany for Revival
Litany: a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications

Revival: an act or instance of reviving: the state of being revived: renewed attention to or
interest in something: a new presentation or publication of something old: restoration of
force, validity, or effect.

In her essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Audre Lorde reminds us, “there are no new ideas.
There are only new ways of making them felt.”
1
The purpose of this dissertation is to make
you feel differently. It is to be. It is to be moved. moving. movement. The histories of Black
queer folk are reality combined with the fantastic. The glitter of Black queer freedom dreams
brings shine to shade. The audacity to make place in the name of Black queer desire and
pleasure when death is and was ever looming, is indeed a part of The Black Radical
Tradition. And how did they make it? And how do we continue to make it? Where do we
find Black queer histories?

Into the Darkness…

I find you, Black queer histories, Black queer geographies, mapping the terrain of the
unnamed and the unknown, but we know you, we feel you. I find you in folders and boxes

1
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Random House Digital, Inc., 2012),
39.
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stored away. In cold dark rooms, on shelves, you, like boiling water somehow keep your fire
while overflowing. I receive the overflow. I am ready now.

Into the Darkness…

Were you waiting for me? Because I have been dreaming of you and your stories. Were you
dreaming about me and my friends back then? Were you thinking of us when you asked for
Black and Gay, race, class, gender and sexuality? Intersectionality. Intergenerationally. Your
souls reached out to me and I have been touched. Anointed because you were unafraid to tell
it like it is. Your visions have shaped future generations of Black queer freedom dreamers,
Black weirdos, Black nerds who just want to be—we must get free.

Into the Darkness…

Were you thinking of yourselves and just how badd you really were and still are? I was told
that you didn’t exist like this. I was told that I couldn’t exist like this. But I have seen you
now through the feeling. And I come to you with questions. How did we get here?

Into the Darkness…

I know that I can’t go back, but perhaps you can give me some ideas as to how to move
forward. I come to you humbly and with gratitude. I thank you for the doing and the writing.
I thank you for documenting your lives as you lived and loved so fiercely. And I know the
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record is incomplete. I know there are things I will never truly come to understand. But
please teach me what I need to know for now, for this moment and for these people, my
people. You have certainly helped to make possible our radical imaginations—yes, a new
world is not only possible, it is desirable. We want it. We are hungry for revival and
restoration. I talk to you in the past and bring you to the future and back again—see there is
no death for us Black queers only resurrection and reincarnation because I will never quit
you and I know that you will never leave me. Past, present, and future all collide to make a
beautiful Black feminist elsewhere. And we don’t have time, only love, revolutionary in its
call—it comes to heal us as it came to heal you. Your arms, poetry, music, embrace us and
we love back, touch back. And they said we didn’t, they say we couldn’t exist—and maybe
they couldn’t see, but I know they feel us now.

Into the Darkness…

There are no new ideas. Only new ways of making them felt. I reached out to my ancestors
and they reached back. We were never meant to survive, but we are here and we will never
die because our lives are not bound by earth’s time, this landscape. No, we know spaceships
that go beyond space. We carry our maps on our backs, in our blood, and with our dreams of
freedom we continue to make the world anew. Welcome to the revival.

Into the Darkness…
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Chapter 1: Introduction to the Darkness

Why Are We Afraid of the Dark?

MEAD: You see, I’ve lived in a place where there wasn’t any fire unless you make it with
two little pieces of wood, a fire plow. People guard fire very carefully in such a place. And
there is no light at night but the little embers of the fire, and you’re terribly afraid. You can’t
make light easily; there is only a little spot of the light in the darkness, and so people have
always been afraid of the dark always.

BALDWIN: Which is identified with what? With death?

MEAD: Well, you see, with danger.

BALDWIN: With danger, yes.

MEAD: With danger. With terrible danger. Thieves come out in the night when there isn’t
any moon. Headhunters raid the camps. Wild beasts are only held off by the fire. When there
is a moon it is lovely; you can dance all night. But when there is no moon the thieves get you.
The enemy gets you. Anything can get you. You don’t know what.

Now I think electric lights are going to get rid of that one. Our children aren’t afraid of the
dark, not the ones who have lived in the city with electric lights. They press a button and the
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world is flooded, and they don’t ever have to grow up with a fear of the dark.
2

I open this manuscript by highlighting a conversation between two public
intellectuals - James Baldwin, Black American novelist, essayist, cultural critic and Margaret
Mead, white American Cultural Anthropologist, writer, and scholar - not to make an
argument regarding either person’s character. This discussion is a long one, and this is just a
small excerpt from a longer conversation as well as a much larger portfolio of work. I do
believe that this passage articulates the ways in which darkness has become structuring logic,
a common metaphor, used to describe the relationship the modern world has to an imagined
old and othered world. The conversation that Baldwin and Mead have here has its roots in a
much older conversation beginning in the 17
th
century in Europe.
David R. Roediger in his analysis of the survival of race in America argues, “Race as
a series of post-1660 rebellions would show, had little firm meaning in such a land of flux,
force, and death.”
3
Race, the meanings that we attach to racial blackness and whiteness were
not inherent, rather “it was in systemizing distinctions between Europeans and Africans that
the elites created race in its modern sense.”
4
The Black/white binary, the distinction between
European and African was solidified in the American imaginary via a system hinged upon

2
James Baldwin and Margaret Mead, A Rap on Race, (New York: Dell Publishing Co.,
1971), 37. James Baldwin and Margaret Mead. The two met for the first time in 1970 and sat
down for this seven and a half hour discussion on race and society taking place over the
course of two days.
3
Ibid., 4.
4
Ibid., 5.
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oppositional binary pairings, Black/white, dark/light, African/European; privilege was given
to all that could find its place in whiteness. This system was put in place in order to create
divisions between white indentured servants and African servants whose unions threatened
the system. “Reacting to threats to the system stemming from the way that flight united
slaves and servants, colonial law makers added new race-based policy to their penal
system…”
5
the joining of African and European was not encouraged and this was reinforced
systematically through a harsh penal code. Flight was not permissible because it could
destroy the system of slavery.
Dark flesh became a punishable sign of criminality during these early stages of
colonization.
Legislation also specified that the children of European women in servitude
would themselves be servants until the age of twenty, if the child’s father was
African … a European servant bearing an African servant’s or slave’s child
would suffer severe public whipping and see her own service extended by as
much as seven years. Following Maryland’s 1661 example, Virginia outlawed
interracial sex in 1662.
6

The Enlightenment period highlighted here signals the developing race line or color line that
would became an essential and, though ever-changing, persistent characteristic of US society.
That which was enlightened always had tethered to it some other darker side. This binary, no
doubt, played a central role in the formation of the Western world as we know it today. What
was not known or what could not be known was cast aside. It could not be predicted or

5
Ibid., 6.
6
Ibid.
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understood using scientific technologies; however, it did not disappear. It merely became
invalidated as a way of knowing. In many ways, if it could not be apprehended by modern
technologies, it was antiquated and useless for the modern world. There were many who
challenged this logic.
7
That challenge is a task we must continue today, as it is a logic that
still shapes the way we understand knowledge.
8

In the discussion that opens this chapter, we see Mead’s insistence upon light as
linked to electricity and the future. This is a progress narrative that only works if that which
is believed to be dark is also dangerous and quite possibly might lead to death. For Mead, the
solution is electricity, which provides an erasure of the fear of even the threat of darkness;
our modern technologies might indeed rid us of any uncertainties like the wild beasts, who
can only be held off by light. I argue here that the wild beasts, like subjugated knowledges or
histories told from the perspective of subjugated populations, work to dismantle any stable
objective notion of history and its tales. The fear of the dark is a fear of the past as unknown
and unmanageable, an unsettling that if untamed will surely make its way into the present
and future. This unsettling, - this rupture, the moments when everything that you thought you
knew becomes tinged with the possibility of change at any moment - becomes for some like
Mead, a space to fear, a place where wild beasts roam—this is the darkness and it is my goal
here to first and foremost present this project as an epistemological challenge or quest to
demonstrate the ways in which darkness marks the condition or location of possible radical
rupture.

7
Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Univ of
North Carolina Press, 1983).
8
Further analysis of Enlightenment period is necessary and will come in the book
manuscript.
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While Mead is hopeful about the light, I am hopeful about the possibilities of and
within darkness. The darkness as I articulate it here indexes a site of rupture, whereby
darkness is not simply a space of death or the end of something, but also a site of struggle, a
site of resistance, resiliency, and possibility where Black queer histories provide maps for
Black queer futures. These Black queer histories are not linear narratives, nor are they
complete narratives. These histories roam in the darkness and as the darkness. They are sites
of possibility where freedom dreams are articulated and struggled over. Bryan D. Palmer
writes in his book, Cultures of Darkness, “The night can be grasped historically as both a
figment of power’s imaginative fears, a dark designation illuminating the historical traumas
of hegemonic regimes…”
9
The fear of the darkness is indeed a fear of a shift in power
structures. It names a place where those who are usually endowed with the most privilege
because of their race, class and or gender, might not have the same value. The darkness is “an
actual place and space in which the ubiquitous contestations of everyday life were fought out
on a terrain that afforded slightly more opportunity for engagement by the oppressed and the
exploited.”
10

In his 1985 essay, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” James Baldwin continues to
work through the idea of darkness. He names his fear of the darkness when he recounts living
in France and trying to remember what it felt like being Black in America—the only thing he
could recall was terror. Of this terror, he writes, “it never sleeps—that terror which is not the

9
Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression
(Monthly Review Press, 2000), 454.
10
Ibid.
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terror of death (which cannot be imagined), but the terror of being destroyed”
11
He continues
to imagine what a young Black male victim in the Atlanta child murders might have felt
saying, “I’ll be thrown into the trunk of the car and it will be dark and he’ll drive away and
I’ll never be found again. Never be found again: that terror is far more vivid than the fear of
death.”
12
Both Mead and Baldwin are interested in knowing and there is something about
darkness that affects both of their abilities to know or to be known. I argue here that darkness
is not only terror, though in the United States for Black bodies, for Black spaces, it does
evoke a great deal of violence. The binary of dark and light, corresponds directly to the
relationship between Black and white. It is not the inherent differences between Black and
white or dark and light that are violent; it is the value placed upon each in order to articulate
the other that has produced a violent matrix of becoming. There is a fear of being lost in the
dark somewhere where all kinds of things might happen to you, violent things. It is the
indeterminacy of that time that is most troubling—the prospect of never being found again.
Never being found again evokes a state of abandonment or homelessness. Home, or
the lack of home, has been an essential characteristic that describes the troubled relationship
Black people have to America. Black visibility, hypervisibility, invisibility and
disappearance are continuously made a part of academic popular discourse. It has been
reiterated that that unknown is the Black American burden. We lack a home, a place to
which we might return. But Enlightenment initially set out (at least according to Kant) to
allow people to break from a tradition, from a past; it allowed for the creation of a present

11
James A. Baldwin, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books,
1998), xiv.
12
Ibid.
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and future based on what can be known. There is no better suitor for this task than the Black,
who has essentially historically been deprived of all of that. In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya
Hartman writes, “Flight was the language of Freedom.” Flight sometimes might look like
disappearance or invisibility but, again, it is also a technology of survival. Enlightenment did
not account for Black peoples’ liberation. Instead, Enlightenment helped to perpetuate them
as a group never to be found again because the terms of finding had, from the onset, excluded
Black people.
Death is described here as a state of permanence. Once one is dead, they are
presumed to never return again at least in this life. But to be gone and never found is
unsettling, death might very well be the outcome, but there are a whole host of other things
that might occur in the state of darkness outside of terror or death. There can be productivity
and there can be the creation of other underworlds. In RJ Smith’s book, The Great Black
Way: L.A. in the 1940s and The Los African American Renaissance, he writes about an after
hours club called Brothers. It was a comfortable, lushly decorated venue where one could
enjoy the music of Nat King Cole and other jazz greats. It was also a space where Black
queer folk gathered and felt safe. Smith writes,
In 1948 the city council cracked down on local nightlife, ruling that cocktail
lounges had to adopt a minimum standard for lighting: low wattage, they
seemed to believe, lead to low morals. A secret club, Brother’s ignored the
mandate; here people saw better in the dark… It was a place where some
discovered who they really were.
13

13
R J Smith, The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American
Renaissance (2006), 221.
Green 8
Smith’s poetic implication that Brothers was a place where some “saw better in the dark”
reiterates my positing of darkness as a vital theoretical tool that brings into view a more
nuanced understanding of the stories and histories of Black queer Los Angeles. This journey
into the darkness requires a shedding of the impulse to redeem the past by claiming some
objective truth, even if it is an alternative to a dominant master narrative. This journey asks
us to shift away from the idea of failure as possibility. Presence - the continuous evocation
and awareness of the here and now - is the goal. However, as every second passes, the here
and now is always becoming the then and there and the when and where—the question of the
future. My goal is to demonstrate a way of engaging history as always then, there, here, now,
and tomorrow. Doing this kind of scholarship has the ability to unhinge history from its
burden of having to provide an objective account of a chronological record of important
events in the past. This method of scholarship is invested in history, the past, but also always
aware of how the present is reaching its arms back to bring forth a thing that is not of this
time. This method also requires the scholar to take responsibility for how their histories will
affect the future.
Fear of darkness is a fear of the unknown but, more than that, it is a fear of an
encroaching non-existence. Many Black writers and cultural producers like Toni Morrison,
14

Evelyn Hammonds,
15
Katherine McKittrick,
16
and Simone Browne
17
have engaged darkness,

14
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Reprint
(Vintage, 1993).
15
Evelynn Hammonds, “Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality,” in
African American Literary Theory: A Reader, ed. Winston Napier (NYU Press, 2000).
Green 9
probing its fullness that might not be apparent from a particular vantage point which deems
darkness solely as lack or void. I, like the aforementioned writers, engage the excess, the
specters, and the ghostly roaming around in the dark. Throughout the dissertation, I examine
the ways in which Black LGBT Angelenos maneuver as the darkness but also in the
darkness. This is a position that requires flexibility. I examine darkness in three ways here: a
type of embodiment, a kind of place, and a way of knowing.
While this dissertation inevitably brings into view Black queer stories and
productions that often get left out of Black histories of Los Angeles and LGBT histories of
Los Angeles,
18
it is not the ultimate goal of this project to fill that intellectual void. This
dissertation is instead preoccupied with journeying into the “void” in such a way as to render
the concept of the “void” inadequate. The “void” is the darkness and the darkness is full of
information.
Darkness in this manuscript is an instructive framework, a scale that helps us to
understand the relationship between place making and the production of identity and
difference. It functions in three ways in the dissertation:

1. A physical embodiment (There are people who carry darkness in the flesh, often Black
people, but not exclusively,)

16
Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women And the Cartographies of
Struggle (U of Minnesota Press, 2006).
17
Simone Browne, “Everybody’s Got a Little Light Under the Sun,” Cultural Studies 26, no.
4 (2012): 542–64, doi:10.1080/09502386.2011.644573.
18
These are not mutually exclusive, although that is how they are normally conceived.
Green 10

2. A type of place (South Los Angeles, formerly known as South Central LA, a site that has
housed and continues to house the largest concentration of Black people in Los Angeles since
the 1970s with the exception of Skid Row)

3. An intellectual and imaginary site of (re)production of subjugated knowledge (In this case,
Black queer knowledge.)

Darkness is a scale. Neil Smith explains scale saying,
The construction of scale is not simply a spatial solidification or
materialization of contested social forces and processes; the corollary also
holds. Scale is an active progenitor of specific social processes. In a literal as
much as metaphorical way, scale both contains social activity, and at the same
time provides an already partitioned geography within which social activity
takes place. Scale demarcates the sites of social contest, the object as well as
the resolution of contest. Viewed this way, the production of scale can begin
to provide the language that makes possible a more substantive and tangible
spatialized politics.
19

Darkness describes multiple sites of contestation and materialization. These social processes
that make the darkness appear or not appear as such are both internal and external forces.
Smith describes four aspects of each particular scale:

19
Neil Smith, “Contours of a Spatialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the Production of
Geographical Scale,” Social Text, no. 33 (January 1, 1992): 66, doi:10.2307/466434.
Green 11
1. Identity, or the characteristics that render each scale coherent
2. Internal differences
3. Borders with other scales
4. Political possibilities for resistance inherent in the production of specific scales, the
abrogation of boundaries, the ‘jumping of scales.’
20

Smith outlines a typology of scale that is not limited to, but includes, the body, the home, the
community, urban space, region, nation and global. In this manuscript, I focus primarily on
the relationship between urban space, community, home and body - though all of these are,
indeed, influenced by and have influence at the level of region, nation, and global.
21
I am
interested in how Black queer bodies make home and community for themselves in urban
space. I focus heavily on the use of language and representational acts by Black LGBT folk
in order to articulate a Black LGBT presence in South Los Angeles specifically.

Darkness as Embodiment or the Fact of Blackness
22

Michele Foucault famously stated in Discipline and Punish, “The classical age
discovered the body as object and target of power.”
23
The body was to be worked not treated.

20
Ibid.
21
Ibid., 75.
22
Elizabeth Abel, “Skin, Flesh, and the Affective Wrinkles of Civil Rights Photography,”
Qui Parle 20, no. 2 (July 1, 2012): 35–69, doi:10.5250/quiparle.20.2.0035; Frantz Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks (Grove Press, 2008); Fred Moten, “THE CASE OF BLACKNESS,”
Criticism 50, no. 2 (April 1, 2008): 177–218.
Green 12
The body was imbricated in a power structure that required disciplining so that the state
might function without disruption.
24
The body that was useful was one that could be
manipulated in the service of the state; “the body was in the grip of very strict powers, which
imposed on it constraints, prohibitions, or obligations.”
25
The body’s flexibility was always
desirable, but the master of the flex determined how much and which bodies could control
their own movement. Darkness as embodiment signals a scale of control. However, bodies
jump scale and, sometimes, this jump can be a liberatory one.
Neil Smith articulates the body as essential to a scale making typology. The body or
the flesh as Black or racialized comes into being through material and discursive
negotiations. We do not have complete autonomy over the meanings ascribed to the signs of
racial blackness, but those who are on the outside looking in do not wholly define it. People
use racial identities to mobilize themselves; they also take them as a type of subversive pride
at times. Still, the way we carry blackness as flesh has some historical meanings that will
always attach it to enslavement in the context of the US and Europe. That does not mean that
all Black people carry darkness in the same way. For example people of different shades, of
different class backgrounds, all shift what the meanings of race could be.
26
Some Black

23
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Random House LLC,
2012), 136.
24
Ibid., 136–137.
25
Ibid., 136.
26
Scott Kurashige and American Council of Learned Societies, The Shifting Grounds of Race
[electronic Resource]: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los
Angeles, (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America); Politics and Society in
Green 13
people might never experience violence because of their flesh, but the dark flesh carries, on
its own, a trace of racialized violence that makes that link possible. Fred Moten says that
Black people have a privileged relationship to blackness, but it is not Black people alone who
experience the condition of blackness.
27
In the early stages of HIV/AIDS, the white gay men
became the representatives of the illness. Their sexual deviation was made public by illness
because of the way HIV/AIDS affected the physical body. The signs of illness in the flesh
marked not only HIV/AIDS but also sexual deviancy. For white gay men who otherwise
lived in a world where their whiteness and masculinity secured certain privileges, the
appearance of a lesion, or the sudden shrinking of a waist, could be the physical sign of the
virus. And these signs were used to discriminate against people; this was especially prevalent
in the corporate workplace.
28
HIV/AIDS was carried in the flesh and there were clear
physical signs that marked peoples’ bodies. Many white bodies that were previously safe

Twentieth-Century America; ACLS Humanities E-Book (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2008); C. J. Kim, “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Politics
& Society 27, no. 1 (March 1, 1999): 105–38, doi:10.1177/0032329299027001005.
27
Arthur Jafa, Dreams Are Colder than Death (2014), Documentary, (2014),
http://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film980807.html.
28
Arthur S. Leonard, “AIDS and Employment Law Revisited,” Hofstra Law Review 14
(1986 1985): 12; J. B. Molaghan, “The New ‘Gay Diseases’: Concern, Not Panic,” Gay
Community News, January 9, 1982; Cindy Patton, “Illness As Weapon,” Gay Community
News, June 30, 1984; “AIDS: Too Few Facts,” Off Our Backs 13, no. 10 (November 1,
1983): 12.
Green 14
from certain kinds of oppressions were suddenly unsafe because of their new and closer
proximity to death.

Darkness as a Type of Place or Who Goes There?
After the 1965 Watts Riots many white residents left the South Los Angeles area.
Middle class Black people began to move into West Adams, Ladera Heights, and Baldwin
Hills.
29
This moment geographically situated a Black middle class, still present in what we
call South Los Angeles. There also remained a class differentiation between those who lived

29
Eric Raymond Avila, Reinventing Los Angeles: Popular Culture in the Age of White
Flight, 1940-1965 (University of California, Berkeley, 1997); Jill Edy, Troubled Pasts: News
and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest (Temple University Press, 2006); Darnell M.
Hunt, Screening the Los Angeles “Riots”: Race, Seeing, and Resistance (Cambridge
University Press, 1997); Josh Kun and Laura Pulido, Black and Brown in Los Angeles:
Beyond Conflict and Coalition (Univ of California Press, 2013); Darnell M. Hunt and Ana-
Christina Ramón, Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (NYU Press,
2010); Kurashige and American Council of Learned Societies, The Shifting Grounds of Race
[electronic Resource]; Scott Kurashige, “Crenshaw and the Rise of Multiethnic Los
Angeles,” Afro-Hispanic Review 27, no. 1 (April 1, 2008): 41–58, doi:10.2307/23055222;
Laura Pulido, Laura R Barraclough, and Wendy Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Norman M. Klein, The History of
Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, New and Fully Updated Edition,
Updated edition (London; New York: Verso, 2008).
Green 15
in Ladera Heights and those who lived just minutes away in “The Jungle.”
30
This moment
also marked a clear move in Los Angeles to a particular investment in official political
representation. In 1973 Thomas Bradley became the mayor of Los Angeles, only the second
Black mayor of a major city in the US at that moment. He served as mayor from 1973-1993.
The shift from protest to politics as a tactic to attain civil rights came with some gains in
terms of representation. It is also in this moment where masses of Black populations begin to
feel more oppression in terms of unemployment, incarceration, and addiction.
31
In the 1970’s
and 1980’s minority discourse, the use of racial, sexual, and gendered categorical terms
employed by groups who sought anti-capitalist freedoms (for instance, Black Feminists)
would soon see its language and demands co-opted and reissued as a concern of
representation.
32

30
The Los Angeles City Council changed the name from “The Jungle” to “The Baldwin
Village in 1990 “hoping to reflect the affluent and peaceful -- mostly Black -- Baldwin Hills
neighborhood nearby.” Erika Hayasaki, “Gang Violence Fuels Racial Tensions,” Los Angeles
Times, September 30, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/30/local/me-baldwin30.
31
Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to
the Present (University of California Press, 2003), 169–205.
32
Roderick A. Ferguson, The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of
Minority Difference (University of Minnesota Press, 2012); Abdul JanMohamed and David
Lloyd, “Introduction: Toward a Theory of Minority Discourse,” Cultural Critique, no. 6
(April 1, 1987): 5–12, doi:10.2307/1354253; Cornel West, “Minority Discourse and the
Pitfalls of Canon Formation,” Yale Journal of Criticism 1, no. 1 (1987): 193–201; Fabio
Green 16
In Katherine McKittrick’s, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and Cartographies of
Struggle, she documents the ways in which Black women have struggled to create their own
routes towards freedom, their own pathways in knowledge and life. Usually these new
pathways are disregarded by the structures that uphold dominant Western ideals and
ideologies. McKittrick opens by discussing Dionne Brand and the ways in which “she writes
the land.”
33
In a similar way, I argue that Black LGBT folk in Los Angeles have had to write
their land because if we did not, there would be no record of our existence. Scholarship
created about lesbian and gay Los Angeles and Black Los Angeles are almost always
conceived of as mutually exclusive, creating an intellectual space of neglect. This exclusion
of a simultaneous Black and gay necessitates a (re)writing of the land on many scales. I
(re)write the land here as I engage the struggles for Black queer or Quare geographies in Los
Angeles.
One of the ways to maintain power is to construct and reinforce dominant narratives
and dominant maps, maps that in their telling also hide those spaces that exist beyond the
map’s borders. Sometimes maps can hide a place even if it exists within its borders simply by
not naming said location.
34
But those who do not make appearances on official maps or in
official historical narratives are not ever completely disappeared; they are simply relegated to

Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an
Academic Discipline (JHU Press, 2010).
33
McKittrick, Demonic Grounds, ix.
34
See foe example: Quinn Coffey, “Google Maps in Palestine,” openDemocracy, accessed
July 17, 2014, http://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/quinn-coffey/google-maps-
in-palestine.
Green 17
spaces of darkness. Sometimes these spaces are material geographical locations that we
travel through, but spaces of darkness can also refer to an individual’s intersectional
embodiment, which makes them illegible if the controlling optical apparatus is singular.
Scholarship created about queer Los Angeles and Black Los Angeles is almost always
conceived of as mutually exclusive, creating an intellectual space of neglect. C. Todd
White’s book, Pre Gay LA, is an example of the absence of people of color (and Black folks
in particular) in queer LA literatures and histories. White gives a detailed account of the Los
Angeles homophile movement before Stonewall so as to resituate our understanding of a gay
organizing and movement building that does not rely on Stonewall for its origin story.
35
He
discusses the Mattachine society: the organization credited with marking the beginning of the
homophile rights movement in 1950. White acknowledges the role of Harry Hay, one of the
Mattachine society’s founders, and addresses other figures such as Dale Jennings and Don
Slater, activists who have often been written out of history because of their conflicting views
with Hay. White gives an institutional history of the early homophile rights movement
through careful considerations of archival materials, and interviews. His work documents the
rise of the Mattachine society, along with The ONE institution, the Daughters of Bilitis, and
the first lesbian newspaper published in the US, Vice Versa.
White’s research is meticulous and presents a very detailed story of a movement’s
conflicts, gains, and sometimes failures. What is missing from this text, however, is a larger
context of the time. White claims to write a social history, but he does not seem to be fully
aware of all the other social and political happenings going on during the period. A clear

35
See also Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Suzanna M. Crage’s, “Movements and memory: The
making of the stonewall myth.”
Green 18
example of this blind spot can be seen in some of the protest events discussed at the end of
the book. White’s sections, Beans for Queens, and LA’s First Gay Pride Parade,
36
are just
two examples of many that he uses to illuminate the LGBT community’s tumultuous
relationship with the LAPD. He presents this discussion with no mention of the poor
communities and people of color who were also receiving this kind of treatment in the mid to
late 1960’s. The LAPD spent a considerable amount of time managing sexuality and gender
variance, and also policing and managing racialized subjects and communities.
37
To ignore
the ways that these disciplining apparatuses work, at the same time, forecloses the possibility
of viewing queer histories, not in isolation, but rather as an important element—the color line
and the sexual line are disciplined simultaneously.
38
My work foregrounds this overlap,
pinpointing Los Angeles as a site of harsh policing and control of many different
marginalized populations. I demonstrate how both types of policing have traditionally been
written about in isolation, even if the subject being policed happened to be both Black and
queer: a process that allows for flawed logics like “Gay is the new Black” to persist—logics
demonstrating an inability to view history in all of its nuances and instabilities, and in

36
White, Pre-Gay LA, 192-195.
37
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power
Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians (Basic Books, 2006); Treva Ellison, “Towards a Politics of
Perfect Disorder (Forthcoming” (University of Southern California, 2015).
38
Siobhan B. Somerville, Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality
in American Culture, 1ST edition (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2000); Susan
Gillman and Alys Eve Weinbaum, Next to the Color Line: Gender, Sexuality, and W. E. B.
Du Bois, 1 edition (Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2007).
Green 19
motion. In my archival work, I examine newspaper articles that feature Black queer bodies. I
ask if there is a formula for how Black queer bodies are portrayed? How are those portrayals
similar or different from stories that feature queer bodies that are not Black bodies? Is there a
difference in how Black (presumably straight) bodies are scripted in comparison to explicitly
Black queer bodies?
In a similar fashion to White, Moira Rachel Kenney, author of Mapping Gay L.A.,
makes arguments about the gay rights movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s without
adequately accounting for the other political movements happening at the same time.
Kenney’s analysis is more than just a narrowing of perspective, as might be the case for
White. Kenney, in many ways, renders people of color movements and activism invisible
and impossible in her text as she gives historical context for the gay rights movement. She
writes,
During the 1970s, gay liberation and the women’s movement changed the
political language of the gay movement, transforming it first into a movement
for liberation, one challenging the assumptions and norms of American
culture, rather than seeking acceptance within those norms. Soon after, the
women’s movement provided the vocabulary for separate (and separatist)
lesbian theologies and strategies. These liberationist agendas led to the
creation of the first social services for gays and lesbians in the city…
39

Here, Kenney creates a genealogy of gay and lesbian activism that gets its radical impetus
from the women’s liberation movement. While this is true in many ways, I would argue that
communities of color and Black liberationist organizations like the Black Panther Party, who

39
Kenney, 8-9.
Green 20
were highly visible in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, also significantly influenced the
ideological development of LGBT movements. It is highly probable that gay rights activists
learned tools and tactics from their observations and interactions with people of color.
Kenney continues to foreclose certain possibilities by way of mapping, which, she
argues, “… is a process that marks the specific ways individuals navigate their urban
environment.”
40
The five maps printed in Kenney’s book never label anything south of the 10
Freeway,
41
rendering the homes and lives of most Black Angelenos completely invisible.
This means that if we are to hear any stories of Black queer folks in this text, it will most
likely be in the context of their movement into largely white queer spaces like West
Hollywood. In order to properly account for Black queer folks, we must look at Black
spaces. Sociologist Mignon Moore gives useful Black queer statics in her essay “Articulating
the Politics of multiple Identities.” She writes,
The state of California ranks third in the United States for the number of
Blacks who live as same-sex couples, after New York and Georgia, and the
geographic distribution of non-White same-sex couples in the state also
mirrors the respective distribution of racial ethnic minorities generally. Within
Los Angeles County, 4% African American adults identify as lesbian, gay, or
bisexual, compared to 5.1% of Whites, 2.8% of Latinas and 3.7% among all
adults. 71% of Black LGB people live in South LA … These are all
communities with heavy concentrations of African Americans and Latinos.
Less than one percent of queer Blacks live on the west side of Los Angeles,

40
Kenney, 10.
41
Kenney, 2.
Green 21
which includes West Hollywood, an area known for its gay social life.
42

It is understandable then that Kenney’s limited mappings of gay LA would not
account for Black bodies. In many ways, Kenney thinks about the possibility of Black queer
space in the same way many think about the possibility of thriving rural queer communities.
Kenney argues,
…the collective celebration of gay and lesbian life in the city intertwines with
the social, political, and cultural transformations of the urban at a pace and
level of complexity not possible in suburban or rural America.
43

I argue that Kenney’s logic of progress goes beyond her proclamation of rural and suburban
areas’ inability to maintain modern queer subjectivities. This logic is extended to Black
neighborhoods in LA, which become rural in theory, and imagined as spaces unsuitable for
queer life. Black spaces, like rural spaces, are deemed unable to maintain modern queer
sexualities.
44
But a thriving Black queer LA culture can be accessed in the present and in the
past: the researcher simply has to be willing to enter the darkness.

42
Moore, 317.
43
Kenney, 3.
44
Mary L. Gray, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America,
1st ed. (NYU Press, 2009); Luke A. Boso, “Urban Bias, Rural Sexual Minorities, and the
Courts,” UCLA Law Review 60 (2013 2012): 562; Jo Little and Jo Little, Gender and Rural
Geography: Identity, Sexuality and Power in the Countryside (Harlow; New York: Prentice
Hall, 2002); Garrett Wedekind Nichols, “Rural Drag: Settler Colonialism and the Queer
Rhetorics of Rurality” (Ph.D., Texas A&M University, 2013),
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/1497226769?pq-origsite=summon;
Green 22
Unlike the two previous texts mentioned, Lilian Faderman and Stuart Timmons’
popular history of gay LA gives some attention to people of color - Black communities - and
the ways in which policing affected both queer and people of color populations. These
authors actually begin their study with an account of the many arrests made at Cooper’s
Doughnuts, and the small riot that occurred there in 1959. Faderman and Timmons state that
many of Cooper’s Doughnuts patrons were Blacks and Latinos who often participated in
informal sex economies.
45
The authors then go on to talk about Native communities’
transgender practices, giving accounts of horrified colonizers who could not understand the
acceptance and even glorification of Native gender queer community members. They also
explain the ways in which the disciplining of Native communities as a means of colonization
eradicated queer practices and rituals. The authors invoke the traditions of Native peoples as
a way to claim an originary queerness that was embedded in Los Angeles as a geographical
space. This logic is used to justify the existence of subsequent LGBT movements in Los
Angeles. However, they do not fully address the genocide and erasure of these populations
and their customs, which does a kind of violence to indigenous histories and cultures. Again,
we see that the logic of displacement prevails. In this text, gay becomes the new Native:
policed and destroyed. This kind of thinking does not allow for thinking about the story of
Native populations as a story on its own terms, with its own timelines. Instead, these tales of

Carolyn Ellis, “At Home with ‘Real Americans’: Communicating Across the Urban/Rural
and Black/White Divides in the 2008 Presidential Election,” Cultural Studies Critical
Methodologies 9, no. 6 (December 1, 2009): 721–33, doi:10.1177/1532708609348566.
45
Faderman, 1.
Green 23
people of color are only useful insofar as they serve to justify and illuminate the plight of
white queer Angelenos. This is a discursive displacement.
Literatures on Black Los Angeles usually begin by proclaiming the origins of LA as
at least partially Black, in the same way that literatures on gay Los Angeles begin with some
originary gay narrative. Many scholars have acknowledged the multiracial identities of the
first settlers of Los Angeles, which included both African and Native backgrounds. To claim
African origins is to claim that there is something about Los Angeles as a place that is
intrinsically Black. However, as Darnell Hunt writes, “…there…has been a tendency for
scholars to downplay the influence of their African and Native roots, instead dwelling on
their assimilation…
46
” These kinds of claims on the physical space as multiracial or queer are
historical claims used to justify a community’s presence in the present.
In many of the texts on Black LA, sexuality is not mentioned as an essential factor or
determinant of Black life and struggle. Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramon’s anthology,
Black Los Angeles, stands out from other texts on Black Los Angeles in that it does include
an essay that speaks directly to the lives and struggles of Black LGBT folks in LA. This
marks a major shift: an intervention into both queer and Black LA scholarship. It is just an
opening. Mignon Moore authors the essay in the anthology titled, “Black and Gay in LA:
The Relationships Black Lesbians and Gay Men Have to their Racial and Religious
Communities.” In this text, Moore grapples with ideas of belonging for queer Black subjects
who usually reside in Black neighborhoods. In Los Angeles especially, is not hard to
understand why it might be that many Black folks, queer or not, believe that “…Black group
membership as an identity status … must remain primary for the continued advancement of

46
Hunt, 21.
Green 24
the race.”
47
Many Black queer people identify themselves as first and foremost Black. This
understanding of self has to do with the ways that Black people have been made hyper aware
of their blackness through racist state-sanctioned violence in America.
During my recent interview with Alan Bell,
48
founder and editor of BLK magazine (a
Black LGBT publication that began in 1988), Bell recalled for me the story of naming the
magazine. For him it was important that the magazine have a Black name because the
magazine was a “Black magazine for gay people and not a gay magazine about Black
people.” Bell compartmentalized the two identities, arguing that the racial consciousness of
the magazine was superior to its sexual consciousness. Because the publication needed to be
explicitly Black, Bell said that he took a survey of all of the Black magazines at the time and
listed Sepia, Ebony, and Jet. He realized that all of the publications had been some iteration
of Black, but none of them actually used the word. He first thought to use the title “Black,”
but since that was too generic, he chose the abbreviation, “BLK.” It was still supposed to be
pronounced, “Black,” but that did not stick.

Darkness as a way of Knowing or Fugitive Knowledge
This dissertation is squarely situated as a Black Queer Studies project as it concerned
with Black queer recovery, which can be said to be one of essential endeavors of Black
Queer Studies as a field. Much of the theory that has come from Black Queer Studies has
been concerned with discovering or looking for that which has been lost. Once found, the
work begins with an interrogation of darkness—those materials, those films, those missing

47
Hunt, 193.
48
Please see interview footage here: http://youtu.be/07izIBq3JVo
Green 25
chapters, those people who have been obscured by a tale that could not or would not account
for that object or subject which troubled a cohesive untroubled narrative of heteronormative
blackness or an unracialized narrative of queerness. The act of interrogation is complicated in
that it makes spaces of darkness visible. The goal for this project is not simply about
recovery; it is not solely a quest to bring to light a Black LGBT history of Los Angeles. Into
the Darkness asks an important question about knowledge production itself—how do we
know what we know? And how is knowing always reliant on a logic of visibility and absolute
truth?
Black Queer studies as a field has been cohered through acts of recovery and quests
for scholarly homes in the midst of alienation within both Black Studies and Queer Studies.
In Sharon P. Holland’s, “Forward, ‘HOME’ is a four letter word,”
49
she writes of the 2000
Black Queer Studies in the Millennium conference, where scholars and artists came together
to discuss the value of the terms Black and queer as well as their relation. They wanted to
“…Quare queer, throw shade on its meanings.” They were searching to find reflections of
themselves in fields that had, in many ways, forgotten about them. These queer scholars
brought themselves together in order to represent themselves, to (re)produce themselves in
spaces where they had once been (and are still in many ways) made invisible and silent.
Black queer studies comes together at the site of darkness and marks the “the strained
relations between ‘Black’ and ‘gay’ at the level of signs.”
50
It has also been the one field that

49
E. Patrick Johnson and Mae Henderson, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke
University Press, 2005), ix–xiii.
50
Kathryn Bond Stockton, Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets
“Queer” (Duke University Press, 2006), 2.
Green 26
consistently engages objects and subjects that are simultaneously Black and queer. Many of
the objects of study have been objects that have been obscured by master narratives of Black
and queer (hi)stories. Many of the objects engaged - Isaac Julien’s 1989 film, Looking for
Langston, or Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 film, The Watermelon Woman, for instance - show artists
that are not simply engaged in reparative acts of Black queer recovery, but also creative and
productive acts of discovery.
51
This discovery is shaped by (re)imaginings of Black queer
pasts, sometimes necessary because of the lack of material evidence.
Black queer histories are composed of what happened and what people say
happened.
52
The positivist notion of history believes it to be a thing of the past that has
happened and is fixed in that moment forever. But historian and anthropologist Michel-Rolph
Trouillot offers us something more flexible: a history susceptible to change depending on the
time and place in the present. He urges historians to understand their roles as actors creating
history and not just innocent filters of objective facts of the past. He writes,
… facts are never meaningless: indeed, they become facts only because they
matter in some sense, however minimal. Second, facts are not created equal:
the production of traces is always the creation of silences.
53

Silences are not the same as absences for Trouillot. He thinks of the active nature required of
silencing someone or something. The silences of history illuminate the workings of power,
and he illuminates this process by describing four moments that allow for this type of power

51
Isaac Julien, Looking for Langston, Biography, Drama, (N/A); Cheryl Dunye, The
Watermelon Woman, Drama, (1997).
52
Trouillot, 2.
53
Trouillot, 29.
Green 27
to flourish. He notes these moments as first, fact creation, sources; two, fact organization,
archives; three, fact retrieval, narratives; four, retrospective significance, history solidified
and stable. Trouillot thinks about power in the same way Foucault does, arguing, “Power
does not enter the story once and for all, but at different times and from different angles.”
54

During all of these moments of power at play, both silences and illuminations occur. History
is a relationship between truth and fiction, what is seen and not seen, heard and not. All of
these binaries are a product of power relations. Black Queer Studies has included some of
the loudest voices making claims to history that no doubt open up space for a more livable
and undetermined Black Queer future.

In the Presence of A Future Past—The Quare Archive
So what or where is the place of Black queer history? In my ethnographic interviews,
I have found history, memory and preservation to be a key agenda item of Black queer
Angelenos. The concern for a Black queer past in LA can be traced by engaging Black
LGBT archival materials.
55
Black LGBT Angelenos situate themselves as part of a long

54
Trouillot, 28-29.
55
Many of the texts that talk about Black or People of Color presence in the LGBT
movement does not come into view until the late 1970’s. This appearance directly coincides
with the proliferation of Black and women of color feminists making major interventions into
feminist movements that did not account for Blacks or people of color. In order to discover a
Black queer history that proceeds this moment of appearance, once must engage a different
kind of scholarship - one that emphasizes the importance and power of memory and
storytelling to history. In order to discover both a Black feminist and Black queer past before
Green 28
Black Radical tradition,
56
producing counter narratives that ignite the meaning of darkness as
epistemological. The dark body is managed, quite literally, and policed because of its
materiality. Yet, texts, stories, histories, can escape “place” in a way that bodies sometimes
cannot. These materials engage lesbian and gay tellings of history mostly to recount how
they have been left out. The productive nature of these histories is a retelling and framing of
Black queer history, told by its Black queer subjects.
In Los Angeles, there has been much work by Black LGBT folk and allies to create
space, space that is simultaneously Black and queer. This struggle to create space can been
seen in the material acts of constructing clubs, churches, clinics, and other buildings able to
house people who are both Black and queer. But this struggle for Black queer space also
takes shape in an ideological and epistemological terrain, whereby local Black journalists and
community activists and members create narratives, stories, by writing themselves into
history. This task of writing oneself into history, for Black queer folk in Los Angeles, is
something that you can see being more clearly articulated in the early 1970’s. This is not to
say that people before 1970 were not articulating or trying to figure out how to make space
for themselves as both Black and queer. It is to say that something shifted in terms of
visibility. BLK Magazine editor, Mark Haile, writes in his retelling of the Stone Wall legend

the 1970’s, one must grapple with a Black past that always already enabled, contained, and
produced feminists and queers.
56
Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
(University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Avery F. Gordon, “The Black Radical Tradition
and the Academy: The Future of Radical Scholarship,” Race & Class 47, no. 2 (October 1,
2005): 82–87, doi:10.1177/0306396805058086.
Green 29
of this shift, stating of the protestors, “their model was neither the hesitant nor the rash
assertion of their self proclaimed leadership, but the flurry of desperation and pride aborning
of the militant Black Power Movement. In 1969, many were giving up powerlessness and
they were, or were following, African Americans.”
57
Haile traces both the roots of the gay
movement and the Black gay movement to a kind of Black radicalism that is separate from
both the gay movement and the Black Power Movement, yet central to both.
In the June 1989 Issue of BLK Magazine, editor Haile writes of the 1969 Stonewall
uprising,
In the retelling of the tale, history has become myth and desperation is
remembered as romance. Changes and omissions, whether accidental or
intentional, are nothing new in American History when it concerns people of
color, gays or women.

And the Stonewall Legend does concern people of color. If that sultry
weekend’s street theater is to be regarded as the launching pad of the modern
gay rights movement, then it is essential for us to know the key players who
started it all: drag queens, hustlers, jailbait juveniles, and gay men and
lesbians of color. The out casts of gay life thus showed homosexual America
how to make a fist, fight back, and win self-respect.
58

57
Mark Haile, “The Truth About Stonewall: Lesbians, Gay Men of Color, Drag Queens, and
Young People Start Modern Gay Movement,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian
Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, June 1989, 13.
58
C. Jerome Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview, audio/video, 2013.
Green 30
In these opening paragraphs Haile makes two important interventions. He questions the
objective nature of any history and he demonstrates the ways in which, even in the margins
as gay history is being told, omissions are made. Doing the first, he holds a tone of
skepticism throughout the passage; “history” becomes synonymous with “tale” and or
“myth.” History is not objective truth. It is a malleable story, a powerful story that
transforms what he calls “desperation,” referring to a group of club goers who had had
enough with police infiltration of their space and thus decided to fight back into “romance.”
He has taken as a given the ways in which history is indeed a product of the story teller’s
creation and, what later becomes, accepted narrative. For Haile, the omissions, the changes
are regular occurrences for POC, women, and gays. Once he acknowledges the malleability
of history, he moves on to examining the ways in which the Stonewall legend must be
revised. It is not important here if the Stonewall riot is or is not the birthplace of the modern
gay rights movement. It is important that if that is the story we choose to reproduce, then
Haile asks that it be told by naming the key players of the movement as those who are outcast
(not simply from heterosexual society, but also) from Black and homosexual society because
they were the hustlers, gender queers, and other unsavory folks. Haile repositions those who
remain outside of history, those who remain in the shadowy places. He reminds us that those
are the key figures of the modern gay rights movement.
Haile leaves space for there to be other origin paths for the gay rights movement, but
also states that if it is what we are going to take as the origin story then we must trouble even
that. He references Harlem in the decades before the depression to bring light to Black queer
bars and even a drag ball scene. He speaks of Harlem as a pre-depression era Mecca for
Black artists and queers, but reminds us that by 1969, Harlem had changed. He talks about
Green 31
the short life span of gay bars and the regular raids, the harassment bar owners felt, and how
they sometimes had to pay off police in order to stay open.
Larry Box was the manager of the Stonewall Inn in 1969. He says that before the riots
he had been arrested at least 109 times with 3 convictions.
59
He compares the Stonewall Inn
to the clubs that were common during the time of the Harlem renaissance. Haile states the
Stonewall Inn was a symbol of a working class folk. At the same time the Stonewall Riots
were rumbling, there was a group of people preparing to boycott against the Stonewall Inn
(and other bars like it) because those kinds of clubs were, “more of a threat to the health and
self-image of lesbians and gays than a safe haven from the persecution they offered.”
60

Haile opens up the story to show how messy it was. He states that the leaders, the
originators, they were not organized in a normative way but instead they were “empowered
by their own hands.”
61
Haile marks that it was those who had nothing to lose - the Blacks the
gays and the drag queens - who put themselves on the line; “their model was neither the
hesitant nor the rash assertion of their self proclaimed leadership, but the flurry of
desperation and pride aborning of the militant Black Power Movement. In 1969, many were

59
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power
Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (Basic Books, 2006), 97–98. Faderman and Timmons also
talk about the ways in which the club space in the 1950’s and 1960’s became one where
middle class gays did not want to go for fear of police entrapment and/or interacting with
working class people.
60
Haile, “The Truth About Stonewall: Lesbians, Gay Men of Color, Drag Queens, and
Young People Start Modern Gay Movement,” 10.
61
Ibid., 13.
Green 32
giving up powerlessness and they were, or were following African Americans.”
62
Haile traces
the roots of the Gay movement to Black radicalism.
Haile’s essay challenges what history is by taking the notion of history apart at its
seams. He then puts it back together again – differently - with Black people, people of color,
transgender people, poor people, and women at the center in order to tell a story of how they
were empowered by their own hands. He creates a new timeline, literally, “A Timeline of
Major Events in Black Gay History Since Stone Wall.”
63
This timeline only becomes
possible once a new history is told. This timeline is in no way complete. In fact, I can point
to at least one glaring absence: the opening of the Black LGBT club, Jewel’s Catch One,
which opened in 1972 and is still open today.
This essay traces a Black queer history and frames it as part of a longer Black radical
tradition. The Black Radical Tradition “extends the boundaries of what is known and
knowable” by freeing “knowledge from Eurocentricity.”
64
These Black queer (re)tellings,
(re)framings, and (re)memberings, of Black queer history inevitably change what we think
of as Black history and LGBT history. These writers, thinkers, and cultural producers were
searching for reflections of themselves in a moment of multiple crises (1980’s and 1990’s)—
AIDS was spreading fast and bringing both sudden and slow death to the lives of many
communities, especially Black communities in Los Angeles who were already facing
extreme unemployment rates, homelessness, lack of access to adequate healthcare and

62
Ibid., 13.
63
Haile, “The Truth About Stonewall: Lesbians, Gay Men of Color, Drag Queens, and
Young People Start Modern Gay Movement.”
64
Gordon, “The Black Radical Tradition and the Academy.”
Green 33
education, increasing rates of incarceration, drug addiction increased by the saturation of
crack cocaine, Reaganomics, and a major movement of Black people to surrounding
suburbs.
65
These things in conjunction with the AIDS epidemic would make the stakes for
history that much higher. These local histories were about representation and (re)production,
indeed a challenge to the death that came for them.
This essay is just one example of the Quare
66
radical tradition existing as a part of the
Black Radical Tradition. Sociologist, Avery Gordon writes of the Black Radical Tradition
saying,
Radical scholarship is absolutely truth-telling, even when it knows there are
no absolute truths; and it is oppositional, often cranky if not unrelentingly
angry. Radical scholarship also harbors lived epistemologies that structure,
either implicitly or explicitly, the questions its practitioners ask and the
answers they give. These epistemologies – the ideas behind the ideas so to
speak – are one part of the root or source of radical thought or scholarship
itself…[the] radical tradition stands not simply or only as a colossal example
of a blind spot in the Marxist point of view. Rather, it stands living and
breathing in the place blinded from view.

At the heart of Black Marxism is the deceptively simple idea that there is
something and somebody’s in the blind spot. And what’s in the place blinded

65
Sides, L.A. City Limits, 201–205.
66
From here on out, “Black queer” and Quare will be used interchangeably throughout the
manuscript.
Green 34
from view, is an entire theoretical standpoint – a practical mode of
comprehension that Cedric calls the Black radical tradition.
67

Black Queer Angelenos, like Mark Haile, struggled on epistemological and ideological
terrains and continue to do so today. These struggles are both personal and political, struggles
for claims to history that no doubt open up space for more livable and un-predetermined
Black Queer futures.
68

Haile’s critique of the Stonewall myth is also an act of what Rod Ferguson would call
Queer of Color analysis. Queer of Color analysis “interrogates social formations as the
intersections of race gender, sexuality, and class, with particular interest in how those
formations correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices. Queer of color
analysis is a heterogeneous enterprise made up of women of color feminism, materialist
analysis, poststructuralist theory, and queer critique.”
69
Ferguson is attuned to “the state’s
ability to assimilate that which it formerly rejected.”
70
Epistemology is personal and political
as these writers demonstrate through their engagements with a history necessary for the now,
for the present. Ferguson defines epistemology as “an economy of information privileged and
information excluded, and subject formations arise out of this economy.”
71

67
Gordon, “The Black Radical Tradition and the Academy,” 86.
68
Please see Appendix 1 for excerpts from 3 interviews which ask three experts about the
meaning of Black LGBT history and the archive.
69
Ibid., vii.
70
Ibid., vii.
71
Ibid., ix.
Green 35
Before Rod Ferguson so eloquently defined queer of color critique, this kind of
analysis was already occurring in Los Angeles. People were engaging in ideological battles
about the meaning of history and Black LGBT folks’ place in it. The notion of a pure true
history for these writers and thinkers was never a myth to which they could cling. Instead,
they seemed to be okay with entering a battle - an ideological battle about the myths that had
been told and the myths they wished to tell, the revisions they wished to create. It was not
about setting the record straight; it was opening the record for interpretation and possibility -
a lot of times it was a radical possibility where the heroes were the lowliest of the low. Still,
how would that shift society if we were made to bow down to those we thought were the
dregs of society?
In this manuscript, I engage Black Queer Angelenos as knowledge producers
themselves. The archival materials are useful as theory and as historical materials. In my
interviews, I listen to the stories being told. I listen for the silences. I listen for the
contradictions. I listen for the longings and the losses. This manuscript was written with the
goal of producing a work to stand within the frame of the Black Radical Tradition. I am
indeed interested in the blind spots, the darknesses, ones that I have noticed as well as the
ones that I inevitably produce.

Making a Way Out of No Way or Negotiations of Black LGBT Visibility
The members of Black queer Los Angeles’ communities that I have been a part of for the last
five years include a range of people who are identified along varying sexual, racial, and
gender identities. Many of the Black LGBT community members that I have interviewed do
not use the term Queer to identify themselves. They instead use, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual,
Green 36
transgender and/or same-gender-loving.
72
I use Queer to signal a range of possible
subjectivities that include and exceed the limits of LGBT. Queer is posited here in the way
that Jose Muñoz describes it in his book, Cruising Utopia. Munoz writes, “Queerness is a
longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present.
Queerness is the thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is
missing.”
73
My ethnographic work is a form of community-engaged scholarship. While I
document Black Los Angeles’ LGBT histories, I am also working to make feminist
interventions in these communities that might propel us to an even more desirable future
together as Black queer Angelenos.
Throughout the manuscript, I examine the demands that visibility makes upon its
subjects. We live in a coming out time,
74
a time when mainstream culture asks for complete

72
See the conflict between C. Jerome Woods and Cleo Manago for more information on the
importance of naming. Cleo Manago, Cleo Manago Interview, interview by Kai M. Green,
December 16, 2013; C. Jerome Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview, audio/video, 2013.
73
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York
University Press, 2009), 1.
74
“Coming Out of the Closet: [Letter],” New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast), July 10,
2012, sec. A; SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES Susan Donaldson James More from Susan »
Digital Reporter !function{var js, fjs=d getElementsByTagName;if){js=d createElement;js
id=id;js src=“//platform twitter com/widgets js”;fjs parentNode insertBefore;}}; Susan
Donaldson James More from Susan » Digital Reporter !function{var js, and
fjs=d.getElementsByTagName;if){js=d.createElement;js.id=id;js.src=“//platform.twitter.com
Green 37
disclosure from its subjects, but this coming out does have ramifications. In Michel
Foucault’s essay, “Panopticism,” he examines the ways in which structuring the world in
order to ensure a certain type of visibility is productive for policing and disciplining. He
writes of the panoptic as an apparatus that organizes space so that visibility is inevitable and
becomes, “a trap.” He writes, “The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the intimate a
state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of
power.”
75
If visibility is a trap, that is not all that it is. The Panopticon is a tool used for
capture, but that tool can be repurposed and used to provide a new way of being, way of
knowing and reading.
Visibility has been a tool used by many oppressed communities in order to bring
attention to civil rights and other pressing concerns. Joseph Beam writes in “Leaving the
Shadows Behind,” his introductory essay to In the Life, “Oddly, such lack of recognition and

/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore;}};, “Sykes’ Coming Out Highlights Gay-Black
Rift,” ABC News, April 16, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/prop-sparks-gay-
Black-divide/story?id=6284348; “The Sacramento Bee, Calif., Dan Walters Column:
Coming out of the Closet Is Best for All,” Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, CA), March 9,
2010; Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman, Against the Closet: Identity, Political Longing, and Black
Figuration (Duke University Press, 2012); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the
Closet (University of California Press, 1990); C. Riley Snorton, Nobody Is Supposed to
Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Jeffrey Q.
McCune Jr, Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing (University of
Chicago Press, 2014).
75
Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, Visual Culture: The Reader (SAGE, 1999), 65.
Green 38
general invisibility of Black gay men may be advantageous at times.” At the same time he
claims, “Survival is visibility.”
76
In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which Black
LGBT communities in LA make claims for visibility and recognition. I document some of
those claims made in public space. I also acknowledge the ways in which these claims
require a certain kind of disciplining. An example of this dynamic can be gleaned if we look
to a recent incident that occurred involving In The Mean Time Men’s Group’s billboard
campaign initiative.
77
In 2006, along with a number of other initiatives to target Black
communities in Los Angeles, In The Meantime launched an educational empowerment
billboard campaign to affirm and empower Black gay men while challenging homophobia in
the larger Black communities.
78
Figure 1 is a replica of an image that was posted on a

76
Joseph Beam, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (RedBone Press, 2008), 15.
77
“In The Meantime Men’s Group, Inc. is purposed to enrich, empower, and extend the lives
of intergenerational Black men, respectful of sexual orientation, through social, educational,
health and wellness programs and services.” (http://itmm.mylifemystyle.net/mission.htm)
78
“In 2006, through the efforts of the African American MSM task force (spearheaded by In
The Meantime and other local service organizations), we were able to influence the local and
state prevention planning groups to support a potent set of recommendations developed
specifically to address the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS among African American
MSM in SPA’s (Service Planning Areas) 4, 6, and 8. A direct result of the adopted
recommendations is The Game Plan, an innovative demonstration project funded by the
County Office of Aids Programs and Policy. The Game Plan will feature an outreach
component, a series of focused 1-ON-1 sessions, and a community mobilization/intervention
component that will focus on assessing risks and linking young men to services while
Green 39
billboard at the intersection of Crenshaw and Vernon (Leimert Park).
79
There were many
calls and complaints about this billboard and eventually, just before the Christmas tree
lighting ceremony occurred in Leimert Park, City Councilmember Bernard C. Parks had the
billboard covered with Black cloth (See Figure 2).
80
This covering occurred two days before
World Aids Day, December 1. By February, In the Mean Time replaced the billboard with a
new image (See Figure 3).
81
Figure 3 also emphasizes an end to homophobia and the need for
regular HIV testing. What has been lost is the visible intimacy between two gay Black men.
The kind of visibility that is allowable required disciplining of the subject.
I challenge a reliance on the visible in order to see or know, for what can be seen
always has embedded within it that which cannot be seen or known, yet remains. As
Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods note in their introduction to Black Geographies,
“Black geographies disclose how the racialized production of space is made possible in the
explicit demarcations of the spaces of les damnes as invisible or forgettable at the same time
as the invisible or forgettable is producing space.”
82
Our understanding of history and truth is

empowering men to improve the quality of their lives. In The Meantime initiated an
educational empowerment billboard campaign that targets the larger AA community as well
as to affirm and empower AA gay men.” (http://itmm.mylifemystyle.net/mission.htm)
79
Kai M. Green, “We Get Tested (Photograph),” 2013.
80
Paul Scott, “Black Out (Photograph),” 2013.
81
Kai M. Green, “Can’t Stop Me,” 2013.
82
Ruffin, Kimberly N., “‘A Realm of Monuments and Water’ Lorde-Ian Erotics and
Shange’s African Diaspora Cosmopolitanism,” in Black Geographies and the Politics of
Place, ed. Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods (South End Press, 2007), 4.
Green 40
grounded in a logic of visibility or light that always inevitably works to produce the darkness
as a space of death, not sustainable for life. Respectively, Black and queer social movements
have relied on visibility as a strategy of political struggle to garner support and both social
and structural changes.
83
I analyze the various ways in which Black LGBT folk in Los
Angeles have used strategies of visibility to build community space and create change, but I
also account for the ways in which the kind of work that many Black LGBT folk have done
(and continue to do) remains in the realm of darkness, unknown or unknowable to those who
rely on logics of visibility as legitimacy. I argue that there have always been those who live,
play, work, die and fight in darkness—the dark is a place of hard work where the living is
concerned. Although the logic has been to assume that like Mead, darkness is predetermined
by death, I am interested in the ways in which Black LGBT folk in Los Angeles have
articulated their awareness of their proximity to premature death - what Ruth Wilson Gilmore
calls racism.
84
I’m interested in how premature death becomes a central base from which
Black LGBT folk move and build in Los Angeles. These struggles, these stories, are not all
heroic, romanticizing tales of Black LGBT folk in LA. These stories trace and mark a record

83
Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies; Monica J. Casper et al., Missing Bodies: The
Politics of Visibility (New York: New York University Press, 2009); David Heitz, “With
Visibility Comes Acceptance,” The Advocate, December 9, 1997; Diane Helene Miller,
“Voice and Visibility: The Politics of Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Discourse” (Ph.D.,
University of Georgia, 1996),
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/304236747?pq-origsite=summon.
84
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, And Opposition in
Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), 28.
Green 41
of Black Queer thought and praxis, but they also illuminate the ways in which Black LGBT
communities create their own spaces of darkness within.
85

“Gay is the New Black” isn’t New
In 1948, Harry Hay imagined an organization that might be able to mobilize people
with same sex desires. In order for this kind of collective consciousness to come into being,
Hay had to figure out a way to get people to feel connected to one another and to a certain set
of issues pertaining to their community. In order to do this, Hay used the term “cultural
minority” as a way of understanding the gay/lesbian positionality in the United States’ social
and cultural hierarchy. While many were opposed to the idea of understanding themselves as
a “cultural minority,” this early crafting of a gay/lesbian politics has permeated and
structured gay/lesbian social movements from that moment to the present.
Hay’s early crafting of a gay liberationist movement was no doubt influenced by his
participation in the Communist Party of the United States of America from 1934-1951. Even
more illuminating, is the way in which his rhetoric is so clearly influenced by cultural
devices used by people of color to gain freedom, especially the tools and tactics of Black
freedom struggles. Hay was also influenced by the existence of a Two-Spirit tradition in
Native American communities,
86
an obsession that one can come to expect as an opening
narrative of most scholarship that holds as its subject LGBT Los Angeles. Usually, Native
Americans become the sign of hope for white gay activists and scholars, providing an

85
Morrison, Playing in the Dark.
86
Harry Hay, Radically Gay : Gay Liberation in the Words of Its Founder, ed. Will Roscoe
(Beacon Press, 1997), 12.
Green 42
example of community not bound by strict gender binaries disciplining and organizing
subjects of United States. Scholars engage this Native subject without acknowledging the
colonial violence and genocide that these communities endured. Instead, the story begins
and ends with the hope for the white gay to realize a Native dream or actuality without
Native peoples. In this same way, we can see how Black Civil Rights and Black Power
Movements provide examples for Gay liberation movements as they came to use slogans like
“Gay Pride” and as activism utilized “Gay-ins.” This is not an argument about what group
has the right to use certain tools for liberation. I point to these moments as epistemological
problems, and I assert the claim that the ideas of gay and Black have been constructed and
historicized as always already in conflict. Part of that conflict comes from the early
articulations of a gay liberationist movement via Harry Hay’s organization, the Mattachine
Society. This is particularly because of his use of cultural minority as a tool to organize gay
bodies, a use that did not fully contend with the privilege that many of those bodies had as
white, male, and middle to upper class.
Hay began his work of gay liberation in the late 1940’s. I trace that history only to
demonstrate how this notion of Gay is the New Black is not new, but simply put, an
ideological pillar of gay liberationist movements. It has been rearticulated over the years,
even from Black subjects themselves. One of the major endeavors that I take on in this
project is to examine how “minority discourse” or identity politics structured both Black civil
rights and gay civil rights movements. I demonstrate the potential and limits of these identity
discourses and how people are able to build space around intersectional identities. I show
how one might examine race, gender, sexuality, and class without requiring the displacement
of one for another as their meanings changes across time and space. If we seriously examine
Green 43
the communities that make up Black queer Los Angeles, we will find challenges to this Gay
is the New Black logic, these challenges come in the form of material productions of Black
queer space.

Methods
In order to complete this project, I utilized an interdisciplinary methodology that
combines historiography, ethnography, and ethnographic film. I conducted interviews with
over 100 Black LGBT community members (this includes allies and or people who share
space with Black LGBT people). I have conducted 20 in-depth interviews that range from 45
minutes to 4 hours and 20 minutes. These interviews were semi-structured and all
interviewees received a copy of the questions before the interview occurred. Often, the
interview script only provided a starting point for the interview. Other times, I did not get to
the interview questions until after the interviewee felt comfortable enough with me.
Sometimes, comfort meant meeting me over the course of two sessions and leaving the
second to do the primary video tapping. Sometimes, comfort meant being able to ask me
questions before we began the interview. After every interview, I asked my interviewees if
they would like to ask me any questions. This sometimes led to a second interview where I,
the researcher, became the subject. The interviews were conducted in various locations but,
usually, they occurred in the home or office of the interviewee. There were interviews
conducted at libraries, churches, and in my home as well if that was convenient for the
interviewee. Two interviews were conducted via phone. Three interviews were conducted in
Oakland, CA; one was conducted in New York, while the rest occurred in Los Angeles, CA.
Green 44
Because I have been building relationships with Black queer Angelenos for the past 5
years, I have often been able to interview people more than once. I have collected video and
audio footage of these events, along with one-on-one interviews over a period of three years.
When I covered specific events like the Black LGBT contingent march in the MLK Day
Kingdom Parade, my interviews also included on the street interviews with people who were
not necessarily members of the Black LGBT community. During the parade, I used a crew of
five people who helped me to capture the march and street interviews. This manuscript could
only come into being out of a collaborative effort between myself and a larger community
who opened themselves up to me and to this work.
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I am grateful for the opportunity to share
some of our stories, but understand that this manuscript is but a glimpse of all of the
interviews, fieldwork, and archival materials that I have collected. A major goal of this
project was to simply collect stories so that others might come after me and use the data in
various ways.
I have located much of my archive from local community collectors who have
amassed much of Black queer Los Angeles’ histories without any formal institutional
support. I will reference alternative archival materials that primarily come from Black LGBT
print culture. This manuscript highlights my investment in community-engaged scholarship
and alternative sources of knowledge production. By documenting events, stories and
interviews digitally, I, too, have participated in creating and extending Black queer Los
Angeles’ archive. The interviews that I have conducted along with the materials that I have
been gifted throughout this project, like magazines, funeral programs, notes, letters, plans are
all now additions to a Black LGBT archive. I will be donating copies of all of my interviews

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Please see Appendix 2 for interview scripts.
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to four institutions: In The Life Black LGBT Archive at The Schomburg, The Southern
California Library, The Black LGBT Project Collection at the Mayme A. Clayton Library in
Culver City, and the UCLA Oral History Collection.

When, Where, and How I Enter
“A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home
among one’s compatriots than be mocked and detested. And there’s a level on which the
mockery of the people even their hatred is moving, because it is so blind.” –Langston Hughes

I began my fieldwork at a march. I walked with the Black LGBT contingent in the
MLK Kingdom Day Parade in South Los Angeles. The group began walking in the parade
after the passage of Proposition 8—the first official group participation took place in 2009. I
have participated in the parade as member, scholar, archivist, and videographer over the past
three years that it has taken place. I have seen faces continue to return each year, and I have
seen new faces each year. This first year was very special, because I had finally figured out
what I was going to do with my time, with my dissertation—I found what I was passionate
about and that was stories, present and past of Black queer dreams, desires and struggles. I
wanted to talk to the people who created spaces - specifically and simultaneously Black and
queer spaces - in Los Angeles.
During that first parade I participated in in 2011, I met C. Jerome Woods, community
leader, archivist, and griot. I interviewed Woods about his participation in the parade. It was
there I discovered that he had been documenting and collecting Black LGBT materials in LA
from 1930 to the present. He had amassed over two garages full of Los Angeles’ Black
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LGBT materials. C. Jerome Woods began The Black LGBT project, which is invested in the
preservation and display of Black LGBT lives and materials. This project emphasizes the
collection and preservation of Black queer materials focusing on the present moment and the
future claim to history. His work includes creating exhibitions of current Black LGBT artist
along with archival materials. This project has not simply been a lesson in reading the
archive, but also a lesson in creating and extending the Black LGBT Los Angeles archive.
All of the interviews and footage that I have collected over the past three years will no doubt
serve as a database of knowledge that will extend beyond this dissertation.
My ethnographic practice is informed by Black Feminist Ethnography, Native
Ethnography, and Critical Ethnography. One of the most influential critiques of the
colonialist anthropological project is Native Ethnography, or the practice of studying one’s
own communities. Historically, this method has been employed by people of color (and other
oppressed people) as a tool to decolonize anthropology and to provide a corrective to
previous ethnographic accounts.
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This approach has as one of its pillars intersubjectivity,
which by acknowledging the importance of both the researcher and the culture being studied,
is a way to challenge the inherent hierarchical power dynamic between subject and
ethnographer. This dissertation is birthed from community and I must acknowledge the
stakes and importance of this project as a part of a community to which I belong. It is not
uncommon that community members and leaders call me to video record community events,
write an article for the quarterly zine, or facilitate a workshop. I am not an outsider; I am a

88
Lanita Jacobs-Huey, “The Natives Are Gazing and Talking Back: Reviewing the
Problematics of Positionality, Voice, and Accountability among ‘Native’ Anthropologists,”
American Anthropologist, New Series, 104, no. 3 (September 1, 2002): 791–804.
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part of this community and, often, I had to remind people that I am actually doing research. I
am a community member and I have been honored and acknowledged by the community as
being an important leader.
I have challenged this community and been challenged by it. A lot of the challenges
had to do with my relationship to gender and the gender justice work that I do. I also
challenged a community that in a lot of ways has been divided and organized as two separate
communities: Black gay men and Black lesbians. Often, transgender bodies are not
accounted for in these spaces. As someone who has been a vocal community member and
also researcher, there was no way to get around my own transgender identity and how that
affected my project and relationship to this Black LGBT community.
I entered the field as Kiana M. Green, masculine identified Black lesbian. I write this
today as Kai M. Green, Black queer transgender man. My transition was not something that
could be ignored. There were certainly questions of where I belonged. Who did I belong to?
Could I still attend BLU, the Black Lesbian Untied retreats? Could I go to the weekly In the
Meantime Men’s group meeting and be accepted with my changing gender identity? I never
believed that as someone engaging in this kind of work, that I could just stand by and
observe. I am a part of the community. This meant that I would be asked to lead workshops
to help bring an understanding of what it was I was doing and how I fit in. I troubled the
waters of Black lesbian and Black gay LA. The people that I have interviewed, marched
with, called for advice, worked with—I challenged them.
An example of my active role in the community can be gleaned from some of the
interactions that I have had with Jewel Thais-Williams, founder of The Catch One,
acupuncturist, and founder of the Village Health Foundation. Before I had top surgery, I had
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many consultations with Jewel. We talked about gender - my own, and hers as a Black
lesbian elder who identified as more masculine internally even in admitting that her
appearance did not always read as such. Jewel struggled with my changing pronouns. Jewel
has been a pillar of the Black LGBT community in LA—there is not one person that I
interviewed that has not mentioned Jewel or the space that she has fostered in LA. She is a
person that I respect. Because of that, I had to contend with my own feelings of guilt and
shame around transition—I felt as though my gender transition might hurt Jewel. I can recall
going to have my treatment after I had top-surgery. I was so afraid to reveal what I had done
to myself and for myself to make myself feel more comfortable in my queer body. I knew
from our conversations that my hormone treatment and other choices that I had made in
terms of transitioning were things that she worried about, because she was concerned about
my life and well being—there was also the loss of Kiana, the Black lesbian. There came a
moment when it was time for me to take off my shirt so that we could begin the healing
treatment for my scars. I stood there facing a 74-year-old leader, mentor, Black lesbian and I
simply hoped that she would not be afraid. When I revealed my scars her response was “It
looks great!” We began the healing process.
This is an example for me of both critical and feminist ethnographic approaches,
because it demonstrates clearly not only how I am changing the field, but also how the field
changes and holds me. This kind of ethnography is about disrupting colonial ethnographic
accounts of foreign natives in far off lands by doing research on the very communities we
belong to. But it is also about acknowledging difference. How do we deal with difference?
How do we create more space for different kinds of people?
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I have spent the years from 2009-2013 participating in local Black LGBT events like
BLU, the Black Lesbians United Retreat, The Black LGBT March for MLK Day, In The
Meantime Men’s group weekly meetings, and a lot more. My project is heavily informed by
my ethnography but it is also enhanced by an archival interrogation of Quare LA’s record
which I have found in autobiographies of Black queer Angelenos, mainstream periodicals
like the LA Times, Black periodicals like the LA Sentinel, Black queer publications like
BLK magazine, and other archival materials to trace various mappings of Black queer Los
Angeles. While I have located some materials at LGBT archives like the ONE Archive in
Los Angeles, The Southern California Library, and The LGBT Historical Society archive in
San Francisco, many of these archives lack substantial material on Black LGBT folk. Just
because it has not been officially housed, does not mean that it does not exist. Much of the
archive that I have collected and encountered comes from local Black LGBT community
members who have kept and held on to their materials, like the aforementioned Black LGBT
Project.
My project is a quest to (re)member, to (re)member the bodies, the spaces, the dreams
and ideas that rest in the spaces of the in-between, the darkness. As neither the existing
literature on LGBT Los Angeles
89
or Black Los Angeles have been able to fully contend with
Black queer Los Angeles, my intervention via ethnographic interviews and archival research
attempts to tell a story of Black queer social and political organizing, living, loving and being
in Los Angeles from 1981 to the present. This manuscript takes its poetic and performative
flights throughout. This for me is essential to a Quare Radical Tradition that I attempt to

Green 50
draw upon in this work. I am interested in not simply getting the reader to know, but also I
want you to feel the feeling of Quareness as it moves.
In my interview with Archbishop Carl Bean, founder of Unity Fellowship Church and
the Minority Aids project, I asked him why it had been important for him to create a Black
LGBT space. Many of the spaces created in Black LGBT Los Angeles did not always
contend with the T. The T was a dark figure within the darkness, the reminder that we still
have work to do, the reminder of the marginalized in the margin. Bean has always made a
critique about the “missing person” who he called the drag queen, but drag queen was the
language that stood in for transgender for him. This dissertation attempts to craft out a Black
Trans reading practice, one that tends to the named missing, the presence of absence.
Making the invisible man visible is not the key to liberation in as much as
representation cannot secure radical and transformational politics. Our movements cannot
solely be based upon our identities, but might we form a politic around systems that work or
enforce laws that rely on such racialized hierarchies? What are the limits of identity politics?
How might a Black queer lens help us to see those limitations? A Trans of Color Politic does
not necessarily have to engage as its subject, a trans person of color, but it must take into
account movement and change. It must understand the ideological function of blackness and
whiteness as a dominant structure of organizing people and places in the United States. Not
all Black people live in blackness just as all white people do not always see the benefits of
white privilege. I understand blackness as an always already queer term, as it implies
impossibility of existence, inhumanity, yet Black people live. The persistence of the Black,
the impossible, shows blackness as a position within the racial hierarchy in the US that does
not move, even as individuals or groups of Black people might be able to move class
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positions. Blackness is itself a positionality that remains at the bottom. There are those who
inhabit this space of blackness and it is from this bottom that disruptions manifest, troubling
clear top-down narratives.
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So by working in this space of blackness, I also engage a space of queerness. To enter
into the darkness means to enter, to embody, to reside, in this space of darkness and it proves
that darkness does not mean death. In fact, it might be where one discovers the richest, the
most exciting, possibilities of freedom because one can exist out of time.
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The communities

90
Mignon R. Moore, “Articulating a Politics of (multiple) Identities,” Du Bois Review:
Social Science Research on Race 7, no. 02 (2010): 315–34,
doi:10.1017/S1742058X10000275; Cathy J. Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and
the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1999); C. J. Kim, “The Racial
Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Politics & Society 27, no. 1 (March 1, 1999): 105–38,
doi:10.1177/0032329299027001005. These are the texts I am engaging most to develop this
theory. Though I speak only of a Black/White binary here, I am aware of the nuances of
racialization that exceed, yet affect, that binary.
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Roderick A. Ferguson et al., “Theorizing Queer Temporalities: A Roundtable Discussion,”
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13, no. 2 (2007): 177–95; Kara Keeling,
“Looking for M—: Queer Temporality, Black Political Possibility, and Poetry from the
Future,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15, no. 4 (2009): 565–82; Elizabeth
Freeman and Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories
(Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 2010); Judith Halberstam, “What’s That Smell?
Queer Temporalities and Subcultural Lives,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no.
3 (September 1, 2003): 313–33, doi:10.1177/13678779030063005; Muñoz, Cruising Utopia.
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that I speak of exist both in and out of time, a time that does not feel the need to account for
them and their experience, for it might slow down a capitalist mode of production. I look to
the Black queer because they might lead us to possibilities and strategies of survival in space
that aims to either get us on beat or remove us. For the Black queer, there is no getting on
beat, which is to say that a Trans of color politic might not simply be embraced or embodied
by all queer people of color; yet, you do find moments of rupture when queer people of color
create their own systems. At times, these moments of rupture might not lead to permanent
transformation. Sometimes, programs die off or become co-opted, but the resilience of the
Black Radical Tradition lives on and Quare is embedded in that.
I return to a trans of color critique which is informed by a critical trans reading
practice and politic which is, as Dean Spade explains in his book, Normal life: Administrative
Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and The Limits of Law, a politic that “…makes demands
that exceed what can be won in a legal system that was formed by and exists to perpetuate
capitalism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and heteropatriarchy.”
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So, I write this not
to simply promote the induction of Black queer Los Angeles into the realm of Black Los
Angeles scholarship or queer Los Angeles scholarship. More importantly, it is my goal to
draw attention to the ways in which, even in the margins, there are erasures that occur even if
sometimes those erasures are self-inflicted. I write this to turn our attention to the possibility
of something else, a practice that is always at once destructive and constructive, making use
of that which is visible as well as invisible. This kind of practice requires a knowing and
seeing and feeling beyond the visible, in the realm of dark matter. We must play in the dark,

92
Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits
of Law (South End Press, 2011), 15–16.
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to learn the lessons of the darkness without trying to constantly bring them into the light.
Understanding that the light, or the visible will change what is, without having to be
conscious of the conditions that create what is visible and what is not.
Through encounters with members of the Black queer community in the present in
conjunction with archival research, I discover a past that is not closeted, but rather protected.
This is not a linear history. Rather, through disparate materials and events, encounters in the
present moment, I am able to reach back and tell stories across time and space. A rigorous
undertaking of these Quare subjugated knowledges in Los Angeles offer radical ways of
seeing, being, and communing in the present and future without the requirement of erasure of
certain bodies and problems that rest in that space of darkness. How have Black queer
Angelenos made space for Black queer possibilities in the face of unlikely probability? Yes,
this is a history of a people who were never meant to survive; yet, some have made it and
continue to make it often in the darkness or in the shadows. We play and move in the dark
because, sometimes, it is safer there. For this project, I learned how to see, feel, and touch in
the darkness. It was my hope that I might know better there.

Research Questions
There are three main questions that I respond to in the dissertation:
1. How have Black LGBT people in Los Angeles created Black LGBT space and place
for themselves 1981-present?
2. What does this intersection between Black and LGBT tell us about identity politics’
possibilities and limitations?
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3. How is the struggle for Black LGBT life also a struggle for a Black LGBT past or
history?

There are three sub-questions that I also attend to in the dissertation:
1. How is Black LGBT struggled over within the context of white LGBT institutions
and spaces?
2. How is Black LGBT struggled over within the context of a larger Black community?
3. How do Black LGBT Angelenos struggle over the meaning of Black LGBT within
their own Black Queer/Quare communities?

Chapter Breakdowns
This manuscript is composed of four main chapters along with introductory and conclusion
chapters. Each chapter responds to the aforementioned research questions. Below are short
descriptions of the four chapters.

Chapter 2: “In The Streets - Claiming Home” examines the differences between being a
Black queer person in West Hollywood and South Los Angeles after the passage of
Proposition 8. After the passage of Proposition 8, Black LGBT Angelenos took to the streets
to make themselves visible amongst Black communities by marching in the annual Kingdom
Day Parade as Black and Gay. Like the image of King or Obama, the parade has become a
depoliticized symbolic performance of the attainment of a dream of freedom that was never
fully actualized. The Black LGBT contingent repoliticizes the mundane annual Kingdom
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Day Parade by disrupting the idea of the parade as an attainment of a dream of diversity. The
double take that the Black LGBT marchers evoke from the spectators teaches people how to
read signs of blackness differently as it brings to the forefront the contradictions that are
present, but might not otherwise be named. I am careful not to romanticize this public act. I
point to how coming out in this way demands a particular kind of visibility that potentially
disavows the ghostly presence and persistence of the Black queer or Quare. I argue that
Quareness might have the ability to sustain excess or better yet Quareness indexes the Black
(w)holeness that exists pre, post, and in conjunction with Black LGBT.

Chapter 3: “In the Sheets—The Uses of the Erotic in a Time of Crises” centers the erotic as
a terrain. I examine the ways in which people create spaces of desire and play in the midst of
looming death. I focus on how gender becomes an anxiety within Black lesbian and gay male
communities. In this chapter, I show how play is never separated from work because to have
the space to play requires the work of creating an erotic terrain to be played on. The
disappearance yet present anxiety of the transgender subject comes through in this chapter. In
this chapter I focus on BLK magazine. BLK magazine is a Black LGB publication that began
in 1988 and ran until 1994 (41 issues). BLK entered the scene when HIV/AIDS was
spreading fast and bringing sudden and slow death to the lives of many communities, but
especially Black communities in Los Angeles who were already facing extreme
unemployment rates, homelessness, lack of access to adequate healthcare and education,
increasing rates of incarceration, drug addiction increased by the saturation of crack cocaine
in Black communities, and so much more. These things along with the AIDS epidemic would
inevitably change the ways in which Black people could and would relate to one another and
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to The State for years to come. The erotic terrain is a site where sex, work, desire, pleasure
and the body intersect. I also examine how the gender binary that organizes this terrain is
both reified and challenged as I illuminate articulations of gender anxieties in the magazines.
Theses anxieties produce a productive tension that make space for Black Queer
transgressions—and this is the space of Black Queer geography that encompasses Black
LGBT bodies and spaces yet also always exceeds those boundaries.

Chapter 4: “In the Sanctuary and of the Spirit” examines the relationship between
Black LGBT Angelenos and Christian churches. Black churches are places commonly
referenced as sites of major homophobia. I am interested in the ways in which Black
churches are popularly described as sites of major homophobia, a homophobia unique to
Black churches; a more flagrant homophobia than non-Black Christian Churches. How is it
that Black churches are deemed some of the most homophobic places, while simultaneously
Black churches are places that give us some of our most vivid images of Black queerness?
Archbishop Carl Bean states that gospel music was the only genre that could really hold him
as a Black gay man. Black churches served as a critical site for working through the trauma
of the AIDS crisis in the late 1980’s, so we cannot think of them as one-dimensional or
simply homophobic. They are, rather, heterogeneous spaces that allowed a range of
responses to the crisis by Black LBGT Angelenos. These responses included separatist
projects like Archbishop Carl Bean’s Unity Fellowship Church, but they also included
projects that challenged mainstream congregations to “see” into their own darknesses. Unity
Fellowship has a large transgender population, however in my interview with Carl Bean, he
states that he never felt able to transition medically because of his leadership role. I examine
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this contradiction in this chapter.

Chapter 5: “In The Life and Off the Map” examines the ways in which Black LGBT folk
map their own space by analyzing Black LGBT directories, maps and gay guides to Los
Angeles. I foreground the struggle over Jewel’s Catch One that occurred in the early 1990’s
when the club experienced a change in population from a majority Black crowd to a
predominantly white crowd. The desire to have safe and separatist Black LGBT was a
response to many LGBT spaces in Los Angeles who antagonized and refused to service
Black patrons. This chapter exposes a fear of darkness as death (or the end of existence) that
both Black and white LGBT Angelenos feel when a majority of “others” enter spaces that
have functioned function as the property and safe space of one particular racial group.

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Chapter 1 Figures

Figure 1: We Get Tested
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Figure 2: Black Out
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Figure 3: Can't Stop Me

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Chapter 2: In the Streets—Marching Black and Gay for MLK

Introduction
On January 17, 2011, I marched in Los Angeles’ Annual Kingdom Day Parade in
honor of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. under the banner, Black, Gay and
Here to Stay (See Figure 4).
93
The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday has become a standard part
of US public and political cultures. In many Black neighborhoods across the US, a parade is
held to honor the memory and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., a memory usually
condensed to King’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech. Today, when neo-liberal and color-
blind ideologies run rampant, King’s dream has become an illusory one, with the parade
often illuminating problematic notions of diversity and multiculturalism. King and other
Civil Rights activists marched and fought for workers rights in the 1960s, but shallow
notions of diversity as inclusion often obfuscate this. Like the image of King, the parade has
become a depoliticized performance of the attainment of a freedom never fully actualized. It

93
Kai M. Green, Here to Stay (Photograph), January 17, 2011. In 2008 shortly after the
passage of Proposition 8 in California, the Here to Stay Coalition was formed. Here to Stay is
an alliance of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex people
(LGBTQI) and their friends, families, and relatives. Based in Los Angeles, this
organization’s two main commitments are to end homophobia within the Black community,
and to end racism within the larger LGBTQI community. One of the ways the Here to Stay
Coalition has made its presence known in the Black Los Angeles community is by marching
in the annual Kingdom Day Parade.
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is clear to me that the Black LGBTQI contingent repoliticizes the mundane annual Kingdom
Day parade by disrupting the idea of the parade as evidence of the attainment of a dream of
diversity.
On this Martin Luther King Day, as we marched Black, Gay and Here to Stay, there
were many supporters encouraging us to keep doing what we were doing. They shouted
things like,
“That’s right! There ain’t nothing wrong with it!” I was struck by the amount of young
people we picked up along the way. I saw wide smiles from sissy boys and studly bois. They
were so happy to see us and to know that their lives could exist in that very moment as well
as beyond it. Of course there were also those onlookers who wanted us to move along faster,
those religious folk who shouted, “I love you, but you need to come back home.” Still, there
were others who told us to “Go back home!” (see Figures 4-8).
94
In both of these cases, those
of us who marched behind the banner of Black and Gay were deemed unfit for residence in
this Black community. The most striking moment came for me after we rounded the corner
of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Crenshaw Avenue. This was the climax of the parade.
We would end our march shortly after. As we were ending we had to walk into a crowd
holding Jesus Saves signs and one Black man shouted, “You Have a Choice, I don’t have a
choice when it comes to being Black.” I asked myself, “What if I did have a choice? And
what if he did too? Would he choose Black?” I would and I do. Here in this moment - when

94
Kai M. Green, Onlookers 1: John 14:6 (Photograph), January 17, 2011; Kai M. Green,
Onlookers 2: Brothers (Photograph), January 17, 2011; Kai M. Green, Onlookers 3:
Yaaasss! (Photograph), January 17, 2011; Kai M. Green, Onlookers 4: Wave and Smile
(Photograph), January 17, 2011.
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Black becomes a conscious choice - politics are revealed. There is a difference between
being black and choosing Black as a social and political modality. I urge the reader to
examine the ways in which identity politics has shaped and continues to shape our
conceptions of Black leadership, feminist leadership, and social movements in the US. If we
are careful, we will discover the difference between the identities thrust upon us and the
politics we choose; they are often contradictory. Still, we thinkers, poets, organizers,
activists, and all who are concerned with creating a new and more just world must be able to
understand the difference. We must be able to understand this difference because we need to
articulate demands for structural changes. These changes are not just necessary for a new
and more just world for Black and/or queer folk; we must build a politic that centers upon
difference. The idea that our sameness will somehow protect us, or unify us, is a farce. The
notion that racial sameness will produce a collective political and social vision is a fiction. I
agree with Marlon Riggs’ declaration that, Black Is and Black Ain’t;
95
therefore, those
interested in ending anti-Black racism, homophobia, transphobia and so on, must come to the
table knowing that not all Black people will have the same investment in ending anti-Black
racism just as all LGBT people will not all share the same vision for LGBT liberation. We
must be able to consider the incoherence of our identities. Some of us are visibly marked as
Black because of the hue of our skin, others might not be easily made out as Black, yet still
identify as such.
96
We become known as Black because of how we are viewed by those

95
Marlon Riggs, Black Is ... Black Ain’t (DOCURAMA, 2009).
96
For current examples see: “HowStuffWorks ‘10 People You Probably Didn’t Know Were
Black,’” HowStuffWorks, accessed July 8, 2014, http://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-
traditions/genealogy/10-people-you-didnt-know-were-black.htm; Alexis Webb, “25
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around us, but Black people also have some agency in the meaning of blackness as we
embody and perform it. It is important that we consider then, how a statement like “I didn’t
choose to be Black,” functions to uphold a logic of blackness as an always (al)ready position
of abject subjugation. There is no predetermined script for blackness, though there are many
tropes and master narratives that we can conjure to signify the Real Black.
97

As many Black Studies scholars like Manning Marable, Richard Iton, Erica Edwards,
and Cedric Robinson have shown, one of the mainstay master narratives of Black leadership
and social movements in America is the belief that they require a single Black charismatic
leader, usually a cisgender male figure who - like the Biblical Moses - leads the people to the
promise land.
98
And while many believe in and reproduce this narrative of the great Black

Celebrities You Didn’t Know Were African American,” StyleBlazer, December 7, 2013,
http://styleblazer.com/191954/25-celebrities-you-didnt-know-were-black/; “12 Beautiful
Portraits Of Black Identity Challenging the ‘One-Drop’ Rule,” Mic, accessed July 8, 2014,
http://mic.com/articles/80841/12-beautiful-portraits-of-black-identity-challenging-the-one-
drop-rule.
97
See John L. Jackson Jr., Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University
Of Chicago Press, 2005) for further discussion on racial Blackness and authenticity.
98
Cedric J. Robinson, Black Movements in America (Psychology Press, 1997); Cedric J.
Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (University of North
Carolina Press, 1983); Richard Iton Professor of African American Studies Northwestern
University, In Search of the Black Fantastic : Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil
Rights Era: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Oxford University
Press, 2008); Erica R. Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (University
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hope (and mourn the losses of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as fallen kings who
possessed THE vision for a new Black world), there have always been those who have
challenged and continue to challenge this notion of Black leadership, most notably Black
women and Black feminists.
99

Erica Edwards traces an archive of literary contestations to charisma and posits that
these literary contestations, “risk defying the authority of tradition and forsaking the
supposed safety of singular political authority for the hope of a more radical collectivity and

Of Minnesota Press, 2012); Manning Marable, Black Leadership (Columbia University
Press, 2013).
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Gloria T. Hull, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are
Brave: Black Women’s Studies (Feminist Press, 1982); Toni Cade Bambara, The Black
Woman: An Anthology (New American Library, 1970); Layli Phillips, The Womanist Reader
(CRC Press, 2006); Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership; Toni C. King
and S. Alease Ferguson, Black Womanist Leadership: Tracing the Motherline (SUNY Press,
2011); Erica R. Edwards, “Gendered Violence in Black Leadership’s Gothic Tale,” Callaloo
31, no. 4 (2008): 1084–1102; “Google Books Link,” accessed July 4, 2014,
http://books.google.com/books?id=toKpAgAAQBAJ; Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and
Komozi Woodard, Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom
Struggle (NYU Press, 2009); Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story
(Anchor Books, 1992); Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American
Women Activists in the Cold War (New York University Press, 2012); Kimberly Springer,
Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980 (Duke University Press,
2005).
Green 66
the urgency of the creative complaint.”
100
Edwards reads “charismatic black leadership as
scenario,” cohered by the charismatic leader who is always “singular…with the gift of
grace…” She writes of the scenario stating,
Charismatic events and narratives articulate a range of performative and narrative
gestures within a single pattern that determines, in broad outlines, both the single
event—march, rally, convention speech—and the historical circumstances that
necessitates it—scarcity, suffering, lack.
101

In this chapter, I argue that identity not be used as the best predictor of radical possibility or
change in a scenario that is predetermined by charismatic logic. Reliance upon identity to
infer politics fails. A desire for representational identity can often come to stand-in for,
become, or at least dictate personal politics, but this logic is mistaken. If we are to create a
new world, we must become more careful readers and writers knowing in advance that the
blackness of one’s skin will not determine the darkness of one’s heart. As Robin D.G.
Kelley claims, in his recent response to Michael C. Dawson, “Neoliberalism also has its
share of black allies.”
102
If we wish to create a new world based on true democracy and
equality, we must know what we are up against and create a politics that is nuanced enough
to address the complex and over lapping issues of high unemployment rates, incarceration
rates, and major health disparities amongst Black Americans especially if we consider the

100
Erica R. Edwards, Charisma and the Fictions of Black Leadership (University Of
Minnesota Press, 2012), xxii.
101
Ibid., 17.
102
Robin D.G. Kelley, “Neoliberalism’s Challenge,” Boston Review, January 2012,
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/ndf_robin_kelley_black_politics.php.
Green 67
HIV/AIDS crisis. I do believe that we can create this kind of political practice, “though not
necessarily,” as Kelley says, “in the form of a distinctly black, progressive social movement.
Yet, absent a progressive black presence and a core anti-racist critique, such a challenge is
doomed to fail.”
103

Before I continue to my examination of the Black LGBT contingent in the 2011
Kingdom Day parade in Los Angeles, I must first go back to November 5, 2008. The first
Black President of the United States was elected that evening. At the same time, the bill to
ban gay marriage in California, Proposition 8, was passed. LGB marriage rights were
rescinded while many perceived the election of Obama to be the attainment of some long
struggled for Black freedom dream. The conversations that arose popularly and privately
tended to articulate these events as separate because Black politics could only be represented
through a Black figure, while LGB politics - articulated as marriage equality by most popular
LGBT organizations - were mostly imagined as represented by whiteness. In what follows, I
use auto-ethnographic accounts and personal correspondence to provide a story of what it felt
like to be both Black and queer when LGBT and blackness were being articulated as two
separate entities popularly, the conflicts, contradictions, frustrations and possibilities.

Some Thoughts on the Election (The Morning/Mourning After):
104

November 5, 2008

103
Ibid.
104
This is a letter I wrote to my family.
Green 68
Last night, I gathered together with many students and professors from my Department in
American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. I smiled, sang, danced and I even shouted "Thank
you Jesus!" despite the etiquette tips for Obama supporters.
105
For a few tender moments I
felt a sense of euphoria, an inkling of liberation or justice. I felt as though time had stopped,
changed, and sped up, only to slow down again. As some of us cast our individual Obama
votes, we received our unified Obama-President-Elect freedom song. It was a sweet song,
something that I had been longing to hear, that so many had been longing to hear.

I called my mother and cried. I realized what this moment might mean to her - a social
worker who spends endless hours working to better the lives of the elderly and disabled, all
while facing foreclosure on her own home. As I stood outside embracing the cool air, I
overheard a Black girl, who could have been no older than nine, talking on her cell phone.
She said, "I never imagined, I never thought this would happen!" I wondered how such a
young child could have been so cynical. How did she already know what could and could not
be imagined, dreamed or hoped for? I smiled, knowing that this moment intervened the
possible foreclosure of dreams to come.

I walked though the USC campus with two friends and our heads were held high, we smiled,
we imagined, we believed in the possibility of change. I imagined, in that moment, as I
walked through campus with my two friends that once we left the gated areas of USC's
campus, we'd enter a world made anew. And though it might sound absurd, I expected the
streets to look different. I expected driving to feel different. I turned on the radio and I

105
http://electronicvillage.blogspot.com/2008/10/november-5th-etiquette-tips-for-obama.html
Green 69
expected the music to sound different. I was astounded when the sounds of Jordan Sparks'
"No Air," played on the radio as it had before the Obama President elect announcement had
been made. I wanted everything following that euphoric moment to remain new, unheard,
unimagined yet present and graspable. Unfortunately, the familiar sounds of our time
brought me back down to earth.

I didn't want to come down, but here is where we are. As Obama stated in his speech last
night, "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that
change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen
without you." What really made this claim resonate was the passing of the ban on gay
marriage in California, Florida and Arizona, along with a measure banning unmarried
couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents in Arkansas. This was the ultimate buzz
kill, to take huge steps forward and back at the same time. While I celebrate Obama's
victory, my own victory, and our victory as a country, I am also saddened by my defeat,
which is indeed our defeat. These bans are bigoted, unconstitutional and, for my Christian
brothers and sisters, not of GOD! I hope that neither my children nor I will have to wait until
the next century to see these fundamental rights violations undone. This is the change we
need to see now!

I want you to think long and hard about the words freedom, equality, humanity and justice.
Think long and hard about people who have died for the right to vote, the right to walk down
certain streets, sit in certain chairs, learn in certain schools that were once closed off to them
and their children. How many people are going to have to DIE in order have the right to
Green 70
marry whomever they love? Or is there another way? Because one way or another change
will come: Black, white, Asian American, Latina(o), Native American, Gay, Lesbian,
Transgender, Straight, women, men, we citizens of the world. If nothing else we all share one
thing in common and that is that we are human, living, breathing, and blessed with the
capacity to change ourselves and the world. It is unfortunate that for many, our humanity,
our basic human rights are still being violated.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly."-MLK

*****
I sent this letter to my family list serve the night after the election. I was hurt because
I knew that I had family members who voted yes for Obama and yes on Proposition 8.
Proposition 8, also known as Prop 8, was a California state constitutional amendment that
passed in the November elections that made same-sex marriage unrecognizable by the
state.
106
I felt guilty that I hadn’t sparked up the conversation with my family sooner. Now it
was too late for debate. It was too late to change a mind and hope they would consider me,
their family, when voting. Somehow, I thought the act went without saying. Somehow I
believed that I did not need to tell my family how or why this vote mattered. I was wrong.
There were a lot of Black people in California and elsewhere who felt simultaneous
accomplishment and disappointment by the outcome of that 2008 election.

106
Prop 8 was eventually ruled unconstitutional in 2010.
Green 71
In California, just like many places in the US and abroad, there were those who
gathered to celebrate, rejoice, and cry—the election of the first Black president was, for
many, a sight that they could have never imagined.
107
For many, like myself, this election
became a manifestation of a Black freedom dream. It was a moment that Tupac Shakur said
we weren’t ready for in 1992.
108
Having a Black president felt, for me, like the White House
was going to no longer remain white. The first Black First family would inevitably paint the
White House Black—this has been a freedom dream echoed throughout generations of Black
music makers like, George Clinton, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Public Enemy, Yo-Yo, MC Breed &
Kam in 1993 and even in the early 2000’s by rapper Lil’ Wayne.
109
The desire to turn the
White House Black was a critique of the symbolic binary system of Black and white. The

107
“Citizens around World Hail Obama Victory - USATODAY.com,” accessed March 24,
2014, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-11-05-election-
worldview_N.htm; “How Do Many African Americans Feel about Barack Obama’s Victory?
(Reading Challenge) - Democratic Underground,” accessed March 24, 2014,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x43
93421; “Obama’s Victory Caps Struggles of Previous Generations - CNN.com,” accessed
March 24, 2014,
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/obama.history/index.html?iref=mpstoryview.
108
2Pac - Changes Ft. Talent, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXvBjCO19QY&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
109
George Clinton - Paint the White House Black (Ft. Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Yo-Yo, MC Breed
& Kam), 2012,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYCM31A1gdQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
Green 72
White House represents, not just the physical building being white, but also the fact that most
who control American political and economic decisions are white people, usually cisgender
white men. To turn the White House Black, was to undo the racialized hierarchal structures
that reinforced a Black/white—bad/good binary. But the election of a Black President could
not and did not reverse white supremacy. If anything, it proved that representation was
symbolic and could not undo the material affects of oppression that Black, Brown, poor and
working class people experienced. The euphoric feeling I had the night of the 2008 election
was fleeting. The Black freedom dream would remain unattained. The ban on gay marriage
was just one sign of this.
So while there were people celebrating and dancing in the streets, there were those
who were upset, hurt, and disappointed that their right to marry had been revoked. Some
people, like myself, both celebrated and lamented. There were those who took to the streets
to protest the ban on gay marriage. I was one of those people who joined protestors in West
Hollywood (see Figure 9).
110
I marched with thousands of others who were appalled that
their rights could so easily be taken away. I marched with my partner at the time. I
remember feeling like we were the only Black people in a sea of whiteness. Of course, we
were not the only Black people, nor were we the only people of color, but the crowd was
overwhelmingly white. In images published in the LA Times, there were photos of disputes
that took place between Prop 8 supporters and opponents. Those pictures show disputes that

110
CBSNewsAP November 6, 2008, and 11:29 Am, “Prop. 8 Protests In West Hollywood,”
accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/prop-8-protests-in-west-
hollywood/.
Green 73
took place in front of the Mormon Temple in Westwood.
111
The Mormon Church gave an
estimated twenty million dollars to support “yes on 8” campaigns that would reverse the
legalization of gay marriage in California.
112
In these pictures, the opponents of gay marriage
are pictured as people of color, even though people of color are not the face of the Mormon
Church.
113

I remember feeling fear. There were many sad faces, but there were also many angry
and rage-filled white faces. I did not carry a sign that proved my allegiance to the LGBT
movement, but my blackness was a sign I carried as my flesh. The symbol of yes on 8 was a
Black or brown body and I bore that trace whether I wanted to or not. I felt more aware of
that embodiment than ever. I wanted another sign - a shirt or something rainbow colored - to
show everyone that I, too, was one of them. My blackness was also my queer, but my
blackness stood in the way of others being able to read or recognize my queer. So perhaps I
was not quite queer. Maybe blackness was not also my queer, but rather in the words of E.
Patrick Johnson, my Quare. Yes, my blackness was my Quare. Quare as in, “something or
someone who is odd, irregular, or slightly off-kilter” and also “something excessive—

111
“Proposition 8 Protests,” Los Angeles Times, accessed July 4, 2014,
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-weho-protest-pg-photogallery.html.
112
Nicholas Riccardi, “Mormons Feel the Backlash over Their Support of Prop. 8,” Los
Angeles Times, November 17, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/17/nation/na-
mormons17.
113
John G. Turner, “Racism and the Mormon Church,” The New York Times, August 18,
2012, sec. Opinion / Sunday Review,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/racism-and-the-mormon-church.html.
Green 74
something that might philosophically translate into an excess of discursive and
epistemological meanings grounded in African American cultural rituals and lived
experience.”
114
My blackness was my Quare, but Quare was not a legible identity in this
queer scenario in West Hollywood, still I was there. I felt compelled to show up as a Black
person and as a queer person. I thought my body might be able to shift the logic that
conflated blackness and homophobia. I thought I could prove something with my own flesh
but the more I marched, the more stifled and alienated I felt.
I was the darkness
115
in that march; my body bore the trace of other grievances -
grievances that could not be viewed through the single-issue lens of queerness as belonging
solely to white cisgender gay men. My body bore the trace of Quareness, which is to also
say: my body bore the trace of blackness. My Black presence was a reminder of Barack
Obama’s election as a freedom dream fulfilled, one that was suppose to appease Black
suffering. My Black presence was also doubly a reminder of a Black homophobia that
proliferates in many Black communities. I wanted to be a representative of my Black - which
was also queer - but I became a representative of all Black people, or at least most Black
people who would be unfairly blamed for the ban on gay marriage. Although I did not

114
E. Patrick Johnson and Mae Henderson, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke
University Press, 2005), 126.
115
See the discussion of Darkness as embodiment in the introductory chapter.
Green 75
experience any physical threats upon my body, or racial slurs, there were reports of Black
people who did.
116

I did not feel safe marching in West Hollywood that night. I knew that I was not
home. I was not queer—I was Quare. My presence as a Black person doubly symbolized
white queer injury as Black people were (because of the election of Barack Obama) expected
to feel victory because his election was a win for Black people generally—this logic is
flawed. In the weeks following the election, Black people were portrayed as the antiquated,
homophobic enemy of LGBT rights. Black and queer were further polarized by popular
media outlets as news sources kept reporting that the reason Proposition 8 passed was
because of the inherent homophobia of Black people. CNN first reported that 70% of all
Black voters voted in favor of banning gay marriage, but later it was discovered that that
number was a major embellishment. The percentage was actually closer to 57%.
117
The
master narrative that began to circulate after Prop 8 passed was that Black people (read
straight) are the reason why gays (read white) lost their rights, and isn’t that hypocritical of
Black people who should know the importance of equality with their history of fighting

116
“The N-Bomb Is Dropped on Black Passersby at Prop 8 Protests,” The Huffington Post,
accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pam-spaulding/the-n-bomb-is-
dropped-on_b_142363.html.
117
“Black Vote for Prop 8 57%, Not 70%!!! | Kenyon Farrow | Writer. Speaker. Activist.,”
accessed March 24, 2014, http://kenyonfarrow.com/2008/12/01/black-vote-for-prop-8-57-
not-70/.
Green 76
racism all throughout history?
118
According to this narrative, homophobia in Black
communities allowed this bill to pass. This became even more upsetting because it happened
at the same time as the election of the first Black president who did not support gay marriage

118
Happy Cog Studios - http://www.happycog.com and Daily Kos, “Facts Belie the
Scapegoating of Black People for Proposition 8,” accessed March 20, 2014,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/07/656272/-Facts-Belie-the-Scapegoating-of-Black-
People-for-Proposition-8; “Gay Is the New Black?,” Advocate.com, accessed July 5, 2014,
http://www.advocate.com/news/2008/11/16/gay-new-black; “Rod 2.0:Beta #gay #news #lgbt
#gaynews: N-Word Hurled at Blacks During Westwood Prop 8 Protest,” accessed December
14, 2012, http://rodonline.typepad.com/rodonline/2008/11/n-word-and-raci.html; SUSAN
DONALDSON JAMES Susan Donaldson James More from Susan » Digital
Reporter !function{var js, fjs=d getElementsByTagName;if){js=d createElement;js id=id;js
src=“//platform twitter com/widgets js”;fjs parentNode insertBefore;}}; Susan Donaldson
James More from Susan » Digital Reporter !function{var js, and
fjs=d.getElementsByTagName;if){js=d.createElement;js.id=id;js.src=“//platform.twitter.com
/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore;}};, “Sykes’ Coming Out Highlights Gay-Black
Rift,” ABC News, April 16, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/prop-sparks-gay-
black-divide/story?id=6284348; “Gay Pride, Black Prejudice | RealClearPolitics,” accessed
July 5, 2014,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/gay_pride_black_prejudice.html.
Green 77
until 2012.
119
Many felt as though Black people as a collective had gained something, some
kind of power that day, and that Black power came with the loss of power and rights for gay
people (read white). The LA Times, CNN, and other newspapers supported this logic by
reporting Black people to be one of the main reasons why Proposition 8 passed.
120
The LA
Times describes a protestor saying,
For many demonstrators who had backed Barack Obama for president,
Tuesday's elections brought mixed emotions. "I felt happy and then I felt
crushed," said Chris Thurman, 24. He and another friend, 29-year-old T.J.
Prokop, carried signs depicting separate straight drinking fountains and gay

119
“Obama: Prop 8 ‘Unnecessary,’ But Doesn’t Believe In Gay Marriage,” Queerty, accessed
July 5, 2014, http://www.queerty.com/obama-prop-8-unnecessary-but-doesnt-believe-in-gay-
marriage-20081103; Jackie Calmes and Peter Baker, “Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage
Should Be Legal,” The New York Times, May 9, 2012, sec. U.S. / Politics,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/us/politics/obama-says-same-sex-marriage-should-be-
legal.html.
120
Dan Morain and Jessica Garrison, “Focused beyond Marriage,” Los Angeles Times,
November 6, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/06/local/me-gaymarriage6; Happy
Cog Studios-http://www.happycog.com and Daily Kos, “Facts Belie the Scapegoating of
Black People for Proposition 8,” accessed March 20, 2014,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/07/656272/-Facts-Belie-the-Scapegoating-of-Black-
People-for-Proposition-8.
Green 78
drinking fountains, a reference to the racially segregated South in the pre-Civil
Rights era.
121

Gay people used the images that hearken back to the US legacy of anti-Black racism and
racial segregation to evoke the message of injustice regarding gay marriage. These images of
Black civil rights struggles were used to publicly make claim for rights to gay marriage, but
this use of images disallowed for the possibility of Black queer injury, the Quare was
illegible in this logic. Black people became the enemy of the gay (presumed white). For
many, the feeling was, we helped you get your president, but you didn’t help us get our
rights. Now, we are angry! The use of the Civil Rights struggle in imagery and rhetoric in
these LGBT (white) settings “was not about freedom for us all, it was about acquiring a kind
of purchase on black life,”
122
as Sharon Holland argues. I would add that it is also about
acquiring a kind of purchase on white life as the sole proprietor of queerness, insurance that
queerness and whiteness become synonymous in popular imaginaries. Yet, Black people and
people of color organizers, artists and allies continue to call out the logic of whiteness as a
state of queer exceptionalism (or vice versa), a logic that proliferates discourses regarding the
US and Africa,
123
or Israel and Palestine,
124
or more directly related to this project, West

121
Dan Morain and Jessica Garrison, “Focused beyond Marriage,” Los Angeles Times,
November 6, 2008, http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/06/local/me-gaymarriage6.
122
Sharon Patricia Holland, The Erotic Life of Racism (Duke University Press Books, 2012),
2.
123
Jonathan Zimmerman, “An African Epidemic of Homophobia,” Los Angeles Times, June
29, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/29/opinion/la-oe-zimmerman-africa-gays-
20130630; Darnell Moore, “Is Africa the Most Homophobic Continent? | Religion
Green 79
Hollywood and South Los Angeles. When queerness is solely imagined through whiteness, a
limited queer politics is the result, often short sighted in its aims. An example of this
occurred most recently, on July 2, 2014 when BYP100
125
members called out major LGBT
rights organizations that had forgotten about the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Members of BYP100 began tweeting using the hashtag #TheseOrgsAintLoyal to challenge
organizations like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GetEQUAL, the National Gay and
Lesbian Task Force and others. By the end of the day at least two of these organizations

Dispatches,” Religiondispatches.org, accessed July 5, 2014, http://religiondispatches.org/is-
africa-the-most-homophobic-continent/; David Smith, “Why Africa Is the Most Homophobic
Continent,” The Guardian, February 22, 2014, sec. World news,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/africa-homophobia-uganda-anti-gay-law;
“Opinion: Is Africa the Most Homophobic Continent?,” CNN, accessed July 5, 2014,
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/28/opinion/uganda-anti-gay-law-marc-epprecht/index.html.
124
Sarah Schulman, “‘Pinkwashing’ and Israel’s Use of Gays as a Messaging Tool,” The New
York Times, November 22, 2011, sec. Opinion,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-
messaging-tool.html; Tyler Lopez, “Why #Pinkwashing Insults Gays and Hurts
Palestinians,” Slate, June 17, 2014,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/06/17/pinkwashing_and_homonationalism_discou
raging_gay_travel_to_israel_hurts.html.
125
The Black Youth Project 100, BYP100, is an activist member-based organization of Black
18-35 year olds, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. This group
uses a Black queer and feminist lens.
Green 80
responded and corrected their erasure. Many of the BYP100 organizers saw this lack of
acknowledgement about the importance of the Civil Rights Act a sign of the white racism
that proliferates larger LGBT organizations. BYP100 members initiated a Twitter
conversation by tweeting, “LGBTQ organizations said nothing about the
#CivilRightsAct1964 today. But will be first in my inbox asking for $5 tomorrow
#theseorgsaintloyal.”
126
Larger LGBT organizations - run by predominantly white people -
are often challenged by people of color asking them to broaden their scope beyond marriage
equality.
127
These critics ask these organizations to understand and be accountable for the
darknesses that they help to produce and maintain. In this configuration, the geographical
locations of darkness mark the “home” of the other. The other also becomes the homophobic
other and that homophobia is a signification of the other’s backwardness or un-modern
culture. This is not just about the geographical place, but also the embodiment of that
othered signification.
After the election of Barack Obama and the passage of Proposition 8, there were
Black LGBT people who, like myself, felt like they had waited too long to speak up and say
something to, not only other Black people, but also to media outlets who framed this
occurrence as a reiteration of the inherent “gay black divide.” Black comedian, Wanda
Sykes decided that after the passage and after all of the anti-Black rhetoric, she wanted to

126
“BYP100 Calls out Major LGBT Organizations Using #TheseOrgsAintLoyal,” Black
Youth Project, accessed July 5, 2014, http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2014/07/byp100-
calls-out-major-lgbt-organizations-using-theseorgsaintloyal/#more-45822.
127
“Gay Pride: A Celebration for White People,” Black Youth Project, accessed July 9, 2014,
http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2014/07/gay-pride-a-celebration-for-white-people/#.
Green 81
come out publicly. Though she stated that she had never been hiding, this moment compelled
her to be visible in a way that would be legible in queer terms of coming out. She stated, "I
didn't feel like I had to. I was just living my life, not necessarily in the closet, but I was living
my life."
128
Before coming out, Sykes was living a Quare life; not closeted, but illegible in a
queer political and social realm that is understood as being confounded by outness and
closetedness. Sykes came out and made herself legible to dominant regimes of queer
visibility. At the same time, she challenged and marked the limits of those regimes as a time
before visibility, when she was just living her life.
129
Her life after coming out then is not just
living, but rather living as marked or tethered to queerness. By outing herself in this way, she
links her fate with the lot of a larger group of LGBT people. By doing this, she disrupts the
logic that Black and gay are incompatible; she also makes herself a visible bridge.
130

The public debate that started to occur in California and throughout the US was
about race and sexuality. It made clear the racism that many Black LGBT people and others
commonly point out that is so prevalent in white queer communities. But it also made clear
the ways in which Black LGBT people understood their identities as Black people; it made
clear that blackness was never detached from queerness. Still, similarly to the way Quare
can be hard to make out in a sea of whiteness, Quare can be just as difficult to recognize in a
sea of blackness. In order to become visible, sometimes people have to leave the life or the

128
“Sykes’ Coming Out Highlights Gay-Black Rift,” ABC News, April 16, 2010,
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/prop-sparks-gay-black-divide/story?id=6284348.
129
Her life here is a Quare life, but also calls up the notion of “In the life” which will be
further developed in the final chapter of the dissertation.
130
See Chapter 4 for more discussion of bridge politics.
Green 82
lives that they were living and enter a dominant regime of visibility and organization. We
have not been taught to recognize or read Quare, but queer we know (or we think we know).
There are ways that Black people make themselves legible as queer.
Many Black LGBT folk in South Los Angeles responded to the passage of Prop 8, not
by joining the mostly white queer folk in West Hollywood as I had done. There were Black
LGBT people in South Los Angeles who organized there, in Black space. They were
interested in doing work at home so they decided to march at home as Black and Gay. They
used racial sameness to build a tangible bridge between the Quare and the Black—this meant
that the Black LGBT people would have to first show themselves visible as Black and queer.
This challenged the notion of a homogenous blackness. It also created an identity that
necessitated management and policing. It at once extended the boundaries of blackness,
131
but
in so doing, created the terms of what Black and queer looked like. Making themselves
visibly queer in Black space - as Black people - required a particular kind of visibility. At
the same time, it acknowledged that Quare held those who might not be able to be seen as
queer, or even want to be known as queer. For this work to be done at home, in South LA,
The fact of racial blackness was one thing that could not be negotiated—people who looked
phenotypically Black needed to be in the majority. In order for this march to succeed it relied

131
Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics,
1st ed. (University Of Chicago Press, 1999).
Green 83
on a relationship based on racial sameness, a notion of linked fate as Mignon Moore
articulates.
132

I knew that I did not belong in West Hollywood that night of the march, but I did not
know in that moment where I belonged. Where could the Quare go and feel safe? Feel at
home? Perhaps there was no home to be found, or even more perhaps I just did not know
where to look.

2008 Black Gay and Here to Stay
At the same time that these protests were happening in West Hollywood, there was
also a group of Black LGBT people, organizers, community members, (some out, others
closeted) who gathered together to talk about how they wanted to respond as Black LGBT
community members. They decided that they too would hold a protest march, but this would
happen in South Los Angeles. This march wouldn’t be mentioned in any of the major
newspapers (See Figure 9).
133
I did not attend this march that occurred on November 27,
2008, but I have looked at the print materials and conducted interviews with organizers and
members of the march in 2008. This demonstration preceded the actual Black LGBT
contingent’s entry into the Kingdom Day Parade. This demonstration occurred in the
historically Black community of Leimert Park neighborhood, where there is a Black book
store, Black art dealers, The World Stage (where there are weekly writing and jazz

132
Mignon R. Moore, “Articulating a Politics of (multiple) Identities,” Du Bois Review:
Social Science Research on Race 7, no. 02 (2010): 315–34,
doi:10.1017/S1742058X10000275.
133
Black LGBT LA Organizers, “Black LGBT Prop 8 Protest (Flyer)” (Love at Work, 2008).
Green 84
workshops), Black-owned restaurants, and a park where Black people gather for a weekly
drum circle. Many Black people also gather in the park at the fountain for pubic
demonstrations to mourn or to celebrate. Black LGBT people chose this site because it has
been meaningful to Black place in Los Angeles.
134

Many say they were compelled to march as Black and gay in their own community
because it was Black people that they were interested in building and growing with. It was
not a call to white LGBT communities for acceptance; it was not a defensive move to prove
to white people that all Black people were not homophobic. There was a desire to heal and
work at home. Although this is the case, we cannot discount the ways in which popular
media portrayals of the Black community as homophobic played a role in how Black LGBT
people decided to make themselves visible. Visibility occurred as a coming out, holding
signs that were Black and gay explicitly.
This first march was a peaceful march to protest the passage of Proposition 8. It was
organized by Reverend Freda Lenoix’s ministry, “Love at Work—The Exchange,” and other
Black LGBT community members and organizations. The march occurred on Sunday,
November 23, 2008 at 11 AM. The over 200 protestors were escorted by the police and chose

134
This is a highly contested place facing gentrification battles. See more: Sinduja
Rangarajan, “Leimert Park Envisions the Neighborhood in 2020,” January 29, 2014,
http://intersectionssouthla.org/story/the-leimert-park-community-vision-charrette-202/;
“Black-Owned Businesses Already Being Pushed Out of Leimert Park Ahead of the
Crenshaw Line,” Curbed LA, accessed July 9, 2014,
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/07/blackowned_businesses_already_being_pushed_out_o
f_leimert_park_ahead_of_the_crenshaw_line.php.
Green 85
that time to avoid churchgoers.
135
This kind of visibility was vexed from the start because the
police escorts already made protestors stand out as other in Black space. The desire to avoid
churchgoers also poses the question of the assumptions being made about Black churchgoers.
Furthermore, it forces one to ask to whom did these Black LGBT folk want to be visible?
The flyer invited “All Gay, Lesbian, Queer, Same-Gender Loving, Bi-Sexual,
Transgender, their families, friends, and supporters” to participate.
136
The slogan of this
march was one of claiming home via historical assertion, it read:
We have always been and will always be members of the Black community.
We are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles …
We are black, we are gay and we are here to stay!
This first march did not occur as a part of the Kingdom Day parade, which would occur a
few months later. This initial demonstration was a coming out. It was not just a claim on the
presence of Black LGBT folk in 2008; it was a claim for past recognition of Quareness, a
blackness that always already possesses queerness.
On the flyer organizers asked, “Please do not wear red or blue” because of the well-
known history of Blood and Crip gang violence in South Central LA.
137
There were
precautions made to assure that the Black LGBT protestors not be mistaken for gang
members. In the same way that I had wished for a sign to let the white West Hollywood
marchers know that I was not “that kind of Black, the homophobic kind,” Black LGBT folk
and other Black people who organize in Leimert Park had to make sure they had a sign that

135
Ibid., 9.
136
See Figure 9. Black LGBT LA Organizers, “Black LGBT Prop 8 Protest (Flyer).”
137
Ibid.
Green 86
proved them to not be “that kind of Black, the gang-banging kind.” This was done, not
simply because being mistaken as a gang member could lead to possible violence from rival
gangs, but also because it could lead to unwanted attention from the police.
An organizer of the Here to Stay Coalition, Yardenna Aaron, recounted an incident
that occurred during this first march, one that could have lead to violence. It was after the
200-300 people who attended the demonstration had left the park and now there were only
12-15 Black LGBT organizers. As they were preparing to leave, an instance of violence
occurred, Aaron describes it below saying,
…There were about 12-15 of us who were left in Leimert park after the rest of
the 200 had left and that’s where I say the community set us up to do a hear no
evil, see no evil act. So there were vendors in the park selling their wares.
There were shop merchants who were kinda outside watching ‘cause
everybody wants to see what’s going on and you had a couple of guys—it
started with 2 who started wolfin’ you know? Saying all their homophobic
slurs you know—talkin’ about hell—how we’re not a part of this community,
how we not from here (pause) I mean have you walked around Leimert Park
lately? Have you seen how many LGBT people are around here? I mean let’s
get real: not only are we from here, we up in here (laughter). So he was tryin’
to kick us out the park saying we had no claim to the space…
138

Here Aaron interrupts herself and talks to the camera as if sharing an open secret. Her voice
changes as she emphasizes the fact that not only does Leimert Park have a large population
of Black LGBT people who might be from that area, but when she says “we up in here,” she

138
Yardenna Aaron, Yardenna Aaron Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, January 2011.
Green 87
demonstrates a relationship to the neighborhood that is not only about origin, but also the
ways in which Black LGBT folks contribute so much to the neighborhood in terms of the
arts. For example, two openly gay Black men own The Lucy Florence Center,
139
a cultural
arts center. The Lucy Florence center is where the Black LGBTQI contingent begins and
ends their Kingdom Day parade. In many ways, Aaron is pointing out the absurdity of the
aggressors in the Black community trying to kick them out of a space that they are helping to
create and sustain in essential ways.
The kind of visibility that The Lucy Florence center had as a Black cultural institution
that was also Quare, did not cause friction in the same way that the visible Black LGBT
contingent did with their signs that marked them as gay, but also the presence of police as
protectors also signaled an outside force that has been the cause of much violence of Black
and brown bodies in LA. This kind of in your face, out of the closet, visibility challenged the
many examples and instances of Black LGBTQI folks; folks who have always been essential
to Black communities, who have had their sexualities ignored or merely tolerated (like the
church organist or director, who many know to be gay). Yet, it is never discussed, and it
remains an open secret.
140
The Black LGBTQI contingent forces their community to contend
with this open secret, which is different from the closet. It challenges a perpetuation of
willful ignorance. But this visibility is vexed.
Aaron continues her story saying,

139
No longer present in Leimert Park.
140
C. Riley Snorton, Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low
(University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Sexual Discretion: Black
Masculinity and the Politics of Passing (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
Green 88
… His numbers started to grow. So this is what I feel folks experienced in the
60s. You know, when a lot of activism was really strong and huge and
poignant? Their numbers began to grow. So other people who were in the LA
Kingdom Day Parade were feeling some of that, but now we were 15 instead
of 200. That 2 became 4, that 4 became 8, that 8 became … It didn’t quite
make it to 16, but it made it to about 12 or 13 ‘cause you know they were
calling their friends. Saying, ‘I’m gonna call the homies to come up here and
handle this.’ And it ended real sad. Cause we were seeing folks comin’ out
watchin.’ That’s what I mean by even the larger community setting
themselves up for hear no evil, see no evil. Cause they’re just watching these
guys become aggressors on us and getting ready to attack us and doing
physical threats of violence against us and they weren’t saying anything. More
and more just came out to watch to just kinda see. So that let us know that
there was more work to be done. And it didn’t spiral out of control to where
there was physical violence, it almost did. And this is where we have to have
more dialogue in our community cause we had to end up calling the police
and we had talked about, we don’t wanna have to do that in our own
community because the prison industrial complex is huge with folks being
locked up.
141

Aaron articulates, here, her feeling of a connection to the civil rights activism of the 60s. She
then talks about the growth of the group of the aggressors and the looming threat of violence
as people in the community watched and became silent witnesses. As the crowd of onlookers

141
Aaron, Yardenna Aaron Interview.
Green 89
grew, so did the amount of aggressors. The conclusion that Aaron comes to here, “that there
was more work to be done,” is one of resilience and strong will. As many might have taken
this as a sign to leave the park and never return, this was not an option when this park is a
place that she sees as connected to her own identity. There is no other place for her to go.
Still, we have to consider the initial police escort that already marked Aaron and the Black
LGBT as other, outsider. Furthermore, we see Aaron’s internal conflict expanded when the
police have to be brought in to prevent a violent situation. For Aaron, this was most
disheartening as she knows of the prison industrial complex and how it has worked to
dismantle and destroy Black and Brown communities. This kind of visibility came with
stipulations. Because of this, we recognize a desire for community accountability and
awareness. If the Black community is to thrive in LA, it must reckon with all of its members.
How do Black LGBT folk prove their Black and simultaneous queer membership? Is there
something inherently violent about queerness’ relationship to whiteness that will always lead
to violence being done on Black bodies? This dilemma around the use of police assistance
clearly illuminates the unique subject position Black LGBT folks occupy. They have a
troubled historical and present-day relationship to the police and police violence that, for
many, is attributed to their racial blackness. They also have a troubled relationship to the
Black community because of their queerness. The Black LGBTQI marchers refuse to disown
their claim to their Black bodies or their Black neighborhoods, proclaiming as they march,
“Say it loud! Black! Gay! And I’m Proud!”

A Quick Note about the Marches that occurred in 2009 and 2010
Green 90
After that first demonstration in 2008, Black LGBT organizers and community
members decided to organize a group of people to march in the Kingdom Day Parade. Aaron
says this was a tactic because it was a parade that she/they had been watching and
participating in since she/they were kids. I was not present for these for two years. I can tell
you that the first year that about twenty people marched under the banner Black Gay and
Here to Stay. Black Lesbian organizer, Imani Tolliver said of this first march:
There was a lot of fear all of us had. We talked about marching in different
ways, but to march in the Kingdom Day Parade, to march at home, on
Crenshaw and King… I remember having a lot of fear about that. We all did.
The first march, Barack Obama had just been sworn in to the White House
and Proposition 8 was over turned, so we lost our marriage rights. It was bitter
sweet. We were celebrating Barack Obama and we were mourning our loss of
Prop 8. I remember holding a sign at a place where we began on Western
Boulevard. I remember all the meetings, all the prayers, all the calling forth of
the ancestors that we could muster, and holding this sign that said Black, Gay
and Here to Stay. And as soon as we turned the corner and it was our turn to
march on King, I just remember thinking… I’ve never seen this many people
this close to me in my life (laughs). And I just remember thinking there were
so many people, there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people
and I remember getting a little start in my heart, but I thought, “This is it. We
can only go forward from here.” And we marched.
142

142
Imani Tolliver, Imani Tolliver Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, January 2011.
Green 91
The main banner of the parade had the slogan, “Black, Gay, and Here to Stay: We are your
Family.” Gay was printed in lavender and here to stay was printed in red, black and green. It
was a merger of the colors of Black Nationalist solidarity and lavender to signal LGBT
solidarity (See Figure 4). In 2011, the Black LGBT contingent doubled and it was raining.
143

When and Where I Entered (2011)
I joined the parade in 2011 - just two years after the Here to Stay Coalition and the
Jordan Rustin Coalition organized a Black LGBT contingent to walk in the Martin Luther
King Kingdom Day Parade. I remember the year I decided to join the parade as an out Black
lesbian (See Figure 10).
144
I had been building with members of the community; I had moved
from the Inland Empire
145
to South Los Angeles. I sent an email to the organizers of the event
and I asked them if they would mind if I made a film about the work they did. They thought
it was important to document the work they were doing, because keeping a record of Black
LGBT history was important and this event was historic as declared by many of the marchers
and organizers. I believed that I would bring to the forefront a story that hadn’t been told, one
that would surely be erased by the voices that called Black people inherently homophobic. I
wanted to keep a record of this public display.

143
Mignon R. Moore, “Articulating a Politics of (multiple) Identities,” Du Bois Review:
Social Science Research on Race 7, no. 02 (2010): 315–34,
doi:10.1017/S1742058X10000275.
144
Kai M. Green, “Kai M. Green Marching and Filming (Photo),” January 2011.
145
About 40 minutes east of Los Angeles
Green 92
It was 2011 and I had just completed the rough cut of my film, It Gets Messy in
Here.
146
I really thought the process of filmmaking and interviewing was an important way to
gain knowledge and share knowledge. When I saw that the Here to Stay Coalition and the
Jordan Rustin Coalition were planning to march in the Kingdom Day parade for the third
year in a row, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to capture Black LGBT folk marching out in
Black neighborhoods?” I wanted to capture this historic moment so that future Black queers
would see, would know, that they had ancestors who would walk with them unafraid Black
and gay. I was naive enough to believe that there was something new about what I was
doing. Yes, there was a specific time and moment that this group came together; the march
was focused around the election of the first Black president alongside the passing of
Proposition 8. Still, I would soon discover that what I was filming was not entirely new. In
fact, Marlon Riggs had a film called Affirmations
147
that came out in 1990 that traced a Black
LGBT contingent marching in the Harlem Day Parade. I was struck by how similar the film
was, the experience of marching Black and gay in Black space was similar. When I saw
Riggs’ film, I knew that there was a changing-same occurring.
148
There was an uncanny
relationship between my present Black queer work and a Black queer past.

146
It Gets Messy in Here, video recording (s.n., 2011).
147
“Anthem; Affirmations - Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO),” accessed March
25, 2014, http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/Detailcompare.asp?Number=4297.
148
Deborah E. McDowell, “The Changing Same”: Black Women’s Literature, Criticism, and
Theory (Indiana University Press, 1995); Imamu Amiri Baraka and William J. Harris, “The
Changing Same,” in The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (Basic Books, 2000), 186–91.
Green 93
2011 Kingdom Day Parade
In preparation for the Kingdom Day parade there was a sign-making party that
occurred at the historic Jewel’s Catch One. At the sign-making party, people gathered to
discuss their experience from the years before, as well as the reasons this march was
important right now. Visibility was important, but it was not just because of Proposition 8. It
was blackness that compelled many people to join the demonstration. Participants and
organizers consistently named histories of Black oppression and liberation as their reason for
joining the march as out, Black, and gay.
One of the founding organizers of the Here to Stay Coalition, Iyatunde Folayan,
opened up the sign making party space with a welcome. She thanked fellow organizers and
sponsoring organizations; these included The Jordan Rustin Coalition,
149
B.L.U. (Black
Lesbians United),
150
At the Beach (Black Pride LA),
151
In the Meantime Men’s group,
152
and
The Catch One.
153
Iyatunde’s welcome began by situating everyone in the space historically.
She told us “It means a lot that we are in a space that has been around for over 30 years.”
154

149
“(1) Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Coalition,” accessed July 9, 2014,
https://www.facebook.com/jordan.rustin.
150
“Black Lesbians United,” accessed July 9, 2014, http://blacklesbiansunited.org/.
151
“My Black Pride L.A. | Just Another WordPress Site,” accessed July 9, 2014,
http://myblackpridela.com/.
152
“In The Meantime Men |,” accessed July 9, 2014, http://itmm.mylifemystyle.net/.
153
“Catch One Night Club,” Catch One Night Club, accessed July 9, 2014,
http://catchonenightclub.com.
154
Kai M. Green, Parade Sign Making Party, Digital Video Recording, 2011.
Green 94
The Catch One was not just a club. For many in the Black LGBT Los Angeles community, it
was a symbol of Black gay pride and Black gay advancement. Jewel is a Black lesbian
entrepreneur and acupuncturist. She is lovingly known as “Mama Jewel” in Black LGBT
spaces. The Catch was the home base for those preparing to march in the Kingdom Day
Parade on the following day. Iyatunde made everyone aware of my presence and told people
that if they did not want to be filmed, it was fine, and just to let me know. Part of her
introduction of me included commentary on the importance of documenting history. She
asked the sign makers to consider, “What does MLK day mean to you?”
155
After the
question, she responded by declaring the importance of history and documentation. She
framed this as why it would be important for the community to talk to me. I had been given
the role of history keeper and I didn’t know then how much of a task it would be.
This march and the parade that we would be marching in tomorrow was “historic”
Iyatunde articulated.
It’s really important that brave people are able to come together and walk as
King did. This march is not unlike the march from Selma. This isn’t just a
parade. There’s a lot of violence in our communities. So we’re wrestling with
those themes as we’re thinking about what we want to tell our community in
our signs. We’re wrestling with themes of suicide—that was really big this
year. We lost a lot and we continue to lose a lot of young people who don’t
know who they are.
156

155
Ibid.
156
Ibid.
Green 95
Iyatunde continues to talk to the sign makers and tell them why their signs are important.
Many are making signs, but will not march in the actual parade. Those people are thanked
and acknowledged for being present. Many will show up tomorrow and carry another
person’s sign that says “I’m Black and gay.” That person will not only be carrying a sign for
themselves, but also for the very near person who is not able to march whether it be because
of health, ability, fear, or some other reason. Iyatunde also points out how the conversation
of rights for Black LGBT folks exceeds the issue of gay marriage. Black LGBT folks have to
contend with the threat of death and violence. This march, Iyatunde continues,
Is about being beautiful, worthy, and in the Black family.
Many of us have been forgotten or kicked out of our families and have had to
choose new families. This isn’t just a party. The way we all came together is
on the back of Prop 8 and we wanted to tell our Black heterosexual family that
we exist, that we’re here, and what better way than to show ourselves?
157

The goal articulated by Iyatunde was one of combating homophobia in Black community.
The argument here is not one for white gay people, it was for Black people. It was a task to
be visible in a very particular way and in certain terms. This kind of visibility requires a
common recognition or bond be made almost intuitively: that is our blackness, our history of
blackness is what connects us to Black people. At the same time, it is also the organizers and
participant’s blackness, their relationship and appreciation of Black history, which enables
the argument for LGBT rights for Black people.
One of the lead organizing groups was The Here to Stay Coalition, a group interested
in addressing the fall out from Prop 8,

157
Ibid.
Green 96
But more so than marriage, we thought it was important to make ourselves
visible and engage our community in different ways. We wanted to create a
dialogue within, particularly, the black community. One of the first things we
did was partner with Love at Work Fellowship to march down in Leimert
Park, down Crenshaw, saying, ‘We’re here, we’re in the community, and we
exist.’ We decided to also make ourselves visible on King day. What more
appropriate way to practice the themes of inclusion and justice than under
King’s umbrella?
158

This march was about practicing being visible. It was not something that happened naturally;
people had to give themselves visible signs to mark their queerness (See Figure 11).
159
The
signs let people know that they were both Black and gay. The Black is by virtue of the
performance, by virtue of the physicality of most marchers being read as Black people,
something that would not be questioned by parade on-lookers.
Many Black LGBT marchers recount watching spectators look at their bodies, look at
the sign, and then look again at their bodies with confusion, hostility, and sometimes, joy.
160
I
recall one elderly Black woman sitting in a lawn chair on the corner as we approached. She
smiled wide and waved. I smiled wide and waved back, feeling loved. Then a younger
woman next to her - perhaps a great niece or granddaughter - looked at me and shook her
head. She kneeled down and whispered something in the elderly woman’s ear. Her smile
became a stoic grimace then. I marched on. We marched on. But the declaration of Black

158
Iyatunde Folayan, Iyatunde Folayan Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, January 2011.
159
Kai M. Green, “Black LGBT Parade Signs (Photo),” January 16, 2011.
160
Green, Parade Sign Making Party.
Green 97
AND gay caused a double take and challenged on-lookers to reckon with their cognitive
dissonance (See Figures 1-5).
The cognitive dissonance resulting from the double take is exactly what the Black
LGBT contingent provokes. I think this is productive. Like the image of King or Obama, the
parade has become a depoliticized symbolic performance of the attainment of a dream of
freedom that was never fully actualized. However, the Black LGBT contingent repoliticizes
the mundane annual Kingdom Day parade by disrupting the idea of the parade as an
attainment of a dream of diversity. The double take provoked teaches people how to read
signs of blackness differently as it brings to the forefront the contradictions that might be
present, yet left unnamed.

We’ve Always Been Here
Iyatunde’s welcome situated all of the sign makers within history; she narrated a historical
home for Black LGBT Angelenos.
We’ve always been in the Kingdom Day Parades, we just may not have been
organized under our own umbrella to stand out in the way that we do. In
Southern California, there have been contingents of Black gays organized
around HIV and AIDS activism in the parade. We stand on the shoulders of
those who have gone before us. Yes we’ve been here. But what we are doing
today is: we are extending King’s legacy. The significance of having MLK
Day has to do with the legacy of justice and liberation of Black people. It has
to do with jobs, education, and employment. It’s 2011, what are the most key
issues that we are still dealing with today? In Black communities everywhere
Green 98
funds are being cut. We have to raise our voices louder, but we are also
adding on to that discussion the issue of sexuality—those ideas that keep us so
locked in that we don’t even talk to our own or we kick our sons and our
daughters out. Or we don’t bury our sons and daughters. There’s a whole
legacy, a conversation around what happened with the onslaught of
HIV/AIDS and how our community treated our Black gay men and women as
they were dying; how we shunned them and wouldn’t bury them. We don’t
want to continue that … It’s time for us to get beyond some of our old notions
and understand that justice exist for everyone.
161

In this welcome, Iyatunde uses “we” to talk about the ways in which Black people generally
have been homophobic, how there is still work that needs to be done. She is implicated in
that “we.” Iyatunde articulates blackness as communal; it is something that is (re)produced
within and outside of Black communities. Her understanding of blackness is expansive and
she includes herself in that “we,” even as she as an individual isn’t homophobic. She
includes herself in the “we” of blackness, which is, in some ways, troubled by homophobia.
Iyatunde is no exception, rather, but a part of a heterogeneous whole. That notion of “we” is
what compels her to do this work of changing the culture of homophobia that exists in some
Black spaces. The failure of Black people is also the failure of Quare people here - like
Iyatunde. She articulates her linked fate as a Black lesbian with all Black people.
162

161
Folayan, Iyatunde Folayan Interview.
162
For more about my thoughts on the radical possibility of “We” see: Kai M. Green, “Kai’s
(Bi)Weekly Jams: 1+1,” Kai’s (Bi)Weekly Jams, May 22, 2012,
http://justmyimaginings.blogspot.com/2012/05/11.html.
Green 99
Iyatunde’s insistence on “we” does not foreclose the possibility of a heterogeneous
blackness. She states, talking to Black people generally, “You do you and I’ll do me. All of
me. I don’t want to compartmentalize. We want to be whole people”
163

Iyatunde encourages the sign makers to see their activities as important work, hard
work. She talks about marching in the parade in 2010 when it was cold and rainy and how
that march got them respect from community members because of their dedication. She
states,
Harriet Tubman had to go rain or shine. She was doing a job. And for us, this
is our job. It’s a celebration of life and love. I want our march to be
remembered for its political aspect. It should never be divorced from King’s
legacy of standing up for yourself even when you’re unpopular, like King on
war and poverty. King was not popular person. King would support us. We
are making a political statement.
164

The work of the march signaled a difference that other marchers articulated as well—this was
to be a march and not a parade.
165
Rodney Knickens Jr., field organizer with Bayard

163
IBID
164
Folayan, Iyatunde Folayan Interview.
165
For more on the politics and performance of marching, see: Hanes Walton and Hanes
Walton, When the Marching Stopped: The Politics of Civil Rights Regulatory Agencies
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988); Lucy G. Barber, Marching on
Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (University of California Press,
2004); Charles Euchner, Nobody Turn Me around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on
Green 100
Rustin/Barbara Jordan Coalition echoed Iyatunde’s insistence on the political importance of
this march. In my interview with him, he said this march was important because of the
economic climate that poor and Black people face. He states,
It’s important to have King Day so that we remember where we come from
and all of our ancestor’s struggles that grant us the opportunities that we have
today. It’s especially important for the Black LGBT community. We are
marching together for the third year in a row. We are marching in the largest
King Day parade and being visible, bringing recognition to the issues that
Black LGBT people face, especially amidst so many accomplishments that
we’ve had; thanks in large part to the Obama administration. It’s a great
symbolic gesture to our community especially in light of the suicides that have
occurred recently.
166

Knickens continues,
I love marching in the parade. It’s a definite distinct difference in marching in
the parade than pride parade. A lot of times folks compare the struggles of the
LGBT community to the struggles of African Americans for racial equality
and racial justice … I think that’s not an accurate comparison. They are
distinctive in terms of a legacy of racial discrimination. … I think gay pride is

Washington (Beacon Press, 2010); Joseph R. Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic
Performance (Columbia University Press, 1996); Jewelle Gomez, Forty-Three Septembers:
Essays (Firebrand Books, 1993).
166
Rodney Knickens Jr., Rodney Knickens Jr. Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, January
2011.
Green 101
a time for me to be proud and open and out and to really be visible. I think
MLK day is a day of remembrance because we do remember the life of Dr.
King and his service, but also that he had to give his life for that service.
There’s a definite difference in tone of what’s appropriate and what’s not.
MLK day is a day of service and a day of thanks for all of his struggle and the
broader civil rights community as well.
167

The MLK day parade is sacred for participants and it harkens back to Civil Rights
demonstrations, sit-ins, hoses, dogs, and the threat of violence. Knickens points out that we
remember, “[King] gave his life.” The proximity of blackness to death is what compels Black
folks and Black LGBT folks to fight. Many people at this sign-making party talk about all the
lives that have been lost because of suicide.
Iyatunde asserts,
It is really important for our Black LGBT family to reach out our arms to
young people, all people. Many have thought about suicide, not just youth. It
needs to be included in our dialogue. I think we forget our responsibility to
one another, to make our communities safe for us to stand up against violence
like King did. We can’t forget that many of us are still not safe in our own
homes, still getting killed; we’re still denied services.
168

Iyatunde continues to talk about the needs of Black LGBT folk that exceed the ask for
marriage equality.

167
Ibid.
168
Green, Parade Sign Making Party.
Green 102
The sense that I get from the white gay community is that once they win the
marriage issue and now that DADT has passed … Marriage doesn’t solve the
problem of safety in terms of violence. I for one am not pro military. I’m
against war. I would like the LGBT community to fight against the war. We
may not agree on all of that, but the reality that we face within the Black
LGBT community [is that] we’re still fighting to save our own lives and our
children.
169

Iyatunde articulates a fundamental question about the terms of equality and what that
would mean for Black LGBT people. Marriage equality does not solve the problems that
Black LGBT people face in terms of homelessness, violence, incarceration and so on. She
also talks about the military, war, and how equality that allows gay people to fight in the war
alongside straight people does not combat the issue of the existence of war.

2012 Kingdom Day Parade
It was different from going to a pride parade in West Hollywood. This parade felt more like
a march. There was something that we all were connecting to - a still very recent feeling of
anger regarding Prop 8 and the way it was blamed on Black folks. There was definitely
something different about this parade, and this kind of feeling was not just happening in the
Black community. There was something happening around the country in the form of

169
Folayan, Iyatunde Folayan Interview.
Green 103
Occupy Movements.
170
The May Day Parade also organized a LGBT contingent.
171
There
were people who organized an LGBT contingent of the Vietnamese parade in Los Angeles as
well.
172
Marching as LGBT in these cultural events challenged the idea of presumed
heteronormativity of non-white racial groups. This insistence on visibility combated the idea
that homosexuality was solely a white phenomenon. Adding LGBT contingents to these
parades trying to display the best of their country, or racial group, often exposes a politics of
respectability attached to the concept of that racial formation. In these parades, there is a
desire to show the group as a unified front, but also that unified front is heteronormative and
even if there are those queers who have always existed, they are not supposed to announce it.
When members of these communities decide to walk as the community and in contestation
of that community, a productive tension is produced. The struggle appears greatest when
Black queers face their own people and refuse to say they are not Black—a refusal to leave a
presumed home. They become bridges. Those bridges have a function, but they also have
certain limitations. For example, in the second year that I marched in the parade 2012, many

170
Esther Addley, “Occupy Movement: From Local Action to a Global Howl of Protest,” The
Guardian, October 17, 2011, sec. World news,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/17/occupy-movement-global-protest.
171
Suyapa Portillo, “The Los Angeles May Day ‘Queer Contingent’ and the Politics of
Inclusion,” Huffington Post, May 5, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suyapa-
portillo/the-los-angeles-may-day-q_b_1476762.html.
172
“Gay Activists Fight To March In Vietnamese New Year’s Parade,” accessed July 9,
2014, http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/video/9621418-gay-activists-fight-to-march-in-
vietnamese-new-years-parade/.
Green 104
radical organizations joined under the banner Black, Gay and Here to Stay.
173
There were
different kinds of people than there had been in previous years, but one of the organizers,
while excited about the increased participation, was also concerned that there were not
enough visibly Black people up front. In order for the parade to do what it was supposed to
do (in terms of building a bridge between the larger Black community and the Black LGBT
community) - in order to be that bridge - there must be a level of sameness, or at least a
belonging to each otherness. This sense of belonging seems to be felt most enduringly as
racial sameness. It is the sentiment that one spectator articulated when she said, “We love
you, but you need to come home.” There was sadness, disappointment and a concern for us
Black and Gay people. We had unfortunately been taken over. That which made us stand out
as Black LGBT, somehow also made us inherently outside of home. It didn’t matter that
many of us lived in the same neighborhoods and were from there. When connection or
solidarity is built on something like racial sameness, it sometimes disallows expansion of
coalition. For instance, when the parade became not Black enough, it was a threat to Black
space, and there was something that needed to be protected in terms of representation. The
numbers of Black people in the LGBT contingent needed to remain the majority or else
they/we would further mark us as outsiders. Of course, an all white LGBT contingent
walking in the Kingdom day parade would fail at building a bridge. A group of folks that
was majority white would have been presumed to be outsiders. At the same time, a group of
Black people who did not necessarily look phenotypically Black might also ignite the same
problem.

173
Kai M. Green, Kingdom Day Parade Footage 2012, Digital Video Recording, 2012.
Green 105
Conclusion
In 1983, Ronald Reagan signed a bill that made Martin Luther King Day a national holiday.
Coretta Scott King had been fighting to get this national holiday in office since the
assassination of King in 1968. One of the many ways that communities have gone about
celebrating the Holiday is to have a parade where people reflect on King’s dream. The parade
emerged as an opportunity to celebrate and honor a Civil Rights activist, but it also provided
a space for Black people to remember a historical site of injury. This holiday was not just a
Black holiday; it was an American holiday, holding all the contradictions of Black
Americaness. For example, the president who signed this bill was Reagan, who was perhaps
the most criticized of all presidents by Black people.
174

In this chapter, I examined the presence of Black queer bodies in the Kingdom Day
parade in Los Angeles. This Black LGBT contingent marked a general queering of the
parade – challenging the idea of a unified, normatively successful, singular Black monolith.
Queer bodies that do not read as Black lose their very legibility as a challenge to monolithic
blackness. Black LGBT marchers had to negotiate how to both represent a unified blackness

174
Robert L. Jackson, “Reagan Links His Policies to Record Black Prosperity,” Los Angeles
Times (1923-Current File), January 19, 1986, sec. Part I,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/154448287/abstract/ADF824C699D548
A9PQ/6?accountid=14749; Luix Overbea, “Black Reagan Appointees Try to Overcome
Identity Crisis,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 1981,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/1038851676?pq-origsite=summon;
Miriam Lacob, “Black Reactions to Reagan,” Africa Report 27, no. 4 (July 1, 1982),
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/1304048233/fulltext?accountid=14749.
Green 106
or a “we,” while also challenging the notion that “we” requires sameness. Racial blackness
was necessary for Black LGBT marchers to create a bridge between themselves as LGBT
and a larger Black community. These marchers challenged on-lookers to expand notions of
blackness to include LGBT.
Think of the double take I mentioned earlier, that moment of [over]standing apparent
in the body language of the elderly Black woman who cheered us queers until she was alerted
of the negation of blackness our signs communicated. The double take provoked teaches
people how to read signs of blackness differently as it brings to the forefront the
contradictions that might not otherwise be named yet present. We made ourselves visible as
Black and queer, but we were already Quare. Just as I was illegible as Quare in West
Hollywood, I was also illegible as a Quare in Black space; this is not something I seek to
change. Queerness demands a particular kind of visibility that potentially disavows the
ghostly presence and persistence of the Quare. For example, the person who made a sign but
did not march in the parade, or the other grievances besides marriage equality Black LGBT
marchers articulate as issues essential for Black LGBT Angelenos. I am interested, then, in
Quarness’ ability to sustain excess. Better yet, I’m interested in Quarness as indexing the
Black wholeness that exists pre, post, and in conjunction with Black queer.
I began this chapter in 2008 in California when two major political occurrences took
place: Proposition 8 and the election of Barack Obama. This conflict that arose in this
moment illuminated a long history of the production of blackness and queerness as
antagonistic. As such, those who bear the sign of the intersection of blackness and queerness
are often left in a precarious situation where they must choose one or the other. In this story,
the Black LGBT people that I engage refuse to choose one or the other. Instead, they work to
Green 107
craft more space for themselves as Black and queer. This struggle to claim space is launched
in South Los Angeles.
In our current moment, there is a move towards a politics of openness and outness
that in the end still calls for the silencing of the other. Like erasure or forced invisibility,
hypervisibility can also be used to control what can or cannot be talked about. Today, in the
age of coming out, for Black queer people, a politics of silence is rebuked. It is traded in for a
more boastful and visible sexuality that claims to be proud and loud. There is a quest to live
and love in the light. Yet, in order to do this, some things and people are continuously cast
into the shadows. Our movements must have a clear grasp of the workings of race, class,
gender and sexuality as those factors structure our material world. Still, the identities that we
embody cannot be said to determine the politics of the subject. We must be careful not to
mistake the identity for the politics. I don’t think there has been a better time to revisit this
cautionary tale, than right now in the age of Obama, the first Black president leading in what
many will argue is a post-race America (although as Michael Dawson argues and statistics
support, this is clearly not the case). If it is indeed a post-race moment, then how do we
contend with the fact that Black Americans make up a majority of those incarcerated,
175
the
highest demographic of people facing unemployment
176
and the highest number of
individuals suffering from major health disparities.
177
Even as these statistics prove Black

175
Michael C. Dawson, “The Future of Black Politics,” Boston Review, January 2012, 2–3,
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/ndf_michael_dawson_black_politics.php.
176
Ibid.
177
“In 2005 the rate of diagnosis for black adults and adolescents was ten times that for
whites” Dawson, 4.
Green 108
American vulnerability to premature death,
178
they cannot predict the politics of Black
people. While race, class, gender, and sexuality will no doubt inform the way one walks
through the world, it will not provide a predetermined outcome as much as we might like it
to. This is especially true when our politics or the leadership we endorse is limited by
scenario or particular regimes of visibility.

178
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, And Opposition in
Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), 28. Gilmore defines racism
here as, “…the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group
differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”
Green 109
Chapter 2 Figures

Figure 4: Here to Stay

Figure 5: Onlookers 1: John 14:6
Green 110

Figure 6: Onlookers 2: Brothers

Figure 7: Onlookers 3: Yaaasss!
Green 111

Figure 8: Onlookers 4: Wave and Smile

Figure 9: Black LGBT Prop 8 Protest Flyer
Green 112

Figure 10: Kai M. Green Marching and Filming
Green 113

Figure 11: Black LGBT Parade Signs (2011)

Green 114
Chapter 3: In the Sheets—The Uses of the Erotic

Introduction
South Los Angeles, formerly known as South Central LA, is commonly recounted in
the American imaginary through conjured images of gangbanging characters in Boyz N The
Hood who occupy the position of the ultimate Menace II Society.
179
Images of Black Los
Angeles range from these hardcore gangster motifs to upwardly mobile Black middle class
dream movies like The Wood.
180
The way that Los Angeles has been produced in the popular
imagination has sometimes included Black queer characters like the ones presented in Car
Wash or Set it Off.
181
However, whether these retellings feature the gang life or the good life,
the Black queer subject is hardly ever present. Hollywood and popular images of Los
Angeles rarely imagine a thriving Black queer subject - a tendency that also structures the
very material conditions of Angelenos who live as the embodied intersection of Black and
queer.
Black queer studies focuses on that intersection of Black and queer; thus, challenging
the logic that the two are inherently oppositional, a logic that affects our ability to organize
politically and socially. This logic has been and continues to be challenged by artists,

179
Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes, Menace II Society, Crime, Drama, (1993); John
Singleton, Boyz N the Hood, Crime, Drama, (1991).
180
Rick Famuyiwa, The Wood, Comedy, Drama, Romance, (1999).
181
F. Gary Gray, Set It Off, Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller, (1996); Michael Schultz, Car
Wash, Comedy, Drama, Romance, (1976).
Green 115
organizers, scholars, writers, and everyday people seeking a more nuanced and intersectional
approach to understand the ways that power is structured and restructured via race, sexuality,
gender, class and ability.
182
One of the ways in which Black queer studies scholars have
challenged this logic has been through a task of Black and simultaneously queer
(re)membering, a key example of this is signaled in the Black Queer Studies Reader when
Sharon Holland recalls the significance of the historic Black Queer Studies in the
Millennium conference, the conference that preceded the reader (which would work to
solidify Black queer studies as a legitimate field)—Holland writes of the gathering, saying,

182
Here are some examples of relevant texts that grapple with intersectional identities and
politics. Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black
Politics, 1st ed. (University Of Chicago Press, 1999); E. Patrick Johnson and Mae
Henderson, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press, 2005);
Kathryn Bond Stockton, Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer”
(Duke University Press, 2006); Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical
Trans Politics and the Limits of Law (South End Press, 2011); Mignon R. Moore,
“Articulating a Politics of (multiple) Identities,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on
Race 7, no. 02 (2010): 315–34, doi:10.1017/S1742058X10000275; Julia Sudbury, “Maroon
Abolitionists: Black Gender-Oppressed Activists in the Anti-Prison Movement in the U.S.
and Canada,” Meridians 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 1–29; Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the
Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,”
Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1, 1991): 1241–99, doi:10.2307/1229039.
Green 116
… we searched for reflections of ourselves and began to find them tucked
away in the Harlem Renaissance, embedded in second-wave feminism, and
nestled at the heart of the civil rights struggle.
183

The reflections that they sought were not only their own, but also reflections and proof of a
Black queer past, preserved or tucked away. These are the stories of Black queers that
existed before there was a formalized name “Black queer” beckoning a group of people. This
is the James Baldwin that my mother read in college, while never once discussing or
knowing about his queerness. It was still there. In some ways to (re)member is to bring back
together for the purpose of resurrection. These histories which may have been deemed Black
or queer or non-existent, are brought together as inseparable tales; this is the work of Black
queer studies. To resurrect is to bring back to life from presumed death. Much of the theory
that has come from Black queer studies acts to resurrect, as it also (re)members that which
has been obscured through singularly analytical frameworks.
184
In other words, Black queer
studies as a project is concerned with (re)membering Black queerness wherever it has been

183
Johnson and Henderson, Black Queer Studies, xii.
184
Black and Women of Color feminists have created a large body of scholarship and art that
critique this singular analytical framework and provide intersectional approaches too.Toni
Cade Bambara, The Black Woman: An Anthology (New American Library, 1970); Roderick
A. Ferguson, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (U of Minnesota
Press, 2004); Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in Sister Outsider:
Essays and Speeches (Random House Digital, Inc., 1984), 53–60; Denise Riley, Am I That
Name: Feminism And The Category Of Women In History (University of Minnesota Press,
2003); Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins.”
Green 117
tucked away. To (re)member is to put back together again. It is also to recall a story or a
time in one’s mind—to bring about a narrative. The process of (re)membering, then, is an
act of approximation because it is a construction. (Re)membering is about survival, and
survival is life. If Black life exists in the margins, then Black queer life exists in the margins
of those margins. Therefore, a (re)membering is required in order to make Black queer life
legible.
This chapter is a Black queer (re)membering of Black queer Angelenos forging Black
geographies which, as Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods note in their introduction to
Black Geographies, “…disclose how the racialized production of space is made possible in
the explicit demarcations of the spaces of les damnes as invisible or forgettable at the same
time as the invisible or forgettable is producing space.”
185
Black queer Angelenos’ work to
(re)member themselves, and part of that struggle includes making themselves visible to
themselves, a struggle that often occurs on the erotic terrain.
186
The erotic terrain is but one
place to locate a Black queer geography. In this chapter, I am specifically interested in the

185
Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, eds., Black Geographies and the Politics of
Place (South End Press, 2007), 4.
186
This is a short list from the long list of scholars who engage Audre Lorde’s call to use the
erotic as resource. Sharon Patricia Holland, The Erotic Life of Racism (Duke University Press
Books, 2012); E. Patrick Johnson, “A Revelatory Distillation of Experience,” Women’s
Studies Quarterly 40, no. 3/4 (Fall 2012): 313–16; Roderick A. Ferguson, “Of Sensual
Matters: On Audre Lorde’s ‘Poetry Is Not a Luxury’ and ‘Uses of the Erotic,’” Women’s
Studies Quarterly 40, no. 3/4 (Fall 2012): 297–302; Nikki Young, “‘Uses of the Erotic’ for
Teaching Queer Studies,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 40, no. 3 (2013): 301–5.
Green 118
ways in which Black gay men and Black lesbians, via print culture, engaged the erotic at the
end of the 20
th
Century as a site to cultivate knowledge, examine desire, and create space
whereby they could critique the very meaning of the erotic and its function in their everyday
and fantastic imaginary lives.
I (re)member the erotic terrain, here, as a Black queer geography constructed and
struggled over in many social, cultural, and political locations. I foreground the Black queer
magazine, BLK Magazine and two of its offspring publications, Blackfire and Black Lace, as
a Black queer erotic terrain. This Black queer geography is often a space of major neglect
and simultaneous policing by the state, institutions, and people. It is also a space of social
and political organization. My task is not simply to (re)member a story of Black queer Los
Angeles’ erotic terrain; rather, it is also an epistemological endeavor challenging us to think
about the objects we engage and how we come to gather those materials. Much of the
information that I present in this manuscript comes from Black queer materials that are not
housed in official institutional archives. The only way to gather some of these stories is to be
in conversation with Black queer Angelenos, which is what I have been doing since 2009.
Through interviews with writers and editors from BLK Publications, along with archival
materials such as BLK newsletters, magazines, and other miscellaneous documents, I am able
to chart the erotic terrain constructed by Black queer folks in Los Angeles in the 1980’s and
1990’s. Yes, the intersection of Black and queer can be found on Crenshaw and King, as well
as in Ladera Heights, Baldwin Hills, West Adams, Leimert Park, Inglewood and Watts.
187
By

187
These are a few of the neighborhoods of the twenty-eight that make up what is known as
South Los Angeles, formerly South Central Los Angeles. South Los Angeles makes up a
51.08 sQuare mile portion of Los Angeles County. For more information on South Los
Green 119
examining these magazines, and through my interviews, I demonstrate how Black gay men
and lesbians made use of the erotic terrain as a liberatory site in part as a response to the
HIV/AIDS crisis. It was also a place sometimes confounded by an oppressive gender binary.
The erotic terrain being forged highlights the ways in which Black lesbians and gay men
struggled to articulate and affirm non-normative sexualities while upholding an erotic
economy hinged on a normative gender binary.
The power to be discovered in the erotic is about a self-determined will over the body
and the place that body occupies. The erotic terrain is a site of (re)production of Black queer
knowledge and innovation, a site of intimacy (intimate relationships with lovers, kin,
violence, loss and death), and a site of struggle. The erotic terrain is a dynamic site of
intersection where desire, pleasure, work, and struggle all collide providing a knowledge that
is often times discounted as “non-rational
188
” and thus devalued. BLK Magazine, Black Lace
and Blackfire were produced on the erotic terrain, demonstrating how Black queer life
functioned in relation to state sanctioned violence and the death and disappearance of Black

Angeles see: “South L.A.: Mapping L.A. Is the Los Angeles Times’ Resource for Maps,
Boundaries, Demographics, Schools and News in Los Angeles County.,” Mapping L.A.,
accessed July 8, 2014, http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/region/south-la/; Please see
the following story featuring a young Black gay leader who was born and raised in the Watts
Imperial Court housing project for a personal narrative of growing up Black and Gay in
South Los Angeles: Michael Krikorian, “A Gay Leader Emerges in the ’Hood,” LA Weekly,
accessed July 8, 2014, http://www.laweekly.com/2013-04-04/news/deshawn-cole-gay-out-of-
closet-watts-leader/.
188
Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” 53.
Green 120
people in Los Angeles because of HIV/AIDS,
189
drug addiction,
190
high unemployment, rising
incarceration rates, and homelessness.

The Erotic Terrain
The erotic as articulated by Audre Lorde in her essay, “Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic
as Power,”
191
is a call for women to make use of the erotic as a source of power, a source of
power that because of patriarchy, misogyny, and white supremacy has been deemed
pornographic. Lorde asks us to challenge this pornographic relationship in order to gain
access to the resource of the erotic. This is a call to reclaim the value of one’s own Black life
and body for oneself in a capitalistic, patriarchal, homophobic, sexist, racist and classist
world that devalues Black bodies unless they are in service of someone else’s gain. Black
queer folk in Los Angeles make this reclamation on the erotic terrain.
Lorde first presented her formulation of the erotic in a paper delivered at the 1978
Berkshire Conference on the History of Women that would later become part of her Sister
Outsider
192
essay collection. Many have grappled with this essay, some discarded the essay
because they believed its emphasis on women’s access to erotic power was essentialist.
However as Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes, “…though her talk is addressed to women, it

189
Between the years of 1981 and 1986, 25 percent of those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in
the United States are black people, who only made up 12 percent of the population at that
time. Among children, black children made up 58 percent of the infected population.
190
By 1986 the DEA had deemed the crack epidemic an issue in most major U.S. cities.
191
Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”
192
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Random House Digital, Inc., 2012).
Green 121
ultimately applies to all oppressed classes whose passion and energy must be distorted and
co-opted by whoever would oppress them.”
193
Though women are an oppressed class who
have had to (and continue to have to) struggle against patriarchy in order to reclaim their
erotic power, the resource of the erotic is not solely endowed to women.
Others grappled with the essay seeking to understand Lorde’s distinction between
pornography and the erotic. Lorde wrote, “pornography is a direct denial of the power of the
erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation
without feeling.”
194
Lorde’s formulation created a distinct binary between pornography and
the erotic. Pornography signals for Lorde a kind of feeling without feeling; there is an
implication that the erotic is deeper than pornography. In some ways, Lorde is trying to
illuminate the ways in which Black women’s bodies are commodified and used as object in
the service of some American imaginary of Black sexuality. Lorde emphasizes the
reclamation of the erotic, or Black women’s sexuality as a liberatory act, but in order to do
so, Lorde posits pornography as an opponent prohibiting access to the erotic resource. Many
note how this formulation disallows for the possibility of feminist pornography.
One of those who both appreciated and struggled with Lorde’s formulation is Black
Lace editor, Alycee Lane. Black Lace printed its first issue in the spring of 1991. There were
four issues printed between 1991 and 1992. This Black lesbian publication included poetry,
essays, erotic stories, art and photographs. The representations of Black women here were

193
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Beyond the Feel Good Workbook: Sustainable Erotics of
Community Accountable Scholarship,” n.d.
194
Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power*,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and
Speeches (Berkeley, Calif: Crossing Press, 2007), 54.
Green 122
varied along the spectrum of masculinities and femininities (See Figures 12 and 13).
195
This
publication is a material example of the ways in which Black lesbians were moving and
shaping their identities; challenging confining notions of gender binaries. Each issue of Black
Lace included an introduction by editor Alycee J. Lane, who was then a graduate student in
the Department of English at UCLA. Lane wanted to create a safe space for Black women to
interrogate and express their desires and love of other Black women. Along with erotic
fantasy, Black Lace also included advice columns giving women sexual health information,
and political articles urging Black Lesbians to make themselves conscious of social justice
issues like South African Apartheid.
Black Lace, though only in print for four issues, articulated the importance of the
erotic terrain as influenced by Lorde’s formulation, but then exceeded and put pressure on
Lorde’s formulation. The erotic terrain is anchored at the scale of the body, and just as the
body is raced and gendered, so, too, is the erotic terrain. If the erotic is to be a usable
resource then, it is the relationship one has to oneself and to one’s body that must be
addressed. Lorde writes that using the erotic as a resource requires an affirmation of the “yes
within” ourselves that we have been conditioned to fear.”
196
This call is directly taken up by

195
The category of woman is struggled over in the pages of Black Lace, a topic that will be
discussed in more detail later in this chapter. See Figures 1 and 2: Bob Finney and Katrice
Jackson, “Katrice Jackson with Weights (Photo),” ed. Johnson Hiawatha and Lane J. Alycee
(BLK Publishing Company, Spring 1991); Bob Finney and Katrice Jackson, “Katrice
Jackson Flex (Photo),” ed. Johnson Hiawatha and Lane J. Alycee (BLK Publishing
Company, Spring 1991).
196
Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” 57.
Green 123
Black Lace editor, Alycee J. Lane, and she articulates it in the “Editor’s Notes” in the first
issue:
FINALLY! BLACK LACE AFTER TOO many late night and early morning
conversations and political debates and asking should I? Or shouldn’t I? And
worrying about the devastating infinite measurements of political
‘correctness’ and meditating on what it means, feels like to be an African
American lesbian loving other African American lesbians, sex and multiple
orgasms, knowing—do you hear me? –knowing that we have been and
continue you to be sexual animals to the Amerikan imagination, working our
asses off to prove the perversion of that imagination all the while internalizing
the frigid Victorian sensibility of no sex, I don’t think about sex, I don’t want
sex, I don’t even know what my own pussy looks like.
197

Lane’s opening to the magazine is forceful, directed to other Black lesbians who love Black
lesbians. She is aware of the tropes, the controlling images of Black deviancy that Black
people negotiate daily.
198
She notes here the ways in which that pressure, that knowing that
you could easily slip into the some popular trope of the perverse Amerikan imagination, puts
disciplinary pressure on the Black body. The quest to not be that deviant body often produces
an over investment in politics of respectability, a detachment from the body, so much so that
you might not even know what your own pussy look like. On the other hand, embracing one’s
sexuality might play into that perverse imagination. In many ways, this is what Audre Lorde

197
Alycee J. Lane, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?,” Black Lace, Summer 1991, 3.
198
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics
of Empowerment, Rev. 10th anniversary ed (New York: Routledge, 2000).
Green 124
is naming as the bind that prevents Black women and Black people from being able to access
the erotic. Yet, for Lane, the response cannot be to censure what is thought of as pornography
because that, too, becomes another kind of oppression. She proclaims,
Let us celebrate. Let us share our fantasies frankly and honestly even brutally
let’s do the safe sex thing the dental dams the latex gloves let’s laugh and love
sex or lovemaking if that’s what you call it to hell with what Amerika thinks
to hell with what we’ve taught ourselves to think pledge allegiance to your
entire black woman selves let us fuck suck eat screw scream our heads off
loud enough for everyone to hear….
199

Lane wants to take her power back and encourages readers to do the same by embracing
different kinds of sex while questioning what pleasure might look like. Pleasure might be
brutal, it might be sex or lovemaking, and it might look deviant to an Amerikan imaginary.
The distinction between sex and lovemaking is a response to Lorde’s distinction between
sensation and sensation with feeling. For Lane there is no judgment of either. There is,
rather, a desire to make room for it all. Lane encourages the reader to let go of those binds
and enjoy sex however you want it. She reminds the readers to do the safe sex thing, that is a
non-negotiable which speaks directly to the time of greater awareness around HIV/AIDS and
activism. This is an example of Black Queer Angelenos working to eradicate internalized
racism, homophobia, and an overall fear of sexuality and the body.
The erotic terrain was not only a place to enact personal pleasure and liberate oneself
sexually, for Black queer Angelenos, this place of pleasure was being forged in a time of
multiple crises. That material reality could not be escaped. Robin D.G. Kelley argues that in

199
Lane, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?,” 3.
Green 125
much of the scholarship on the working class, "...play is seen as an escape from work..." but
when it comes to oppressed poor people of color, "the pursuit of leisure, pleasure and
creative expression is itself labor."
200
Lane articulates the importance that Black queer
Angelenos understand the relationship between work and play. For Black queer folks,
pleasure - finding creating and sustaining places of pleasure - is a battle against internalized
and external heteronormativity and white supremacy. Lane argues that access to a liberated
sexual self comes with a responsibility to do other kinds of work. She, too, makes a
distinction between work and play that seems contradictory to how Black Lace worked as an
erotic magazine. After encouraging women to fuck and screw she proceeds, saying,
Then let’s get off our backs, dammit, there’s so much to do there’s crack
young black kids hating themselves poverty homelessness murdered black
children black men black women George Bush Jesse Helms it’s not enough to
fuck not enough to search for the ultimate orgasm we have other lives to live
other lives so wash your toys put your leather harness away kiss your lover(s)
get up, I say, get up there’s so much work to do, so much power in our erotic
selves … Enjoy.
201

We can read this as in upholding the false dichotomy between work and play, arguing
that after you are finished having sex, you must do the work because there is so much to be
done. The sex act itself is not going to bring about social transformation; there are multiple
interlocking oppressions that Lane names: crack, poverty and homelessness. Although Lane

200
Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban
America (Beacon Press, 1997), 45.
201
Lane, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?,” 3.
Green 126
articulates these as struggles separate from sexual liberation, I argue that the placement of
these social issues alongside an articulation of a desire for sexual liberation outside of
deviancy or denial, creates an erotic terrain that is simultaneously work and pleasure. She
contradicts her very own employment of this false dichotomy and solidifies it by concluding
the erotic self does indeed exceed sex acts. The erotic self is not put away when a person
gets up, it is simply another place of erotic power, perhaps this is Lane learning how to name
that as Lorde suggests. This inseparability of work and play is further inscribed in the text
itself as the text rarely uses commas, periods or grammatical markers to separate sentences or
thoughts, demonstrating the messiness and complex dynamic of the erotic terrain.
Though Black lesbians and Black gay men were affected differently, the virus was
still being represented as a major feature of the erotic terrain. The cover of Black Lace, Issue
1, included a Black woman, head tilted back, facial features unclear, locks flowing to
shoulders, chest out, wearing a “silence equals death” t-shirt (See Figure 14).
202
Black Lace
included calls for safer sex measures. Still, knowledge about how the virus affected women,
especially Black lesbian women, was scarce as most of the research being done focused on
gay white male populations.
Black lesbians and Black gay men forged relationships during this moment of crisis.
C. Jerome Woods, founder and director of the Black LGBT Project, stated in an interview
regarding Black lesbians in the 1980’s and 1990’s, “Sometimes [black lesbians] were the
only people who would touch an infected person.”
203
In the bonds created between Black

202
Bob Finney, “Silence Equals Death (Photo),” ed. Johnson Hiawatha and Lane J. Alycee
(BLK Publishing Company, Spring 1991).
203
C. Jerome Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview, audio/video, 2013.
Green 127
lesbians and Black gay men in this moment, Black lesbians primarily took on the role of
caretaker. However, the caretaking role was not as clearly defined in Black Lace. Black Lace
centered Black lesbian experiences and tried to help create knowledge for women and their
own bodies in relationship to the virus, not just their bodies in relationship to Black gay men.
You can hear that impulse for self-determination, as the Black queer female is both the
subject and object in the magazine. From the cover, you turn to the Editor’s Note and find the
same body photographed only now back turned and nude, butt and arms flexing, this image is
a declaration of unapologetic life and an example of a way to combat silence as death, to be
loud, naked, unafraid of being naked (See Figure 15).
204

I am interested in the ways in which work, desire, and play occupy the same space. If
pleasure was indeed to be had amongst such great loss and violence of disease and the other
things that plagued Black and lower class communities, pleasure would always have to
happen alongside struggle – it is a dialectic. We talk about the audacity of hope; I am
intrigued by the audacity of pleasure, the right to touch and be touched when the site of the
Black body - the Black queer body - in particular has been deemed dangerous and
untouchable without risk of death.
From the erotic knowledge comes a deeper knowing of self. Affirmation of this Black
queer erotic knowledge as a valuable resource challenges heteronormative valuations of
knowledge production. Lane asks the reader to participate in an epistemological shift
whereby we imagine the Black queer subject outside of the paradigm of deviant, in need of
discipline, or unseen.

204
Bob Finney, “Back Flex (Photo),” ed. Johnson Hiawatha and Lane J. Alycee (BLK
Publishing Company, Spring 1991).
Green 128

Meeting Alan Bell
Alan Bell is a Black gay-identified man who lives in South Los Angeles’ Ladera
Heights. He is the founder and editor of BLK Magazine, a Black LGBT publication that
produced 41 issues between the years of 1989 and 1994. Born and raised in South Central
Los Angeles on Vernon and Central, Bell went to Los Angeles public schools, graduated
from Los Angeles High School, and then went on to attend UCLA for undergrad and NYU
for graduate school.
Bell describes himself as a feminist and a Black gay man. BLK Magazine was a “for
us by us” endeavor, the goal to create a magazine that appealed to a particular community
that was often overlooked in both Black and queer communities. Bell wanted to affirm the
knowledge of the Black queer community for the Black queer community. This was not a
production to display the Black queer community’s value to a broader audience. Instead it
was about making a space for Black and queer self and community love. Bell helped to
create space for the recuperation of the Black queer erotic resource.
I first met Alan Bell in April of 2011 while helping C. Jerome Woods
205
with his
upcoming Black LGBT Project exhibition, “IMAGES: Iconic to Insurgent & Divine to

205
C. Jerome Woods is a black gay community archivist living in South Los Angeles. He is
the founder and director of “The Black LGBT Project,” which is invested in the preservation
and display of Black LGBT lives and materials. This project, emphasizing the collection and
preservation of Black queer materials, is about the present moment and the future claim to
history. His work includes creating exhibitions of current Black LGBT artist along with
archival materials.
Green 129
Decadent,” by conducting interviews with some of Black LA’s history-making figures (such
as Jewel Thais-Williams, Alan Bell, and Jerome himself). This exhibition took place at the
William Grant Still Arts Center located in West Adams from May - July 2011 (See Figure
16).
206

I headed out to meet Alan Bell. Before we went into his home he showed me the BLK
office—a guesthouse converted to a publishing office, which is still open and running today,
though no longer publishing BLK Magazine. In the window of the office, there was a small
sticker that said BLK. That tiny sticker was the only indication that this was BLK’s publishing
office (See Figure 17).
207
Before my interview with Bell, I had read a few issues of BLK
Magazine, but I had no idea the wealth of information I would leave with after that interview.
In many ways, this interview brought clarity to my entire project, not simply because of the
conversation that took place, but also because the archival materials that Alan Bell gifted me
that day (which included every issue of the magazine, issues of most of the off-spring
publications, flyers, and copies of notes and brainstorms relating to the magazine).
Alan Bell’s BLK Magazine (aka The Black National Gay and Lesbian News
Magazine—where the news is colored on purpose), and its erotic offspring publications are
central to the archive of Black queer Los Angeles, providing a place for dialogue amongst
Black lesbians and Black gay men in Los Angeles and beyond. The erotic is a terrain of
struggle that occurs over bodies and representation of bodies. The erotic power is about
desire and play, but it is also about desire and play in relationship to that which might prevent

206
C. Jerome Woods, “IMAGES: Inconic, Insurgent, Divine, Decadent (Placard)” (The Black
LGBT Project, April 2011).
207
Kai M. Green, “BLK Office (Photo),” February 2012.
Green 130
desire and play; illness, incarceration, unemployment, drug addiction and ultimately death.
What the BLK publications demonstrate is a struggle to posses bodies and claim erotic power
in the face of disempowerment.

From Black Jack to BLK Magazine
1986 was the year that President of the United States and former California Governor,
Ronald Reagan first mentioned HIV/AIDS publicly. In his, “Message to the Congress on
America’s Agenda for the Future,” he claimed deregulation was “…one of the great success
stories of the 1980’s,” vowing to “…move forward to liberate the vital American economy
from the grip of unnecessary regulation.”
208
His statement came after the cumulative
HIV/AIDS death toll in the United States had reached 16, 301. In 1986, the death toll was
2,960. In 1981, the death toll was 23. In the span of five years, the death toll had multiplied
by more than twelve times. HIV/AIDS was spreading fast and bringing sudden, tortuous,
and often times, disfiguring death to the lives of many communities, especially Black
communities in Los Angeles.
The crisis of HIV/AIDS hit Black communities especially hard because there were
many Black organizations who, like President Reagan, refused to address the issue, deeming
the virus a material manifestation of immorality. This was especially true in some Black
Christian communities that associated the disease with homosexuality and associated
homosexuality with sin. As Cathy Cohen states in her book, Boundaries of Blackness,
“…dominant institutions and indigenous leaders and organizations… significantly shaped the

208
Ronald Reagan, “Message to the Congress on America’s Agenda for the Future,”
February 6, 1986, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=36768.
Green 131
development and the response to the epidemic.”
209
In many Black communities and in
national discourse, the conversation narrowly focused on “good” versus “bad” people who
became afflicted: the bad being the drug-users and queers and the good being the Black
women who sleep with down-low brothers, the children, and people who caught the disease
as a result of blood transfusions. While there were some who spoke out in the early stages,
there was an overwhelming amount of silence and stagnation.
210

On November 7, 1991, Ervin “Magic” Johnson announced his immediate retirement
from the Lakers and the NBA because he was HIV positive. This announcement caught the
attention of all media and popular print arenas, even places who had not spoken about the
virus before hand were now engaging it because “Magic” a symbol of Black masculinity,
athleticism and heterosexuality was now infected. One of the first articles to address AIDS in
the Los Angeles Black newspaper, The Los Angeles Sentinel, appeared in 1987, announcing a
“New testing site on Western.”
211
The next article discussed the higher rates of HIV infection
among Black military personnel.
212
Many of these articles were interested in how the virus

209
Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness, 339.
210
For an example of this rhetoric see: BOBBY GLANTON SMITH, “Down Low Brothers
or Just Low Down Brothers?,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), May 6, 2004, sec. Opinion,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565895527/abstract/A209EB04B3CE4
B02PQ/11?accountid=14749.
211
“AIDS Testing Site Opens On Western,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), April 30,
1987.
212
“AIDS Infection Most Common In Blacks,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), August 6,
1987.
Green 132
affected infants or possibly was a type of germ warfare against Black people. There were
about 140 articles that addressed the topic of HIV/AIDS between the years of 1981 and 1991
(though there were no articles before 1987 that talked about the virus).
213
There was a
discourse happening regarding homosexuality and that mostly was a conversation between
homosexuality and violence - was Wayne Williams a homosexual? This was a question in
response to the Atlanta Child Murders, but there was also the local question of a streak of gay
murders in 1981 and the suspect was a Black man.
214
These stories addressed homosexuality
and its close proximity to death, violence, and deviance. In March of 1983, there was also an
article printed about the silent community of Black gay people
215
There was also a health
briefing in 1983 that warned Black Angelenos.
216

Between the years of 1991- 1996 there were over 400 articles that addressed
HIV/AIDS. That is double the amount in half the time since before Magic made his public

213
“‘Gays’ Murderer May Be Black,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), October 1, 1981;
CHICO C. NORWOOD Sentinel Staff Writer, “Wayne Williams: Innocent or Guilty?
Community Speaks Out,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), March 11, 1982,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565341032/abstract/2C9447791D4A40
06PQ/7?accountid=14749.
214
“‘Gays’ Murderer May Be Black”; Writer, “Wayne Williams.”
215
“A Silent Community Speaks Out,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), March 10, 1983.
216
“Briefing The News: Health Department Warning,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005),
May 26, 1983,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565412025/citation/2C9447791D4A40
06PQ/18?accountid=14749.
Green 133
announcement. Even though the media started to talk more about the virus, the way the virus
was discussed was limited; there was still was a refusal to discuss the population being most
affected by the virus, Black queer people. Cathy Cohen discusses this, saying,
Magic Johnson’s announcement, along with his accompanying declaration of
heterosexuality and the need for abstinence on the part of young people …
only exacerbated the dominant media’s dodging of what some might consider
the ‘seamier side of AIDS in black communities.
217

This vocality on the virus did not mean that people were going to talk about sex and sexuality
other than to deride heterosexual promiscuity. Again even as the silence transformed into a
rumble, more pressure came to reinforce silence regarding sex and sexuality. Black queer
folk in Los Angeles took the lead in combating this silence in their communities. Black queer
Angelenos rejected notions of morality or sexual purity and instead asked for pleasure and
knowledge. Silence and stagnation were not the totality. Black queer folks in South Los
Angeles worked to provide knowledge, support, community, and life saving opportunities for
Black queer folks, locally and nationally. These services were provided in spaces created by
community members like Jewel Thais-Williams who opened The Catch One in 1972, the
oldest Black LGBT club that is still open today. Jewel and her partner Rue also opened Rue’s
House in 1989, the first residential home for women and children infected with HIV/AIDS.
Then there were people like Archbishop Carl Bean who founded the Black queer affirming
Unity Fellowship Church and the Minority Aids Project (MAP) in 1985—the first
community-based HIV/AIDS organization run by people of color. These are just a few of the
people who made Black queer place and community in South Los Angeles after the

217
Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness, 149.
Green 134
onslaught of HIV/AIDS. And though many of the services came via Black non-profit
organizations like the Minority Aids Project (MAP), there were other approaches to
defending Black queer life against the virus.
In 1986, Los Angeles native and Black gay journalist, Alan Bell, helped to forge one
of these alternative sites of Black queer community via Black Jack Sex Club which published
Black Jack Newsletter. Bell says he started Black Jack because he wanted “to do what a
state-chartered organization with federal 501(c)(3) status could not: provide a place to put
into actual practice what Minority AIDS Project preached.”
218
Bell says:
I got involved in . . . a sex club . . . [T]hat happened . . . about the time that
AIDS and HIV was making its presence known. Abstinence was the order of
the day and wearing condoms. It seems to me that that wasn’t the message
that people were acting on. It was a don’t message. It was, “Don’t do this!
‘Don’t do this!” In the same way AIDS is still discussed today. One of the
things I thought of was, okay, let’s provide a place for people to have safe sex
rather than just talk about what not to have. I started a sex club for Black men.
The rules were masturbation, safe sex or anal sex, but you had to use
condoms. We called it Black Jack because we thought of it basically as a jack
off club and that’s what most people did although a few other people did other
things. It was a place to come and act on those things in a controlled situation

218
Alan Bell, “Black Jack: The Beginning of Public Black Gay Sex Parties,” Message In The
Meantime, Spring 2012.
Green 135
and again I understand that Black Jack was the first public sex club for Black
men ever.
219

Black Jack began consciously as a response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which worked to
disappear many Black queer bodies. This club functioned in the darkness unafraid of the
wild beasts - not searching to find a way to tame the beast, but instead, find a safe place for
the beast to roam, a place that would value the dark body. Bell describes making choices
about less risky sex during Black Jack sex parties. Sexual health educators from the Minority
AIDS Project (MAP) conducted safer sex workshops during these parties. The parties were
about pleasure and education—to make those two things available for Black gay men was
radical. The conversations that took place during these education breaks were not only about
the ways to protect against the HIV/AIDS virus, but they also included information on other
STIs like herpes and syphilis. Bell provided a space for Black gay men to build community
around desire, health, and wellness, which included thinking about the various ways to have
sex.
You can do circle jerks in the park 24/7 and be safe, but more anal sex—even
with a condom—puts one at greater risk because condoms can break or be put
on incorrectly—all those little things that cause us to call it safer sex, not safe
sex.
220

219
Alan Bell, Alan Bell Interview with Kai M. Green, April 28, 2011.
220
Bell, “Black Jack: The Beginning of Public Black Gay Sex Parties,” 16.
Green 136
This kind of alternative sexual health education occurred in other cities, like San Francisco.
In his book, Erotic City,
221
Josh Sides writes of the shutting down of 14 bathhouses by the
city of San Francisco in 1984 on accusations of “‘…not fostering gay liberation…(but
instead) fostering disease and death.’” Many believed the mandatory closures came too late,
since by 1984, many bathhouses had voluntarily closed in the face of the overwhelming dead
or dying clientele. The clubs in San Francisco were allowed to reopen a month after
mandatory closing, but only if they hired people to monitor for safe sex.
222
A new kind of sex
club opened in San Francisco in 1986: 890 Folsom, which was lauded as a “‘state-of-the- art’
model in terms of promoting a sex positive and a safe sex environment for consenting adults
desiring sexual expression in the age of AIDS.”
223
What was different about Alan Bell’s club
is that it catered exclusively to Black gay men. It was a place of pleasure, desire, and
education for a population who faced devaluation from the state, from Black heterosexual
communities, and from predominantly white queer communities.
With Black Jack sex club came Black Jack Newsletter (See Figure 18),
224
which
posted information about upcoming parties and local events of interest to the Black gay

221
Josh Sides, Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco
(Oxford University Press, 2009).
222
Kevin Mumford, “Erotic City: Sexual Revolution and the Making of Modern San
Francisco. By Josh Sides . (New York, Oxford University Press, 2009. 292 Pp. $29.95),”
Pacific Historical Review 80, no. 1 (February 2011): 180.
223
Ibid.
224
Alan Bell, ed., “Black Jack Newsletter” (BLK Publishing Company, February 14, 1988).
(Photo)
Green 137
community. The Black Jack Newsletter provided information regarding membership to the
sex club. There were two levels of membership, gold members and green members. Green
members did not pay an annual fee. Gold members paid an annual membership fee of $15.
Green and gold members both paid the $5 entry fee for the bi-monthly “Safe Sex Meeting.”
These meetings occurred in different locations every time, usually at hotels. Gold members
received the location and an admissions pass ahead of time and were allowed to come to the
party at any time. Green members met up at a specific location, usually a nearby hotel lobby
or fast food restaurant and then they were driven to the party location as a group. Both gold
and green members were allowed to bring guests as long as they met group criteria: “be
black, gay, into safe sex, and willing to share in the evening’s expenses.”
225
Black Jack made
safe sex a non-negotiable, so if there was a person unwilling to abide by the safer sex rules,
they were not welcome.
In 1988, Black Jack banned anal sex altogether because they could not monitor
whether or not people were actually being safe. The meetings were called J/O meetings
because jerking off was the primary activity to occur in the space. One could expect this of a
Black Jack gathering:
Some of us sit quietly in the background and beat off. Some of us grab hold of
others for a one-on-one. Some walk around and watch. Some bring out
condoms for safe sex games. At the end of the evening, some will have made
new friends and exchanged numbers. Some might go home together. Black
Jack is what you make it—so long as it’s safe.
226

225
Ibid.
226
Ibid.
Green 138
The Black Jack Newsletter provided summaries of the past and future sex meetings. And it
also had a classified ads section. Gold members could place ads for free. Each Black Jack
Newsletter also included a community directory that listed local Black gay bars, baths and
political organizations, like, Black Gay Men’s Coalition for Human Rights, Black and White
Men Together, Lesbians of Color, Women of Color Rap Group, The Minority Aids Project
and so on.
227
Originally written to educate the community about the location of the next Black
Jack party, the newsletter quickly expanded to include information about non-sexual social
gatherings and community directory information. For instance, one of the newsletters
included a copy of the program for the first National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership
Conference (See Figure 19).
228
It was noted in that newsletter that Phil Wilson (co-organizer
of the conference) attended the Black Jack party in order to promote the conference. While
Black Jack was a club for people to engage in safer sex activities, it also brought Black gay
men together for other “non-sexual social events,” which helped to create Black gay male
community outside of the safer sex parties. The erotic terrain is a site where the sexual and
political intersect. According to Bell, the Black Jack Newsletter began to house information
that was useful for a broader Black queer community, not just Black Jack club members.
Thus, a Black queer publication was born—BLK Magazine, a “Black magazine for gay
people and not a gay magazine about Black people.”
229

227
Ibid.
228
This conference was organized by Ruth Waters and Phil Wilson for the enrichment of
Black queer folks in Los Angeles and people outside of the city. See Figure 19: Ibid.
229
Bell, Alan Bell Interview with Kai M. Green.
Green 139
The first issue of BLK Magazine in 1986 had a print run of 5,000, but by the final 41
st
issue in 1994, BLK had an estimated print run of 37,000 with global distribution (See Figure
20).
230
BLK was just one of many Bell publications. Other publications include the
aforementioned Black Lace, Blackfire, an erotic magazine for Black gay men, and the literary
journal, Kuumba. BLK also published two guides to Los Angeles for Black people in the life,
which gave literal Black queer mappings of Los Angeles.

Blackfire and The Intimate Relationship Between Black Queer Life and Death
231

There were five issues of Blackfire published between 1992 and 1997. The magazine
consisted of letters to the editor, erotic stories, poetry, and photo-essays. It always included a
lengthy interview and a centerfold or cover model. Photographs included Black cisgender
men,
232
clothed, unclothed, and semi-clothed. There was much debate in the letters to the
editor regarding the construction of the erotic and its usefulness for Black gay cisgender men.
Blackfire indeed challenged readers to think about the relationship between the erotic,
creative expression, pornography, and politics. For example, in a letter to the editor, reader
W.W. argued simply: “Too many limp dicks. Need hardons [sic].” R.R. wrote, “While
poems and stories are fine, they are not important in a black or any other nude magazine.”
Other readers appreciated the poetry and the literary nature of the magazine, like M.W. who

230
“BLK First Issue Cover,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los
Angeles, December 1988.
231
Please see Chapter 5 for further discussion of Black queer death.
232
Cisgender describes a person whose current gender identity is the same as the one they
were given at birth.
Green 140
wrote, “I was impressed by the spirituality that came across in the pictures... I am an artist,
too, and realize that the human body isn’t porn. It is art…”
233
Readers were evidently
engaged in a debate about the Black gay erotic terrain and the place of politics in desire. It
was also a debate about the place of pornography in the erotic. One of the aims of Blackfire
was to provide a space for Black gay men to not only affirm themselves as same-gender-
loving sexual beings, but to also recuperate the Black male body from the dominant, in this
case, white gay male gaze while challenging the stereotypical overrepresentation of Black
gay men as hardcore well-hung thugs. Black gay men tried to locate and make use of the
erotic power, more than sensation; they worked to developed deep feeling relationships with
their own bodies and with each other.
Blackfire was inherently political because it could not ignore Black queer death.
Death was not something that the BLK community just wrote about; it was something they
lived with as they simultaneously made space for pleasure and desire. The third issue of
Blackfire begins with naming the losses that the community had already experienced.
The founding editor of Blackfire, Revon Banneker, died of complications
related to AIDS before the first issue went to press. David Weems, who
produced the Blackfire column ‘Day Dreamer,’ passed in April. Ralf-E, co-
editor and art director of Blackfire, the person largely responsible for the
magazine’s first two issues, died in June of complications related to AIDS. All
three were hugely talented men who were sexually active in at a time when
HIV and AZT and CDC and DDI were all new to us.

233
Alan Bell, ed., “Letters,” in Blackfire, vol. 3 (Los Angeles: BLK Publishing Company,
1994), 4–5.
Green 141

Though stepping after these men will be tough, there will be other editors,
other photographers, other art directors. Blackfire will survive. But I wonder if
these potential staffers who have doubtless read those studies and posters and
seminars and newspaper articles and speeches and brochures are following
that advice or if they are thinking ‘It can’t happen to me.’ I wonder how long
it will take for AIDS to strike at the heart of Blackfire again.
234

There was no way for Black queer folks to engage the erotic terrain without grappling with
Black gay male desire, pleasure, and the close proximity to premature death. The erotic
continued to have meaning and power for Black gay men outside of the fantasy of the sex act
itself. By the first issue, Blackfire had already lost three core staff members to the HIV/AIDS
virus. Death was central to the production of the erotic terrain.
The intimate relationship to premature death that Black queer folk were required to
develop in the midst of the early HIV/AIDS crisis cannot be separated from the relationship
that all Black people in Los Angeles had to the state. It is a relationship structured by racism,
or as Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes, “…the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and
exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”
235
The War on
Drugs had already made South Central L.A. an enemy to the state prior to HIV/AIDS. In this

234
Alan Bell, ed., “Introduction From the Publisher,” in Blackfire, vol. 3 (Los Angeles: BLK
Publishing Company, 1994), 1.
235
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, And Opposition in
Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), 28.
Green 142
context, then, the use of the erotic by Black queer Angelenos as a site of community, art, and
knowledge production is both a radical act of reclaiming Black queer life from the
degredation of homophobia, as well as a challenge to the racism that reproduces South Los
Angeles as a blighted community in the popular imaginary.
236
Black queer folk in Los
Angeles live in the intersection. Thus the erotic terrain is an ideal site from which to examine
the simultaneous workings of race, gender, and sexuality.

Gender Troubles on The Erotic Terrain
The creation of the erotic terrain in Blackfire demonstrates a clear engagement with
Audre Lorde’s articulation of the erotic “… [as] a resource within each of us that lies in a
deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or
unrecognized feeling.”
237
The conversations that took place in the pages of Blackfire
demonstrate a struggle over the power of the erotic as resource. For Black gay men, there

236
JoÃo H. Costa Vargas, “The Los Angeles Times’ Coverage of the 1992 Rebellion Still
Burning Matters of Race and Justice,” Ethnicities 4, no. 2 (June 1, 2004): 209–36,
doi:10.1177/1468796804042604; Scott Kurashige and American Council of Learned
Societies, The Shifting Grounds of Race [electronic Resource]: Black and Japanese
Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, (Politics and Society in Twentieth-
Century America); Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America; ACLS Humanities E-
Book (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008); Darnell M. Hunt and Ana-Christina
Ramón, Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (NYU Press, 2010).
237
Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” 53.
Green 143
was an agreed upon affirmation of both blackness and homosexuality, but there was much
contestation over gender. This questioning kept causing anxiety: Are we still men? (See
Figure 21)
238

BLACK MAN! Your arms are strong and powerful. Chiseled out of
stone. Built up from hard work and sweat. Wrap them around me and
keep me safe and warm BLACK MAN!

BLACK MAN! Your Legs are mighty and strong. I love the way you
walk. You walk so Proud and swift, like a black panther. Protecting
me from the harshness in this cold world BLACK MAN!
239

This is an excerpt from a poem/letter to Black men from a Black man. The letter writer—the
one who desires the warm safety of strong Black arms—is rarely represented in the pages of
Blackfire. The letter is written to a Black man who is physically strong, like the majority of
the images of Black men in the Blackfire. This can be understood as a counter conjuring of
Black queer virility, a direct opposite of the reality so many Black gay men experienced and
witnessed as their bodies or their loved ones’ bodies physically deteriorated rapidly. This
poem/letter also demonstrates a recapitulation of normative patriarchal notions of Black
manhood. These representations consume the Black gay erotic imaginary and circumscribe

238
See photo of all five Blackfire publication covers. Kai M. Green, “Blackfire Covers
(Photo),” 2012.
239
Alan Bell, ed., “BLACK MAN!,” in Blackfire, vol. 2 (Los Angeles: BLK Publishing
Company, 1992), 27.
Green 144
the erotic assertion of homosexual desire as always bound by a manhood that devalues the
feminine.
So while Blackfire was able to represent Black men as same-gender-loving,
240
there
was something about gender - in particular, normative notions of masculinity that remained
an ever-present boundary within the magazine. Two examples of this contradiction can be
found in the pages of Blackfire.
Figure 21
241
(top left) pictures cover model of the first issue of Blackfire: Bo Darris of
the Chicago Meat Packers, an exotic dance troupe out of Chicago. In Darris’ interview, Alan
Bell asks him about everything from coming out to the size of his penis. Darris tells his story
of joining the military and justifies it as one of the few things he could do when
unemployment was abound. Moreover, the military was a place where he could accumulate
normative masculinity—this was important because, as he noted, what his mother feared
most was not who he was having sex with, but that he would become a drag queen. This fear
of trans* embodiment and femininity was normalized throughout the interview. There was no

240
Same-gender-loving or SGL is a term coined by Los Angeles Native, Cleo Manago. For
more on Manago and the term see: Irene Monroe, “Cleo Manago: The Most Dangerous
Black Gay Man?,” Huffington Post, February 17, 2012,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/cleo-manago_b_1280272.html; Cleo Manago,
Cleo Manago Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, December 16, 2013; Trimiko C.
Melancon, “Towards an Aesthetic of Transgression: Ann Allen Shockley’s ‘Loving Her’ and
the Politics of Same-Gender Loving,” African American Review 42, no. 3/4 (October 1,
2008): 643–57.
241
Green, “Blackfire Covers (Photo).”
Green 145
question about the kind of US militarized masculinity Darris sought in order to find
manhood, no talk of how that kind of masculinity might co-constitute the very
homophobia/transphobia his mother articulated. In fact, Darris tells the story of his return
home from duty and notes his mother’s pride, but also how his gay friends did not know how
to interact with him anymore because the kind of masculinity he had taken on was off-putting
to his more feminine male friends. This is one example of how the gender binary presents
itself as a restrictive boundary that Black gay men struggle over and sometimes reinforce.
Gender troubles also appear on the erotic terrain via the Black gay male imaginary
illuminated in the erotic story, “A Noonday Soiree.” This is the first erotic story of a three-
part series written by Charles Jr. This tale centers on the couple, Wayne and Smellit. After
having sex, Wayne takes a shower and Smellit falls asleep but awakens screaming because
he has a nightmare. This was his vision:
It was that same haunting dream. I was in bed with a big ugly, black woman.
That pint of gin I downed, told me she was attractive and that I could go
through with it. It lied. She was on top of me trying to get me to suck one of
her oversized tits. Her pussy was trying to find my sleeping prick so she could
suck it up into its fish-smelling cavity. I bit her breast, thinking it would deter
her.
242

This is one of the few portrayals of Black women in this magazine. The clear disdain for
Black women speaks to an anxiety about Black womanhood and femininity—not simply an
anxiety regarding a man becoming a woman, but also a fear and disgust of Black women as
sexual beings.

242
Bell, “Letters,” 17–18.
Green 146
So while homophobia was actively being worked against, gynophobia loomed. The
Black woman is articulated as ugly, aggressive, stinky, and possessing a will to destroy the
Black man; it does not matter that he is gay. This kind of fear or anxiety is not much different
from notions of Black manhood embedded in a Black Nationalist Common Sense
243

framework that feminists like Toni Cade Bambara, Frances Beal, Audre Lorde and others
have critiqued.
244

Alycee J. Lane envisioned Black Lace, a safe space for Black women to interrogate
and express their desires and love for other Black women. Every issue of Black Lace
included a section of letters under the title, “Hot Lace Letters,” different from usual letters to
the editor, this section housed letters of sexual fantasies from Black women that include
student teacher scenarios, steamy library scenes and whatever readers were willing to come
up with and share. All of the letters were published anonymously. Along with erotic fantasy,
Black Lace also included advice columns that gave women sexual health information. This
was especially important for Black women, who in the late 1980s were not yet being
addressed as an at-risk group for HIV/AIDS. Black Lace also featured socially current
articles, like “Oppression For Sale,”
245
which asked Black Lesbians to make themselves

243
Kara Keeling, The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of
Common Sense (Duke University Press, 2007).
244
Toni Cade Bambara, The Black Woman: An Anthology (New American Library, 1970).
245
Kevin Mumford, “Erotic City: Sexual Revolution and the Making of Modern San
Francisco. By Josh Sides . (New York, Oxford University Press, 2009. 292 Pp. $29.95),”
Pacific Historical Review 80, no. 1 (February 2011): 181, doi:10.1525/phr.2011.80.1.147.
Green 147
conscious of the companies who supported South African Apartheid, and boycott and write
letters to those companies.
Black Lace like Blackfire, struggled over questions around the representation of Black
sexuality and gender. There was some disagreement on the meaning of lesbianism and
womanhood. Could lesbians be women? What kind of women? This is a discussion that has
been had in larger women’s and feminist studies as well.
246
The debate over how Black
lesbians should be proper woman is illuminated through a discussion about the
representation of dildo’s in the publication.
In Black Lace, issue number two, many of the Hot Lace Letters were filled with
women’s fantasies of sex with dildos. Name Withheld from Norfolk, VA wrote “I’m glad to
see that Black Lace is finally out! Reading the letters of the first issue has inspired me to set
down one of my experiences … Every woman has her fetishes and one of mine just happens
to be that I love to be fucked in the ass. Fingers, vibrators, dildos, fists.”
247
This column
allowed women a safe space to share their sexual fantasies and build community while
sharing explicit sexual encounters with other women. This was a charting of the erotic terrain
that allowed Black women to let go of any concepts of respectability and propriety; however,
everyone was not always in agreement. In this issue, two of the three letters included dildos
in their fantasies and all included fantasies of penetration. These letters were all listed under
the title, “Dances with Dildos.”

246
Jacob Hale, “Are Lesbians Women?,” Hypatia 11, no. 2 (May 1, 1996): 94–121,
doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.1996.tb00666.x.
247
Readers, “Dances With Dildos: Hot Lace Letters,” Black Lace, Summer 1991.
Green 148
The dildo became a major site of antagonism in the magazine. In editor Lane’s essay
just following the Hot Lace Letters, she wrote, “What’s race got to do with it?” In this piece,
she decided to take a deeper look at the relationship of the dildo and race, especially since so
many women had been evoking the object in their erotic stories. Because Lane had so many
fantasies about dildos she thought it would be a great idea to photograph one for the
magazine. She had her own that was “six inches, rubbery, cheap, mauve,”
248
which she
became self-conscious about when her friend told her she had race issues. Her response to
this friend was “‘A dildo is a dildo, not a dick.’” She was satisfied with that response until it
came time to find a photo suitable for the magazine, she needed to go to a sex shop and find a
Black dildo. This shopping trip made her ask the question, “What does it mean, exactly,
when white hegemony extends to the production of dildos? The dildo was at once humanized
and racialized, flesh colored. In another section of the store, she discovered the bright colored
toys that were called “‘psychedelic’” and “Not human.” She was looking for a brown dildo,
though, and she could not find one. When she asked the store shop owner where she might
find one, he told her that they had sold out and those are the ones that go the fastest, but there
were some in a bin sitting on the floor. The bin was labeled, “Big Black Dick.” The only
ones available were “24 inches and thick as [her] arm.” She could no longer think of dildos
without thinking about their relationship to race, but also to notions of humanity and
monstrosity. (See Figure 22)
249
She concludes:
The entire experience forced me to more critically examine how race
permeates American culture. A sex toy easily becomes the location for racial

248
Lane, “What’s Race Got to Do with It?,” 21.
249
Ibid.
Green 149
terror and desire because sex itself is that location. We confront the violence
of history and its consequences. We speak our allegiances according to the
color we choose … what really needs to change is not so much the dildo, but
constructions of race and the power behind these constructions. After all,
what’s race got to do with dildos?
250

In this essay, we see how sex is talked about on the erotic terrain, not simply as an act, but as
an act that is also political and entangled with capitalism and labor. The dildo cannot be
detached from the Black body. Lane confronts her relationship to sex toys and Black men.
The relationship is about women’s relationship to dildos, but also women’s relationship to
Black men.
In the next issue of the magazine Lane writes in her introduction,
One sister told me that issue two reminded her of On Our Backs, the sex rag
produced in San Francisco. She meant this as a criticism and suggested that
the photos (and I’m certain she was talking about the dildo shots) didn’t
“‘represent”’ what lesbians do in bed. She preferred the first because the
images were “‘softer,”’ more “‘truthful.”’ Issue two played into
“‘stereotypes,”’ particularly the one that claims lesbians want to be “‘like
men.”’
251

In my interview with Lane, I asked her about this debate and she responded, saying,
I think some people were uncomfortable with the dildo stuff and were trying
to get away from male representation blah blah blah. But you know I wasn’t

250
Ibid.
251
Alycee J. Lane, “Objectifying the Object (Editor’s Note),” Black Lace, Fall 1991, 5.
Green 150
willing to censor sex that way. This is how women are having sex with each
other. You can have your critique, but this is my representation and I am not
gonna sit there and it may even be more radical than you are allowing it to
be.
252

Lane was interested in challenging Black lesbians to think seriously about representation and
she would not allow anyone’s desires to be policed even if there was a fear that somehow
they would become men.

Conclusion
Although Lorde’s call was to women, it is clear that men, Black men in particular,
need to interrogate the erotic as well. The erotic has been distorted by a violent type of
pornography perpetuated by Black men as well as others—it is the notion that Black
manhood is only fully realized when men take control of their houses, their women, their
men, and their objects through domination—patriarchy. The erotic as a source of knowledge
cannot be fully reached until we, thinkers, artists, organizers and the like, let go of ideas
about reclamation of an ideal prefigured manhood that has been stolen. We must separate
manhood and humanity from violent acts of ownership. This is necessary not simply to
eradicate misogyny and gynophobia in Black gay male communities, but it is also important
for organizing Black men and women to creatively and collaboratively work to end the
HIV/AIDS virus.

252
Alycee J. Lane, Alycee J. Lane Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, May 24, 2011.
Green 151
Lorde states that the erotic “lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane,”
253
while
Hortense Spillers writes “It is the heritage of the mother that the African-American male
must regain as an aspect of his own personhood-the power of the ‘yes’ to the ‘female’
within.”
254
For Black men to make use of the erotic, there must be a reckoning with Black
male vulnerability. If vulnerabilities are only understood as emasculation, all erotic power is
lost. The erotic is a resource that we must fight to reclaim because we are living in a time
when the value of Black life is being challenged in multiple ways.
One of the most pressing issues for Black people today is still HIV/AIDS. Because of
modern medicine, HIV/AIDS does not mean sudden death as it did in 1981 when the virus
first appeared, but work still needs to be done. In 2010, the estimated death of people with
AIDS was 636, 048. More than 260, 800 those deaths were Black people. Almost 300, 000
of those deaths were men who sleep with men. While Black Americans only make up 14% of
the U.S. population, we account for 44% of all new HIV infections. Imagine the real people
these numbers represent—What would our communities look like today if we had not
already lost so many of our people, our poets, our scholars, our griots, our preachers, our
business people, our families?
This is an urgent issue and we must tackle this problem with an intersectional and
multi-scalar approach. As we create Black queer place and space like Alan Bell and others in
Los Angeles have done and continue to do, we must work towards a liberation that is not
contingent upon the debasement of some other body or some othered bodies. We can make

253
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (Tucson, AZ: Kore Press, 2000).
254
Imamu Amiri Baraka and William J. Harris, “The Changing Same,” in The LeRoi
Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (Basic Books, 2000), 186–91.
Green 152
use of the erotic terrain as space that is always transforming, creating room for collectivity
instead of more divisions, especially between Black women and Black men. We must take up
the maps of the erotic terrain that have already been laid out by people like Alan Bell, Alycee
Lane, and Audre Lorde and expand upon those maps if we are to all fully access our erotic
knowledge as power resource.

Green 153
Chapter 3 Figures

Figure 12: Katrice Jackson with Weights from Black Lace Issue #1, Spring 1991
Green 154

Figure 13: Katrice Jackson Flex from Black Lace Issue #1, Spring 1991
Green 155

Figure 14: Silence Equals Death, Black Lace Cover (Spring 1991)
Green 156

Figure 15: Back Flex, Black Lace (Spring 1991)
Green 157

Figure 16: Images: Iconic, Insurgent, Divine, Decadent
Green 158

Figure 17: BLK Offices (Also Alan Bell's Residence)

Green 159

Figure 18: Black Jack Newsletter, February 1988
Green 160

Figure 19: National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference Ad (From Black Jack
Newsletter FEB. 1988)
Green 161

Figure 20: BLK First Issue Cover, 1988
Green 162

Figure 21: Blackfire Covers
Green 163

Figure 22: What's Race Got to Do with it?

Green 164
Chapter 4: In The Sanctuary and Of the Spirit

When the Spirit Catches
To Catch. Catch (transitive verb).
To capture or seize especially after pursuit.

To Catch. The Incurable. Contagion.
Contagion (noun).
A disease-producing agent.
A virus.
(HIV/AIDS)

To Catch. Catch (verb). To grasp and hold on to.
Something in motion.

To Catch. The Holy Ghost.
Contagion. An influence that spreads rapidly.

To Feel. The Spirit.
A shout. A groove. A motion.
Emotion In motion.

To be. Transformed again.
And again.
The body succumbs.
To(o) something else…

Green 165
Contesting Contagion
We got reports from down here that people were doing ‘stupid sensual
things,’ were in a state of ‘uncontrollable frenzy,’ were wriggling like
fish, doing something called ‘Eagle Rock’ and the ‘Sassy Bump’; were
cutting a mean ‘mooche,’ and ‘lusting after relevance.’ We decoded this
coon mumbo jumbo. We knew that something was Jes Grewing…

Don’t you understand if this Jes Grew becomes pandemic it will mean
the end of civilization, as we know it?

...You see, it’s not 1 of those germs that break and bleed suck gnaw or
devour. It’s nothing we can bring into focus or categorize; once we call it
one thing it forms into something else.

…Jes Grew was an anti-plague. Some plagues cause the body to waste
away; Jes Grew enlivened the host…terrible plagues were due to the
wrath of god; but Jes Grew is the delight of the gods.

...Jes Grew is seeking its words. Its texts.
255

In Reed’s 1972 novel, Mumbo Jumbo, Jes Grew is a virus that personifies ragtime,
jazz, and a type of embodied liberation; it is darkness as the flesh. The initial virus carriers

255
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel (Open Road Media, 2013), 4–6.
Green 166
were Black artists in the 1920’s, but Jes Grew infects more than just Black bodies. A living
entity, it seeks to be “caught” so that it might manifest itself as text via human bodies. In the
novel, the Jes Grew virus of the 1920’s is finally suppressed. Reed’s text brings the reader to
the 1970’s where the protagonist, Professor Papa LaBas, gives his annual Jes Grew lecture at
the University. Jes Grew of the 1920’s is history now, but Professor Papa Labas posits to his
students that the 1970’s are much like the 1920’s. He argues to his audience that Jes Grew
will once again seek and catch its texts. Important to note, is that in order for Jes Grew to be
caught or infect, it needs music—It requires bodies to move with the music or perhaps as the
music. The 1970’s is a decade popularly imagined in the U.S. as a bell-bottom wearing,
funky listenin’, disco soul trainin’, free lovin’, psychedelic drug-induced era, one that took
root in lava lamp-lit living rooms or outside. It was a time for living out loud and out of the
closet. These were the disco years; how fitting that Reed’s novel would suggest the 1970’s as
the decade for Jes Grew’s return. What was most threatening to those trying to stop Jes Grew
was that this virus could not be understood through categorization. In its refusal for
discipline, Jes Grew held the possibility for civilization’s end. Civilization, in Reed’s text, is
held together through categorical relationships that (re)produce and reinforce boundaries and
hierarchal power structures. This virus exposed the fragility of those power structures -
without boundaries it was Jes Grew was impossible to control; it spread and as it spread it
also transformed.
Similarly to Jes Grew, Black culture has often entered as a virus contaminating an
idealized white American culture. Black people in the U.S. have creatively and innovatively
time and time again repurposed tools that were meant for confinement and debasement. This
is evidenced by Black people’s use of Christian scripture during times of and immediately
Green 167
after enslavement—The Bible was used to control bodies by, not simply normalizing a
system of enslavement, but also asserting that that system of enslavement was a divine
proclamation. White slave owners argued that the curse of Ham was indeed a curse inherited
by Black people and, as such, their Biblical duty according to the word of God was to be
obedient slaves.
256
Black people took the Biblical texts and reinterpreted and repurposed
them in order to encourage and sanction Black life and freedom. Still, Black Christians were
able to creatively take control, creating a new master narrative of the Bible by changing the
story to the commandment of the Lord being one of Black liberation instead of Black
enslavement; this action representing an essential component of the Black radical tradition:
repurposing the master’s tools.
257
This repurposing has often meant challenging definitions,
relationships, and dichotomies that have been instilled as contradictory and incompatible.
Many Black people and oppressed people have used the master’s tools in order to conduct
operations that challenge the master order of things—a easy example of this is the Black is
beautiful slogan, a reclamation of Black identity linking it to beauty rather than the ultimate
ugliness as previously articulated by western philosophical traditions.
Black queer Angelenos continued this tradition of repurposing the master’s tools.
While this repurposing is not able to fully dismantle the master’s house, it does give glimpses
of how a new house might be fashioned. These Black queer visions challenge the boundaries
of dichotomies that are enforced by Western thought. Black queer visions and productions
brought together flesh and spirit, church and club, sacred and secular, disco and gospel.

256
Anthony B. Bradley, Liberating Black Theology: The Bible and the Black Experience in
America (Crossway, 2010), 123.
257
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Random House Digital, Inc., 2012).
Green 168
Black queer Angelenos facilitate the coming together of contradictory and opposing
dynamics and systems; their very existence is predicated on razing the logic that Derrida
points to, “Genres are not to be mixed.”
258
Not only do Black Queer Angelenos exist as
embodied manifestations of a kind of genre mixing, but they have also facilitated many
crossings and mixings a lot of times because they were people who laid themselves out as
bridges, bridges that brought together a more whole and conscious community. In this
chapter, I examine the stories of people and institutions that were essential bridges for
building spiritual and other kinds of knowledge in the earlier years of HIV/AIDS. Bridges
help communities see into their own darkness, but seeing does not always mean rectifying or
changing the conditions that enforce a sometimes-violent separation.
In this chapter, I argue that Black churches serve as a critical site for working through
the trauma of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. Black churches are not one
dimensional or simply homophobic; rather, they are heterogeneous spaces that have allowed
for a range of responses to the crisis. Some of these responses included semi-separatist
259

projects like Black gay affirming Unity Fellowship Church; they also included projects that
challenged mainstream congregations to “see” into their darknesses.
In order to understand how a Black queer affirming church like Unity Fellowship
came into existence, one must examine all of the communities and people affected by its

258
Jacques Derrida and Avital Ronell, “The Law of Genre,” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1
(October 1, 1980): 55–81.
259
Even though this church was created with Black LGBT folks as the main population to be
served, it was not exclusive. All people of all races and denominations or religions were
welcome.
Green 169
existence. Unity Fellowship church was not just a place for Black queer folk - some of whom
had been abandoned by family and other churches because of their proximity to HIV/AIDS -
it was also an institution that helped to build more knowledge in a broader Black community.
Unity Fellowship Church and its HIV/AIDs organization, Minority Aids Project, were bridge
institutions that enabled the growth of knowledge around health, wellness, and sexuality in
Black communities. This chapter shows the importance of Black queer place, created and
housed within Black space, while emphasizing the decreased potential that Black gay place
has to transform Black space if either is closed off, one from the other. This chapter argues
that the role of Black queer subjects is essential in not only creating space that can
specifically house them as Black and queer, but also acting as a mediator between Black
churches who sometimes go unchecked regarding their homophobia. These spaces contain
people who stand in the gap as intercessors or bridges, and in so doing, transform and extend
the community of blackness and queerness. I caution us to not romanticize, here, the role of
the bridge or the intercessor without taking into account the burden of the bridge as
articulated in This Bridge Called My Back. “A bridge gets walked over,” but it is also “the
body laid down for a vision,” a great vision that can enable and inspire radical change.
260

When people become bridges, they can sometimes remain stuck in the middle. The
connection between two or more distinctive groups, they are unable to be anything other than
that bridge. When the bridge collapses, there is no longer a way for people to cross from one
neighborhood, position, or place, to the next. My ethnographic data documents the stories of
many Black LGBT people who have acted as bridges from one community to another. These

260
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical
Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983).
Green 170
relationships are difficult to maintain and also detrimental if the bridge is made on the back
of an individual (or a group of individuals) rather than an infrastructure that exists to hold
people even when individuals cannot. This new infrastructure would allow people to enter
the darkness without the reliance of an external bridge. A bridge must be both external and
internal and hopefully facilitate the moving of the burden of being a bridge to not just one
group or one body. But not every person can be a bridge in every community. In Black
churches that are not specifically gay churches, the people who are able to be bridges in those
institutions must be seen as members and not outsiders, only then do their requests or
challenges get taken seriously.

Gospel to Disco and Back: Genre Mixing, Gender Bending
Archbishop Carl Bean founded Unity Fellowship Church (a Black LGBT affirming
church located in South Los Angeles, on Jefferson just west of La Brea Avenue)
261
in 1982.
In 1985, Archbishop Bean and members of Unity Fellowship Church founded, The Minority
Aids Project - the first community based HIV/AIDS organization established and managed
by people of color in the United States. But before all of this happened, Carl Bean journeyed
through the genres of both gospel and disco as a talented vocalist. Archbishop Bean is a
prime example of an artist with gospel music roots who transitioned into a new musical genre
– disco – yet carried that gospel sound as a continuing influence. Archbishop Bean came to
California in the 1970s after having spent years in New York and Chicago as a professional
gospel singer. During those years, he sang with the Gospel Chimes and the Gospel Wonders,

261
The church relocated in Fall 2013 to Figueroa—deeper into South Los Angeles.
Green 171
and the Alex Bradford Singers. He also had a theatrical career where he performed in plays
like Langston Hughes’, Black Nativity.
Carl Bean, an out Black gay man, says that as a musician, because he was gay and
Black, the genre of music that was most suitable for his success was gospel music. This goes
against the most common understanding of Black Christian churches and gospel music as
homophobic sites that disallow queer existence. Bean states that gospel in Black churches
was actually the most formidable because it is where he found community. “Gospel was
where all the gay kids went, or the same-gender-loving people. It was the avenue open for
you to do this thing professionally.”
262
Articulating the ways in which Gospel music became
the place where many Black gay and lesbian signers and performers found themselves, Bean
asserts that the gospel music scene was a place for same-gender-loving people to connect to
one another. He also argues that it was limited in that same-gender-loving relationships were
never fully and publicly affirmed—they were open secrets. Even though Bean found others
like himself in gospel music and Christianity, he still found his sexuality either ignored or
demonized. Bean eventually left the gospel music scene because of the homophobia
experienced within the church:
I didn’t come from a fundamentalist slant. With a hateful God who was
waiting to put you in a place called Hell and fire. That was so weird to me
when I would hear that. But of course, I wouldn’t say anything because all of
them were saying it and I would just say well that’s crazy to me so I just
won’t say nothing, but as I developed and grew even in the gospel field I was
the oddball out because everyone around me grew or descended from this

262
Kai M. Green and Carl Bean, Carl Bean Interview, February 11, 2013.
Green 172
Pentecostal very fundamentalist teaching and they were all gay & lesbian, but
they all believed that there was a hateful God and he was going to put them in
this furnace and they were going to burn forever and it was unbelievable and
so you had a lot of self destructive behavior because there was an
unwillingness to accept self and you were singing about a power you had had
an experience with. At the same time you believed [that power/God] was very
unhappy with who you were. And so you were very conflicted. You could
make no sense of it. And some of them left so early, because of that dual track
that they were running on, but it left me with the desire to continue to explore
and deal with discovery and so by the time I was in California, I was 28,
trying to find my way.
263

Bean speaks, here, about the conflict of being gay in a genre and in a place that had a lot of
gay people, while still maintaining a homophobic structure. Some gay members left the
gospel scene altogether. However, Bean wanted to reckon with the contradictions. He
wanted to figure out how to use gospel and Christianity, his master’s tools, as tools for
liberation.
Many scholars, writers, artists, and activists argue that homophobia is a main
characteristic of Black Christian churches. Black theologians like Anthony B. Pinn, Kelley
Brown Douglass and Anthony Stanford,
264
have discussed the various ways in which Black

263
Ibid.
264
Anthony Stanford, Homophobia in the Black Church: How Faith, Politics, and Fear
Divide the Black Community (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2013); Elijah G. Ward,
“Homophobia, Hypermasculinity and the US Black Church,” Culture, Health & Sexuality 7,
Green 173
churches’ inability to contend with homophobia speaks to a larger issue of Black churches’
inability to deal with sexuality, generally. Since the time of enslavement, Black bodies and
their varying sexualities have been viewed as deviant, hyper-sexual or asexual. Whatever the
framing, the Black body (as an individual body or a group) has always been viewed as the
non-normative other in relation to a white heteronormative cisgender male-female coupling.
Once Black people in the United States were freed from slavery, they were challenged to
prove their new found humanity in a world still structured by white supremacy and a binary
gender system. Humanity was (and still is in many ways) tentative for Black people. One of
the strategies Black people and families used to prove their humanity in a world of white
privilege was to invest in normative gender roles and normative family structures. As Robyn
Wiegman argues in, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender, “…Western racial
obsessions, lie in the body and its epidermis or in the cultural training that…teaches the eye
not only how, but what to see.”
265
Black men and Black women as indexical social political
and ideological categories were (and still are) made to be seen only as a troubled subjects that

no. 5 (September 1, 2005): 493–504; Keith Boykin, One More River to Cross: Black and
Gay in America (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1997); Kelly Brown Douglas,
Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Orbis Books, 1999); Joshua
Alston, “The Black Church, Homophobia, and Pastor Eddie Long: Even in a City with a
Large Gay Black Population, the Allegations against Pastor Eddie Long Bring up Larger
Issues about the Church and Homophobia.,” Newsweek Web Exclusives, September 23, 2010,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/773625323.
265
Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (Duke University
Press, 1995), 22.
Green 174
require policing. This policing occurs inside and outside of Black communities, though for
different reasons. Policing of Black bodies and Black sexuality within Black communities,
most often occurs as a function of securing human privileges in a world that privileges
whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity. The policing of Black bodies and Black
sexuality outside of Black communities also occurs as a function of securing human
privileges, for non-Blacks. This policing, too, reinforces white supremacy, Black sexual
pathology, and notions of Black deviancy. In both cases, a standard Eurocentric
heteronormative sexuality and family unit is deemed ideal.
Black churches have been pillar institutions for Black community formations since
the time of enslavement, but as theologians like Anthony B. Pinn assert, the Black church
loses relevance when it is unable to identify methods of engaging with and understanding
Black sexuality without demonization of the Black body. Pinn writes:
Too many black churches ignore the hard questions concerning sex and
sexuality. Black churches should not think it necessary to consider sex sinful,
and certain relationships unnatural. This attitude restricts black churches and
their work on issues of oppressions by making churches guilty of oppression
within their own ranks. If black churches fear or at worse despise what the
body is and what it does, they cannot really be concerned with safeguarding
African Americans against abuse. If they cannot safeguard African Americans
from abuse, their purpose and usefulness is seriously called into question.
266

266
“WorkingToConnect_AnthonyPinn2.pdf,” accessed May 10, 2014,
http://www.theafricanamericanlectionary.org/pdf/dialogue/WorkingToConnect_AnthonyPinn
2.pdf.
Green 175
Pinn asserts that Black churches’ inability to contend with sexuality generally stems from
Biblical scriptures articulation of the conflict between spirit and flesh. The flesh is the body,
always out of control and in need of discipline in order to acquire spiritual fulfillment. This
belief is particularly harmful for Black people who have historically and popularly been seen
as the manifestation of sexual pathology.
267
In order to challenge this notion, Black Christians
must wrestle with the Biblical texts, but that wrestling has not occurred in the same way that
Black Christians were able to grapple with texts that reinforced their literal enslavement or
captivity. Pinn continues,
… for many black churches, and black Christians in general, the body (the
flesh) is the barrier between the soul and what the soul seeks (i.e., relationship
with God). Hence, to achieve what the soul desires, many black churches
promote a disciplining or denial of the body to weaken it and allow for the
strengthening of the soul. At the very least, there is a deep suspicion
concerning the body what it wants; what it does; what it needs…
268

In the previous chapter, I examined the ways in which Black LGBT Angelenos restructured
an erotic terrain in order to articulate Black LGBT sexuality and bodily affirmation—they
did this by creating spaces for sexual desire in print culture and sex clubs. This chapter

267
Roderick A. Ferguson, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (U of
Minnesota Press, 2004).
268
“Connections between Bodies, Sexuality, and Religion:
WorkingToConnect_AnthonyPinn.pdf,” accessed May 10, 2014,
http://www.theafricanamericanlectionary.org/pdf/dialogue/WorkingToConnect_AnthonyPinn
.pdf.
Green 176
examines another factor that affects the erotic terrain: spirituality and Black Christian
churches. BLK magazines provided alternatives to Black homophobia, a lot of which came
from Black churches, but in this chapter, instead of focusing on Black churches’ inability to
deal with homophobia or Black sexuality in general, I focus on the ways in which Black
people and churches challenge homophobia and contend with Black bodies and sexuality.
269

By highlighting these challenges to homophobia that come from Black Christian
communities, the discourse is expanded; not simply by pointing to the problem of Black
homophobia, but by also examining the various ways in which Black people have created
solutions in the midst of Black homophobia. The common belief that Black people and Black
churches are “hyper homophobic,”
270
predetermines the parameters for discourse about Black
churches as always already hostile places for Black and other lesbian and gay persons. Still,
what if we did not start by labeling the Black church deficient because of homophobia? What
if we instead asked how it is that a space so seemingly hostile towards non-normative
genders and sexualities is also a space that so often houses Black queerness? I encourage you
to interrogate the ways in which we as writers, thinkers and cultural agents tend to
(re)produce the logic of Black Christianity as inexplicably linked to homophobia when we
choose to focus primarily on Black homophobia rather than also attending to Black
challenges to homophobia. I focus on the challenges by Black churches to homophobia in

269
For another example of this kind of work see: Angelique C. Harris, AIDS, Sexuality, and
the Black Church: Making the Wounded Whole (Peter Lang, 2010).
270
Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude, African American Religious Thought: An Anthology
(Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 996–1018.
Green 177
order to move the discussion from one of critique to one that engages in the multiple ways
Black people have acted against homophobia within Black Christian churches.
Black Christian churches are but a sect of a larger group of Christians in the United
States; many are some of the most homophobic sites in popular western imaginaries. Though
there have continuously been Christians who publicly proclaim anti-homophobic platforms –
for instance, the Not All of Us Are Like That campaign, a campaign of “unfundamentalist
Christians” who support and affirm LGBT life.
271
Particularly in Black Christian culture, as
overt homophobia is considered to be politically incorrect and morally intolerable, such
campaigns have challenged Black Christian homophobia publically. There are many gospel
singers who proclaim themselves “ex-gay” and maintain homophobic stances in their music,
but more and more, those messages are being challenged - as was the case when “ex-gay”
gospel artist Donnie McClurkin was cut from a Martin Luther King Jr. Day concert because
of his stance on homosexuality as curse and sin.
272
Unfortunately, while there have been
challenges, what is most remembered are events such as “Reigniting the Legacy,” a
procession from Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change to
Turner Field. The December 2004 march was staged in support of a federal constitutional

271
John Shore, “Introducing The Not All Like That (NALT) Christians Project,”
Unfundamentalist Christians, accessed May 13, 2014,
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2013/09/introducing-the-not-all-
like-that-nalt-christians-project/.
272
Cavan Sieczkowski, “Donnie McClurkin, ‘Ex-Gay’ Singer, Cut From MLK Concert Over
‘Potential Controversy,’” Huffington Post, August 13, 2013,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/13/donnie-mcclurkin-gay-mlk_n_3749861.html.
Green 178
amendment banning same-sex marriage. The march was led by Bishop Eddie Long, the
pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church (a mega-church outside of Atlanta), and
Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. (also an elder at New Birth).
Because of events like “Reigniting the Legacy,” the troubled relationship between Black
church and Black queerness is now often assumed. Black churches are usually described as
hostile in their homophobia or they maintain a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Many members
of these churches acknowledge the queer choir director or member of the church who
everyone knows is different; yet, that person is only tolerated as long as they do not reveal or
own their queerness.
273

Black churches - as spaces that both disown and demonize queers - have also
contradictorily been the places where many Black queers find and build community, despite
homophobia. According to Bean, disco was influenced by gospel, but also gospel and Black
Christianity would not be what they are without the queerness and Black LGBT folks who
were essential to producing it; gospel music would not exist without its queer center:
Very easily I would say there would be no Black gospel as we know it today
without gay & lesbian people...If you took Black gay and lesbian people out
of the history of gospel music there would be none. If you look at the earliest
picture of a gospel group, it’s Alex, Alex Bradford. They describe him as
being flamboyant. The singing rage of the gospel age. Alex was extremely
flamboyant, very effeminate and he married these wives and all, but no one
was fooled by any of that. James Cleveland… Basically if it was Black Gospel

273
Ashton T. Crawley, “‘Let’s Get It on!’ Performance Theory and Black Pentecostalism,”
Black Theology 6, no. 3 (September 1, 2008): 308–29.
Green 179
and it was a guy in a robe 98% of the time that was a same sex attracted
person. The guys playing piano or directing choirs or organs…
274

Bean argues gospel music and Black church was home for Black queer folk. He says that he
himself chose gospel music because it was the genre you went to if you were Black and gay.
Black churches were places where Black queers experience homophobia, but they were also
constructed as a safe space of liberation for Black queer people. Black sexuality and
homosexuality specifically moved from a question of spiritual and moral codes to an issue of
public health with the onset of the HIV/AIDS crises. The HIV/AIDS epidemic was the true
manifestation of God’s divine curse on homosexuals, and many churches and denominations
declared this disease to be a sign from God of his unhappiness with homosexuals.
275

Bean was interested in contending with Black sexuality and bodies that were not as
easy to account for through spirituality alone. Black churches were and are still forced to
reckon with the flesh, the materiality of the Black body. Much of Carl Bean’s struggle
occurred after he moved to California in order to pursue a solo career. He worked in a
department store in Los Angeles and sang lead in the group, Universal Love, signed to ABC
Records. After hearing Archbishop Bean sing on the Gotta Be Some Change album (Carl
Bean and Universal Love, ABC Records, 1974.), producers at Motown reached out to him to
record "I Was Born This Way," which reached number 14 on the Billboard disco charts. "I
Was Born This Way" was first recorded by Black gay disco singer, Valentino, in 1975. It was
then re-recorded and re-released by Carl Bean in 1977. Both artists recorded on the Motown

274
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview.
275
Michael Cobb, God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence (NYU Press, 2006).
Green 180
label. Chris Spierer and Bunny Jones wrote the song.
276
In my interview with Archbishop
Bean he spoke about the intimate relationship between disco and gospel:
Well it is … if you really listen to the backbeat of disco, it is the rhythm of
the Black shout. It is. They basically took that rhythm that you hear in the
Black church; the time of the church. That time signature that is used when
the Pentecostal church would talk about...when you hear someone say, “Let’s
do Shout Time,” they’re talking about that rhythmic pattern that became disco
that was done with the drum. You hear that in the Black church all the
time…There was nothing new about that in Black rhythms at all, so most of
us that were successful, that’s why I think most of us were recruited out of
Black gospel music.
277

Bean gives a history of disco’s queer gospel roots. These gospel singers were easily recruited
and could traverse the distance between genres because there was a bridge that enabled that
crossing. Bean states that that bridge was the beat, the disco beat was also the gospel shout, it
was music made in the same time signature as the gospel shout. He names gospel artists that
came out of the church who also went on to make disco music: Teddy Pendergrass, Sylvester,
Izora and the Tons, Tremaine Hawkins, The Clark Sisters, were all artists who had gospel

276
Carl Bean, I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher’s Journey through Gospel Music,
Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ (Simon and Schuster, 2010); “Valentino & Carl
Bean,” accessed July 22, 2014, http://queermusicheritage.com/jun2002v.html.
277
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview.
Green 181
backgrounds.
278
Bean asserts that the transition to disco for gospel artist was easy “Because it
was just the words changed. That’s the only thing they changed, but the vamping [stayed the
same]. That’s why we were all so successful because it was what we all knew how to do.”
279

Bean believes the relationship between gospel music and disco music to be one enmeshed in
the rhythm, the timing, and the sound. There was something about the rhythm - the timing of
shout time and disco time - that allowed gospel singers to adjust to the genre shift. For Bean,
this something was the fact that gospel already had disco embedded within in it – this was the
shout time, the time when people “catch” the spirit or the Holy Ghost.
Gospel music, and Black Christian churches were sites of convergence, where Black
queer people came together and created music. Disco music also became a site of
convergence. It was where the sacred and the secular met. Disco was a space of
reconciliation for many Black queers who experienced the Christian church as a site of
psychic violence and alienation. The church was a place where Black queers might be at once
be damned to hell and embraced as vital members of the congregation, serving as leaders in
musical and administrative positions. Some Black queer disco singers like Archbishop Carl
Bean and the popular, Sylvester, left the church and its homophobia, but they carried with
them the music - that gospel spirit - and the ability to use music to facilitate movement.
Disco icon Sylvester was raised in Black Pentecostal church, Palm Lane Church of
God and Christ in Los Angeles. He was a popular gospel performer in California, but he left

278
Carl Bean, I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher’s Journey through Gospel Music,
Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ (Simon and Schuster, 2010); Carl Bean, CARL
BEAN, n.d.
279
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview.
Green 182
the church in order to pursue performance of another kind. He first began performing with
the drag trope the Cocketts in 1970, but he would eventually leave the group to begin his solo
career. Sylvester went on to produce disco hits like You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) and
Dance (Disco Heat) (1978) with his two back up singers Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes,
also known as The Two Tons O’ Fun.
Sylvester was not only known for his blatant embrace of homosexuality, but also his
gender transgression. Sylvester as a solo artist never saw himself as doing drag. According to
Alice Echols’ Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, “When the guest host
Joan Rivers of The Tonight Show asked him if he wasn’t in fact a drag queen, he replied,
‘Joan, honey, I’m not a drag queen. I’m Sylvester!’”
280
Sylvester’s androgynous to
effeminate stylings as well as his choice to sing in a high falsetto usually designated for
women, were challenges to normative notions of Black masculinity in sight and in sound. His
being Sylvester was also a challenge to what Echols defines as “The Gay Macho,” which has
the ability to mask homosexuality in its adherence to heteronormative performances of
masculinity.
281

Contagion is a keyword that helps describe both the binary relationship between
secular and sacred, gospel and disco, church and club, but it also helps to think through
infection and HIV/AIDS as darkness, and the fear of contagion or spread of something viral.
Contagion is the spirit that can move or be moved. Contagion can imply an illness or a virus
that has the ability to harm populations of people. At the same time, what one group may

280
-Bargain Price, March 29 2010, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, 1
edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 144.
281
Ibid., 121–157.
Green 183
think of as a virus, as in the Jes Grew virus from Reed’s novel, another group may believe to
be the source of liberation, just waiting for someone to catch and spread it. Contagion
manifests itself in multiple ways. One is the reality of a disease. For instance, the HIV/AIDS
virus that kills people—this becomes for conservative Black churches (in the 1980’s)
synonymous with homosexuality. But the second kind of contagion is the kind of spirit that
we think of when we think of the Holy Ghost or the gospel shout, which allows a loosening
in the body and the spirit a possible means towards liberatory transgression.
Black queer Angelenos struggled through the various meanings of contagion after the
onset of the HIV/AIDS virus in 1981 because many saw the disease as a manifestation of
God’s disdain and hate for homosexuals. The virus made the allegorical “sinsickness” of
homosexuality materialize. But just as Black people reckoned with the scriptural
interpretation that justified their enslavement, Black LGBT Angelenos challenged the
relationship between HIV/AIDS and damnation. In January 1989, the second issue of BLK
Magazine (tag line: where the news is colored on purpose) was published. BLK was a Black
lesbian and gay magazine created and edited by Los Angeles native Alan Bell. The first
issues of BLK magazine always made it a point to highlight the deaths of Black lesbian and
gay persons. Eventually, this kind of memorial would have its own section in the magazine
called, Black Veil. The second issue’s cover story was entitled, “Remembering Sylvester:
The icon of a whole generation of gay men passed away December 16
th
, 1988.” Bell writes:
Funny thing about Sylvester. Everybody liked his music. Even the Lords of
macho whose newspaper ads reject ‘fats, fems, and Blacks.’ The more
political among us would prefer to think it was because he was open about his
sexuality, and that’s likely part of it. But most of it was probably his ability to
Green 184
make us loose [sic] it on the dance floor. Changing musical styles aside, gay
men can’t seem to get the pulse beat of the seventies out of their blood. The
contagion is incurable; we’ll test positive for disco forever.
282

Bell articulates Sylvester’s queerness, which was viewed as such even by some within the
Black lesbian and gay communities. Despite, and sometimes because of Sylvester’s gender
variance, people loved him. There was something about his ability to make people loose it on
the dance floor. To loose is to unhinge. To loose is to provide the opportunity of freedom
movement. To loose is the gift Bell attributes to Sylvester and his music. This loosening
through disco sound and glam was a loosening of a strict gender binary code, but it was also
about dancing, allowing the body to be in motion. According to Bell, disco was something
that gays would never be able to get out of their blood, and perhaps something they would
not want to get out. The language, here, is no doubt telling of the times and the ways in
which HIV/AIDS was killing large numbers of individuals during the 1970’s and 80’s,
especially Black folk who were often times abandoned by families and churches because of
the stigma related to HIV/AIDS, death and homosexuality. By December 31, 1988, 82,764
AIDS cases had been reported to CDC in the United States and more than 46,000 of those
were fatal. Black and Brown folk were overrepresented in these AIDS cases in the United
States. The cumulative incidence of AIDS per 100,000 persons was highest in these groups
(83.8 and 73.0 in Black and Brown populations, respectively) followed by whites (26.3),
Asian/Pacific Islanders (13.9), and American Indians/Alaskan Natives (6.1). Though the

282
Alan Bell, “Remembering Sylvester: The Icon of a Whole Generation of Gay Men Passed
Away December 16th, 1988,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--
Los Angeles, January 1989.
Green 185
proportion of cases in adult white males decreased in 1988, the proportion in Black and
Brown populations increased.
283
For many in Black communities and outside, the deaths of
Black queer bodies were not of note or newsworthy because they were homosexual and/or
Black. Bell’s use of play on the words contagion and testing positive, revalues Black queer
life in the face of rampant death.
Despite changing genres, that gospel funk - the shout, that body-moving elixir -
would not be left behind, only transformed. Black queer studies scholar E. Patrick Johnson,
examines the ways in which Black gay communities reconcile and challenge the imagined
distance between the sacred and the secular. He writes:
Indeed, in the ‘place’ of the church, the heterosexual members maintain
a hierarchy intent in hiding their own sins of the flesh, creating not a
sacred ‘space’ -- a site that ‘invites multiple acts of interpretations’ -- but
a sacred ‘place’ -- a site prescripted and ‘narrativized in advance.’ Again,
African-American gay critics and writers observe the limitations of the
church performance place through personal testimonies, memoirs,
poems, novels, and short stories. In particular, these writers depict a
place in which heterosexual members treat gayness as an illness. As with
other forms of ‘sinsickness,’ the church's answer to homosexuality is
exorcism.
284

283
“AIDS and Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection in the United States: 1988 Update,”
accessed May 26, 2014, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001477.htm.
284
E. Patrick Johnson, “Feeling the Spirit in the Dark: Expanding Notions of the Sacred in
the African-American Gay Community,” Callaloo 21, no. 2 (April 1, 1998): 405.
Green 186
When the infected (infected refers here to Black queers who are members of churches that do
not affirm LGBTQ identities) refuse to acknowledge their homosexuality as illness, exorcism
may take place in multiple ways. There are people, church clergy and lay members, who
literally attempt to rid the person of the “sinsickness” through prayer and a command to
“come out!” If removing the demon from the body does not work, sometimes the response is
denial and silence. Another response to a gay demon that refuses to leave the body may be
exorcism that materializes as a literal removal of the queer body from the church.
Though Sylvester eventually died, as with Jes Grew, the spirit he brought to disco
was one that had been caught. That spirit that was loosed escapes even death. Much like Jes
Grew, disco is articulated here as a virus, but the kind that is radical in that it might be able to
be suppressed but never fully contained. Sylvester’s actual death does not preclude the
reproduction of his spirit; his sound, the beat that facilitates movement is indeed incurable.
Black music and sound has the power to ignite spirit-shifts and movement, both
physically and psychically. This is especially true when it comes to gospel music. Gospel
sound seeps into other genres like funk, R&B, and disco. Often, it is because the artist has in
some way come from out of the Black church and carried that sound with them. Many like
Archbishop Bean left the church because of homophobia. Later, of course, Bean would open
the doors of Unity Fellowship Church in order to create a safe space for Black and other
LGBT people of color. This place of worship was affirming while also maintaining a
culturally Black Pentecostal style of worship. Here was a place where Black queer people
could worship without fear of exorcism or excommunication from a whole church
community.

Green 187
Making a Way: From Black Church to Black Gay Church
I think at the end of the day one of the biggest challenges for us as Black gay
men, especially at that time, is that we really didn’t have the support of the
church. As the Black community, whenever anything would happen we would
all run to the church. A couple of young Black men get killed...you all run to
the Church. The Church then engages the political elected officials and maybe
something happens, but you know we really didn’t have that choice. We really
didn’t have that level of support.
285

This quotation is from Jeffrey King, the founder and director of In the Meantime Men’s
group, a Black gay men’s organization that fosters the health and wellness of Black gay, bi-
sexual and queer men in Los Angeles through weekly chat groups, print publications,
research, HIV mobile testing, and outreach. King calls the church an epicenter for Black
community building and organizing for political and social change. Cedric Robinson asks us
to consider the “truer historical significance of Christianity among Blacks as not an
instrument of domination but as a philosophic adaptation to oppression.”
286
I focus on
Christianity not to imply that all Black LGBT Angelenos have a Christian background. In the
Black LGBT communities that I have encountered there has been much emphasis on other
types of spiritual practices, which include Ifa, Santeria, and other Non-Western spirit based
practices. It is common to have a priest from the Ifa tradition open community space through
ritual sage burning and an offering of libations to the ancestors. I choose to focus here on the

285
Kai M. Green, Jeffrey King Interview, February 5, 2013.
286
Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Univ of
North Carolina Press, 1983), 302.
Green 188
relationship between Black LGBT Angelenos and the Black Christian churches because even
though some members of the community might not identify as Christian, the Black church is
a place that is commonly referenced as a site of major homophobia. I use the term “Black
churches” or “Black church” broadly to refer to a range of Black Protestant practices and
places. Black church is often a misleading label because there are all types of denominations
with unique practices. Black church(es) here refer to a congregation with majority Black
leadership and membership.
The remainder of this chapter examines the relationships Black queer bodies
287
have
to Black church and demonstrates the complexities of those relationships. I analyze
ethnographic data from three churches in this chapter: Southern Missionary Baptist Church,
Holman Methodist Church, and Unity Fellowship Church (See Figure 23). I focus on the
meaning and production of a church that is specifically categorized as Black and gay;
however, I also examine the ways in which Black LGBT folk move within and shape Black
churches that are not specifically labeled Black and gay. Black gay churches house and
create space and place for Black people and others to practice a traditional Black Christian
spirituality while affirming non-normative genders and sexualities. The production of Black

287
Black LGBT, Black queer, and Black Gay & Lesbian (LG) are not interchangeable here.
LGBT names spaces and communities that include Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
people. LG refers to spaces that are constructed to house lesbian and gay people and are not
as hospitable for bisexual or transgender people. Black queer refers to the LG, LGBT, and
also calls out the limitations of those categories. Black queer church is the place that you can
not quite put your finger on, but it is all of these: Black church, Black gay church, and Black
gay spiritual settings outside of the church that make the Black queer.
Green 189
gay churches points to the heterogeneity of Black communities, but it does not always signify
a transformation of Black churches more generally. Black gay churches’ existence has not
shifted popular discourse around Black people and Black church homophobia, and though
there have been many Black LGBT affirming churches, they are not usually highlighted.
Studies that contend with homophobia in Black churches must also contend with the
collective will to create new images of Black Christianity. Transformation of Black churches
can occur when members stand up as allies and become bridges for their Black LGBT
families and themselves. These members become bridges that stand in the gaps between the
multiple worlds they inhabit.
It is not enough to create Black LGBT affirming churches if they are not able to have
an impact on the way we conceive of Black church more generally. We know too well the
whispers that surround churches such as gospel legend James Cleveland’s Cornerstone
Institutional Baptist Church in Los Angeles, which he pastored from 1970 until he died of
HIV/AIDS in 1991. Cleveland’s congregation had a large majority of queer people, and it
was an open secret that Cleveland himself was in the life. Though Cleveland was known to
be same-gender-loving, he still preached homophobic messages that damned those like him
to hell. Cleveland’s church was not able to contend with the HIV/AIDS crisis because it
could not deal with non-normative sex and sexuality as anything other than sin.
288
Because
there are many Black churches that came into being like Cleveland’s, it is necessary to
consider the Black queer navigation of space that is not constructed as specifically Black and
gay. It is not enough to rely of the creation of Black gay church to be the manifestation of an
end to homophobia in Black communities. I argue that all of these locations where Black

288
Bean, I Was Born This Way, 2010, 262.
Green 190
LGBT people worship are important. Black churches and Black gay churches are both
institutions that constantly transform as they are also in need of transformation. As Black
church historian and theologian, James Tinney wrote in his essay, “Why a Black Gay
Church?” “Black gay churches are a necessary step before there can be mutuality, equality,
and reciprocal relationships between gay and non-gay Black Christians, and between Black
and white gay Christians”
289
For Tinney, it was necessary that Black gay folk organize
themselves as a collective before engaging in building community outside themselves. My
fieldwork shows that Black gay church functions always in relation to Black church because
many Black queer folk occupied both spaces and in so doing caused transformation to occur
in Black Christian settings that were not specifically LGBT, therefore queering Black
Christianity.
Before there were Black gay churches, there were queer people in Black churches:
members, leaders, visitors, and sometimes they were closeted and other times they were
not—mostly there were negotiations to be made between ones’ sexuality and the church that
they belonged to. In the second half of this chapter I highlight stories of Black LGBT
community leaders Reverend Freda, Archbishop Carl Bean, Jeffrey King, C. Jerome Woods,
and Claudia & Kevin Spears. All of these members of Los Angeles’ Black queer
communities have or have had strong relationships to Christian based churches.

NJoseph Beam, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (RedBone Press, 2008), 74.
Green 191
This Bridge Called Carl Bean
In 1968 Reverend Troy Perry, revered by many in the LGBT community as ‘“Our
Martin Luther Queen’,”
290
began the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). It began a
small service in his living room with about 12 members, but it eventually grew to become
“the largest gay institution in the world,” with “275 congregations in twenty-three countries
and houses of worship in all but four of the United States.”
291
Eventually the MCC found a
permanent home in an old opera house in West Adams. Perry’s church invested in social
justice and his vision of a thriving church for gay people was modeled after the Black church
and its emphasis on Black civil rights.
292
Perry’s ministry was influential and in very close
geographical proximity to other Black congregations at the time, though this church was
located in a Black and Brown neighborhood, the congregation did not reflect that population.
Still this ministry had an affect on Black queer space in LA. It was one of the earliest places
to influence Archbishop Carl Bean’s spirituality, Bean writes of his experience there:
I entered a long period of spiritual study and solitary prayer as I sought
spiritual enlightenment. At Reverend Troy Perry’s Metropolitan Community
Church, I attended a sacred service, foreign to my own background, yet
moving and deeply Christian. The congregation was largely white and gay. As
I stood in the aisle waiting to receive the sacraments, a white brother came

290
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power
Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (Basic Books, 2006), 261.
291
Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons, Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power
Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians (Basic Books, 2006), 260.
292
Faderman and Timmons, Gay L.A., 261.
Green 192
and stood beside me…we both knew we were stepping into a heightened
spiritual experience.
293

In this passage Bean reflects on the multiple influences impacting the ministry he would
eventually start. He learned from the MCC how to create affirming space for non-normative
genders and sexualities, but he knew this ministry was limited in that it did not reach people
of color. Bean’s theology was informed, too, by Black liberation theology - particularly
theologists, James Cone and Howard Thurman.
294
He was also influenced by the Eastern
spiritual philosophies of Paramahansa Yogananda. Bean was determined to create a place for
queer people of color to worship. It included spiritual practices common to Black protestant
churches in terms of singing and charismatic preaching, but services also included meditation
time, a time encouraging community self-reflection in the darkness.
Bean’s spiritual journey at this time was a part of a larger calling that Bean
articulates, one that was about spreading a new message to all people, but especially poor
people and people of color who had been abandoned by their home churches. Many looked to
Bean to build a ministry that was not only about spiritual wellness, but also physical
wellness. Bean learned a new volunteer approach to people with AIDS called Shanti, an
organization providing hospice care to patients at the end stages of the HIV/AIDS infection.
The spiritual basis of this program was Buddhism. The future Minority Aids Project was
impacted by what Bean learned from this experience. Bean writes of this experience saying,
I created a new buddy model, based on Shanti, but geared toward African
Americans. I knew that our people specifically needed to hear about Christ.

293
Bean, I Was Born This Way, 2010, 212.
294
Ibid.
Green 193
The language of Jesus rang with a truth and brought comfort that no other
could provide.
295

Bean returned to his Christian and gospel roots, mostly because he felt it necessary to be able
to engage Black people who were dealing with the HIV/AIDS. Many of my interviewees
describe their route towards Christianity in order to better serve Black folks with HIV/AIDs.
Terry DeGrace describes her transition from being atheist to becoming an ordained minister
because she said that what most people - most Black people who were sick and dying of
HIV/AIDS - wanted to know was whether or not they were going to hell. In her interview,
DeGrace describes going into hospital rooms and praying with patients. Sometimes it would
get loud, sometimes people would break out into a shout and it was odd to the other mostly
white hospital workers. For DeGrace, Christianity was the only way she would be able to
service many of the Black gay men and their families who were dealing with death. In this
way, HIV/AIDS brought many Black queer folk into church settings, as it was a way to
access the people who needed the most help.
296

Bean broke with the Shanti organization because of its geographical location in Santa
Monica. He wanted to help Black people. In order to do that he needed to be in a space where
Black people were or could easily get to. He had a conversation with the leader of the
program, Jerry Coash:
‘I love Shanti,’ I told him, ‘and I love the work you do. But I can no longer
continue to do this work out of your office. I need to take what you’ve taught

295
Ibid., 222.
296
Degrace Terry, Terry DeGrace Interview, interview by Kai Green, video, November 25,
2012.
Green 194
me and bring it south of Wilshire Boulevard. I need to take it to my own
people.
297

Archbishop Carl Bean is just one example of how the HIV/AIDs virus brought more Black
queer people to Christian ministries. Bean’s approach was interdenominational, a ministry
open and affirming to all (See Figure 24).
298

The ministry that became Unity Fellowship Church was based in Black liberation
theology and also Eastern spiritual practices, but, essentially, love was the foundation. The
practice of garnering knowledge and skills from many places in order to build a ministry was
fruitful and began before Bean began his conscious journey into ministry. It actually began
with the music: gospel and disco. For Black queer folk, the church might not always take
form in the church proper, church might happen in the club or on the dance floor. Unity
Fellowship church, before finding a permanent location, held services in The Cockatoo Inn, a
motel and lounge just south of Watts, the Ebony Showcase Theater, and The Catch One
(located where Mid-city and West Adams meet). They found a permanent location on
Jefferson and Sycamore in the historic West Adams neighborhood.
299
The church was
flexible and occurred in various sites, many often considered inappropriate for spiritual
gatherings, like clubs and motels. But the Black queer church was not bound by limited
binaries like spirit and flesh, sacred and secular; it was forced to engage the contradictions

297
Bean, I Was Born This Way, 2010, 222.
298
Unity Fellowship Member, R. Steele, drew this “androgynous face” to become a part of
the logo. See image: “Unity Fellowship Placard (Photo)” (Unity Fellowship Church, 2011);
Bean, I Was Born This Way, 2010, 154–155.
299
Bean, I Was Born This Way, 2010, 241.
Green 195
and build with them. The Catch One, the first place Bean performed “I was Born this Way,”
was the same place where he built a Christian church.
300

Bean’s approach was one characterized by flexibility. Bean helped to create flexible
structures that would hold flexible bodies. Emily Martin writes, “A part of the ability to
adjust continuously to change has been called loose coupling…[these] systems contain more
slack and allow more variation.”
301
Although Bean was able to help facilitate the growth of
this gay affirming Black church and it was characterized by flexibility, there were also
limitations. This was similar to the ways in which Black LGBT Angelenos were able to craft
affirming Black lesbian and Black gay identities, but simultaneously maintained and
sometimes reinforced a problematic gender binary that prohibited other ways of being to
come into view unless they were being disciplined.

The Bridge Bean Couldn’t Cross

Three Accounts of the 1989, National Black Gay and Lesbian Conference

1. On February 17
th
, 1989, The National Black Gay and Lesbian Conference hosted its
second annual meeting in Los Angeles, California. The theme was “Loving Ourselves,
Healing Ourselves, Preparing for the 21
st
Century.” This conference brought together Black
gays, lesbians, and allies both nationally and locally in Los Angeles to provide space for a

300
Bean, I Was Born This Way, 2010, 229.
301
Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of
Polio to the Age of AIDS (Beacon Press, 1994), 144.
Green 196
group often alienated within Black communities, and again in gay communities. In many
ways, this conference created home even if only temporarily for Black lesbian and gay
people in Los Angeles. It was also a space for people to build relationships with one another
(See Figure 25).
302

Phil Wilson was the conference chairperson and long time HIV/AIDS activist and
advocate for Black LGBT people in Los Angeles. He was also at the time co-chair of the LA
chapter of Black and White Men together.
303
BLK magazine, a local Black lesbian and gay
magazine, covered the event and praised Phil Wilson for his leadership and innovation in
bringing the conference into being.

302
“National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference Advertisement,” BLK: The
National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, February 1989.
303
“The National Association of Black and White Men Together is a gay, multiracial,
multicultural organization committed to fostering supportive environments wherein racial
and cultural barriers can be overcome and the goal of human equality realized. To these ends
we engage in educational, political, cultural and social activities as a means of dealing with
the racism, sexism, homophobia, HIV/AIDS discrimination and other inequities in our
communities and in our lives.” For more information see: “National Association of Black and
White Men Together,” accessed July 6, 2014, http://www.nabwmt.org/aboutus.html; Gregory
Conerly, “Black and White Men Together (BWMT),” in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgendered History in America, ed. Marc Stein, vol. 1 (Detroit: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 2004), 146–47,
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3403600076&v=2.1&u=usocal_main&it=
r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=ed941329730d8b5b0d0ae59ddef1b76b.
Green 197

2. On February 17
th
, 1989, The National Black Gay and Lesbian Conference hosted its
second annual meeting in Los Angeles, California. The theme was “Loving Ourselves,
Healing Ourselves, Preparing for the 21
st
Century.” This conference was organized by a
select group of Black lesbian and gay leaders who did not have the support of local Black
Angelenos who felt the conference to be elitist and non-inclusive of people with AIDS, poor
and working class people, and transgender people. An organization by the name of Black
Gays and Lesbians for Health and Justice (BGLHJ) printed a letter in protest of the event.
This group also published the magazine The Real Read which read the conference and
deemed it disconnected from the issues of working class Black lesbian and gay people. The
conference was a failure and an insult to Black Lesbian and gay people working locally in
LA.
304
(See Figures 26 and 27)
305

3. On February 17
th
, 1989, The National Black Gay and Lesbian Conference hosted its
second annual meeting in Los Angeles, California. The theme was “Loving Ourselves,
Healing Ourselves, Preparing for the 21
st
Century.” Carl Bean was invited to give a keynote
address. In his address, Bean declared to the crowd, “someone is missing today.” The

304
Cleo Manago and Ron Grayson, eds., The Real Read 1, no. 1 (April 1989): 42.
305
Black Lesbians and Gays for Health and Justice, “Black Lesbian and Gay Conference,”
The Real Read, April 1981, 1 edition.
Green 198
someone missing was the “drag-queen.” Bean later said they used the word drag queen to
signal what transgender means today.
306

None of these stories is false, but the fact that they all exist as simultaneous narratives
prevents any one narrative of the event to sit as the master. There can be no definitive truth of
the event, only multiple truths, each narrative with its own lessons to teach us. This kind of
scholarly engagement with history asks the researcher to be flexible in their analyses. In this
way, the research engages the darkness, not for the purposes of containment and disciplining,
but rather, as a challenge to the linear, neat, clean, narrative providing a clear beginning,
middle and end. Different narratives of events need not be always thought of as competing,
rather all narratives and accounts should be considered, as each has something to teach. For
the remainder of this section, I will further engage the significance of the third account of
The National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference.
The 4
th
Issue of BLK Magazine, reprinted sections of Archbishop Carl Bean’s keynote
address at the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum in 1989. In his speech he challenged
Black gay and lesbian leaders to think about the people they had yet to make space for. There
was an open letter circulating that critiqued the conference for being elitist and not be
accessible to poor people or people with HIV/AIDS. There was also a critique that the
conference, though organized by Angelenos, lacked a real connection to Black queer

306
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview; L. Paul Davis, Jr., “Dear Editor, Letters to the
Editor,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, March
1989.
Green 199
Angelenos (See Figure 27).
307
Carl Bean had another critique when he
308
spoke the words
“someone is absent today.” He was referring to the lack of transgender and gender queer
people present at the meeting. Bean’s observation was an intervention into an emerging
Black lesbian and gay movement. He called for recognition of marginalization that was being
created within an already existing margin.
When I read this critique it made a great deal of sense to me. Having been to Unity
Fellowship Church many times, I was always astounded by the large numbers of transgender
and gender queer members, in addition to the specific support groups for transgender people
and allies.
309
I, first, imagined these programs were developed as a component of Carl Bean’s
transgender advocacy. While that is true, there is more to the story. Carl Bean was not just an
advocate for the transgender community. He identifies as a transgender person, though he
never publically claimed that identity, always feeling a greater responsibility to the Black

307
Black Lesbians and Gays for Health and Justice, “February 1989: A Message from the
Black Lesbian and Gay Community of Los Angeles,” The Real Read, April 1989.
308
I use male pronouns because those are the pronouns Carl Bean uses for himself even as he
acknowledges his Trans* identity.
309
All of the ministers use both male and female pronouns to refer to God. The church has
support groups for Transgender people and their partners. For more information see: “Alpha
Omega Nu, Transmen Fraternity,” Facebook, accessed July 7, 2014,
https://www.facebook.com/AlphaOmegaNu; “Alpha Omega Nu Fraternity, Inc.,” Alpha
Omega Nu Fraternity, Inc., accessed July 7, 2014, http://alphaomeganu.com; “Divine
Transitions,” Unity Fellowship of Christ Church Los Angeles, accessed July 7, 2014,
http://ufclosangeles.org/UFCLA2012WP/?page_id=702.
Green 200
LGBT community. He needed to lay himself out as a bridge between communities in order to
make those connections. When Bean explained why it was important to cultivate space for
transgender and gender variant people, he said that as much as it was about creating a space
that could hold all of these people who were not held in other church spaces, it was also a
critique of how these spaces might contain, yet, still not affirm certain variances. Bean
explains his relationship to transgender identity saying,
It’s really who I am. I came up in Baltimore as a young person. In those days,
we didn’t have the word Transgender, but I was one of those persons who
identified as female much more than male. All of my little running buddies in
Baltimore, we were in female attire by the time we were 12, 13, 14 years old. I
was probably the only one who broke away from them and took on this male
persona in the public arena and the only reason I did that was because I was
sure it was what I had to do to sing Gospel music. But, I’m sure had there
been another path for me as a Black kid out of the ghetto of Baltimore who
had wanted to sing for a living and it seemed ok… Gospel was where all the
gay kids went, or the same-gender-loving people. It was the avenue open for
you to do this thing professionally. I’m sure that had there been another path I
would have gone and lived the Transgender life very openly and probably in
those days had an operation and lived as a woman.
310

Bean describes the church and gospel music as a space holding same-gender-loving people,
while simultaneously being unsafe for transgender or gender variant bodies. Transgender as a
category entered the U.S. public arena in the 1950’s, as Christine Jorgenson became a front-

310
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview.
Green 201
page news story as the first person to transition surgically.
311
This story influenced Bean
when he was younger, but it also became a story that would bring Bean closer to his father.
He states of the Jorgenson story, “It was front page news. My dad was so aware of what I
was. I remember him, one Sunday morning, reading to me that story from the newspaper.
Not knowing how to say, ‘Son, I understand,’ but that was his way of saying it...He gave me
that page and I treasured it for many many years.”
312
Bean recognized his transgender
identity and also says that it was something that his father too acknowledged, though it was
never explicitly articulated.
When Bean began making the previously named critiques about the absence of
transgender people in Black LGBT spaces, he was not just naming an absence, he was
naming a present absence, which included his own actualized presence. He says of his
critique of the conference,
So, I was basically talking about, you’re talking to me, but talking past me.
And even when I told people the very stuff I’m sharing with you, they didn’t
want to see it. They would hear me, but just not accept it. So, then I had to
accept…I think the hardest thing privately was that I had to accept that
everyone would say ‘you belong to me’ or ‘you’re not like the rest of them.’

311
“Parents Join Christine In Copenhagen: Bronx Couple Arrive For First Look at Man Who
Became Girl,” The Hartford Courant (1923-1988), December 19, 1952; “Sex-Changed Ex-
GI Signed In Film Role,” The Washington Post (1923-1954), December 11, 1952; “Surgery
Makes Him a Woman, Ex-Gi Writes,” Chicago Daily Tribune (1923-1963), December 1,
1952, sec. Part 1.
312
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview.
Green 202

I would tell the guys in the movement who could walk down the street and
never be picked out for being same-gender-loving and I would say, ‘That’s
not who I am. I am this,’ before we had the word transgender. And they would
say ‘Oo you’re not like that. That’s not you.’ ‘Yes it is!’ And I say you know,
‘What is it in you that’s just not willing to accept the truth of who I am? What
is that blockage for you?’
313

Bean expresses frustration with the coming out process. He tried to tell people how he
identified, but it was not accepted. He had to be a bridge and hold many Black LGBT people
but, in being that bridge, he made a personal sacrifice of not physically transitioning. This
kind of sacrifice was not described as a regret, but more so as a necessity. There was a need
and Bean had the ability to bring people together. He resolved,
I had to learn in my industry that everyone felt that I was theirs alone. If it was
a butch boy that considered himself, quote, not a queen, I would be his Bishop
and you are to stay a Bishop. And if it was my femme sister they would say,
“Girl you know.” And if it was my butch women they would say, “Well, Dad,
you understand.” So, I had to accept that the spirit had somehow given me this
aura that everyone could identify me as their own. And I kind of just accepted
it. And I knew that when I started the work ... that it would be too much. If I
moved towards transitioning and doing what I was called to do to establish

313
Ibid.
Green 203
this spiritual path for same-gender-loving people of African descent … It
would have gotten into the way.
314

Bean points to the key challenge of being a leader and a bridge. The stakes were high
because there was so much work to be done, so many people to comfort, shelter, so many
needing medicine and hope. Although Bean was a bridge leader who acquired a diverse kind
of theology evoking interdenominational and interreligious theologies, as a leader, he was
asked to stay Bishop. He belonged to everyone else, which meant that sometimes he did not
belong to himself. He explains,
It was like a personal sacrifice that I had to make. Transitioning was not…
Well, what was most important was my brothers who were dying and there
needed to be something that gave them some sense of being a part of the
Black Diaspora and I needed to forge a path somehow to the mothers, these
are your sons. To the sisters, these are your brothers. Uncles, these are your
nephews. No, now come on these are the boys that make you release in that
church and play that organ. These are the people that give you your release.
You cannot deny them at the point of death. I knew that was the bigger
picture…I needed to focus on that over my own transitioning to full
womanhood as it were. And so that’s just the journey that I had to take. And it
was private.
315

314
Ibid.
315
Ibid.
Green 204
Bean, in the tradition of radical feminist of color, laid his body down for a vision.
316
This was
a necessary strategy, but would it be a sustainable one? Bean found solace in some groups.
There were transgender church members who would affirm, ‘“You’re one of us.”’ But he
accepted it and did not talk about it. He says that whenever he went home to Baltimore he
“would get this moment of relief” because it gave him a chance to hang out with the people
he had grown up with, the people he calls, “my sisters.”
317
Bean was not closeted about his
transgender identification, but it was an identity that was not affirmed openly. As a leader,
people needed him to be accessible and often, that connection meant an erasure of difference.
There were ways that even as his transgender identity was not recognized in a larger
community, his sisters recognized it.
Bean’s transgender identity is helpful because it gives another iteration of transgender
that is not predicated on medicalized operations to confirm its completion. Bean’s story asks
us to consider the Trans* narrative that is both-and, rather than either-or. He states,
The other funny thing, when I started reaching out to gang members,
my gang boys from the Crips and the Bloods, they would say things to
me like, ‘Dad, you know when I’m talking to you I also feel like I’m
talking to Mom,’ or, ‘I see her,’ Or, ‘I hear her when it’s Mother
telling me what to do.’ And I was so taken a back when one of them
said that to me I was like, ‘wow!’ When it’s truly who we are, we
can’t hide it. And even til this day, Kai, let me tell you, If I were to
leave this house and get in my car go through a fast food restaurant, til

316
Moraga and Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back, xix.
317
Green and Bean, Carl Bean Interview.
Green 205
this day, they would say, ‘Ma’am do you want ketchup?’ I’m so used
to it now. They hear her. …Those of us who are transgender, it’s just
who we are. It’s just there. It’s innately who we are and it’s heard.
With a beard, it’s heard. So, I was always advocating for myself in
those environments. You’re calling me leader. You’re calling me
pastor. You’re saying I’m great, but you’re not seeing me is really
what I would say.
318

Bean’s transgender identity exceeds the category of transgender. The person not present in
the room, the person who the audience could not see, was his transgender self and his sisters.
Bean made a decision that meant he personally could not transition, but he worked to create
space where others could. Bean acted as a bridge, only the bridge now was not between
Black homophobic space and Black queer space, this was about the people that Black and
gay could not hold. Even leaders in this space, as Bean was, proved that the space was not
completely the answer for all Black queer people. Bean’s observation at the conference in
1989 was an intervention into an emerging Black lesbian and gay movement. Bean called for
recognition of marginalization that was taking place at the margin. Bean explains here that
the person that was not in the room—was actually in the room only, the conference
organizers and supporters couldn’t see this person, Bean’s transgender self.
As Bean made himself a bridge for the people to find home -Black LGBT Angelenos,
who were not always seen as core members of Black community - it became increasingly
difficult for Bean to actually find himself fully home in that place. But perhaps home is an
endeavor that was always already predestined for failure. In Nael Bhanji’s essay “homing

318
Ibid.
Green 206
desires, transsexual citizenship and racialized bodies,” he writes, “… it is neither ‘home’ per
se that is contested within trans theory, nor the mechanisms that shape home as that contested
space. Rather what are at stake are the things that must necessarily be sacrificed, or
disavowed in order to engage in the very act of imagining home.” Bean shows us the kinds of
individual sacrifices that must be made in order to create a collective church home for Black
LGBT Angelenos. In order to create a Black LGBT place, one must make choices—choices
like where the church will be located. Each choice is both an opening and a closing. Bean
says a personal sacrifice of not transitioning was made, yet Bean declares his Trans*
selfhood exists whether or not others accept or acknowledge it—it just is. After hearing this
story, many questions arose: What does it mean when the person responsible for building
Unity Fellowship Church Black LGBT affirming congregation and the Minority Aids
project-the first people of color lead organization dealing with the HIV AIDS crisis—what
does it mean that this person can facilitate the creation of a space that is open and affirming
for others, yet unable to fully hold their own identity? It signals a need for a critical
positionality, a Trans* optic, a way of not only seeing in the dark, but being in relation in the
dark.
Dwight A. McBride asks, “Can the Queen Speak?”
319
I ask a follow-up question:
Who can listen/understand/read the Queen when she speaks? Darkness as a Trans* optic is a
tool that helps us to embark upon the work of listening, understanding, and reading as both
intellectual and political practices. My study documents the ways in which dark spaces are
produced within the darkness. An example of this: once I looked to South Los Angeles for

319
Dwight A. McBride, “Can the Queen Speak? Racial Essentialism, Sexuality and the
Problem of Authority,” Callaloo 21, no. 2 (1998): 363–79, doi:10.1353/cal.1998.0112.
Green 207
queer information, what I discovered was two connected yet separate communities, Black
gay men and Black Lesbians. But when it came to bisexuals and transgender people, there
was a present absence. The darkness is a useful optic – a Trans* optic - that allows us to see
certain things that might not normally be seen. It also helps us to understand how that seeing
is being shaped. The darkness becomes a positionality that helps us to understand how
visibility is useful in providing space and place that is both Black and LGBT, separate and
connected to both. In the final sections, I will analyze ethnographic data providing stories of
people who played the role of bridge to and from Black churches (not specifically gay) to
Black LGBT communities and social issues.

This Bridge Called C. Jerome Woods
It was a gray February afternoon and I was excited to meet Jerome for what had
become our regular weekly check-ins. He would give me the latest on The Black LGBT
Project (See Figures 28 and 29),
320
what new connections he made, the names of people who
promised to offer something, but did not follow through. He talked to me about the
frustrations he had when it came to creating an archive. We also discussed how excited he
was to make all stories of Black LGBT people and their loved ones accessible. He wanted to
collect all of Black LGBT lives, living and loving. We had become friends by now, and our
exchanges often times left me feeling hopeful and right on track. However, there were always

320
The Black LGBT project is an archive project focused on the collection, preservation and
dissemination of Black LGBT lives and knowledge. Kai M. Green, “C. Jerome Woods
(Photograph),” 2011; Kai M. Green, “The Black LGBT Project: Statement of Purpose
(Photograph),” 2011.
Green 208
moments when I thought I understood the story and I would share it with Jerome. He would
then challenge me to think about the issue in a more complex way. I remember sharing
chapter drafts with Jerome, and sometimes he would say, “Yes! You got it right this time.”
But when I did not quite get it, he would tell me to go back and dig deeper. He would tell me
a story that had all the answers, but he would not give me the answers. In our interactions,
there was one particular moment when I thought I had it right and Jerome pushed me to
consider how my ideas, though not wrong, not false, were not whole.
On this gray February afternoon, I was excited to share my dissertation prospectus
with Jerome. I was happy to share the prospectus because of the ideas, but more so, because
of the platform. I created two versions of my dissertation prospectus. The first was a standard
Microsoft Word prospectus—something that would be legible as standard academic
scholarship. The second version was a Scalar version. Scalar is a software platform that
allows scholars to create interactive, multimedia book projects.
321
Scalar is a tool that not
only allowed me to make use of all of the archival materials, video, and audio footage but
also helped me to better organize my thoughts as a writer. Scalar allowed me to create an
interactive map of the dissertation project, which was itself a project about geography and
mapping. This platform made it much easier to share the project with Jerome. I did not just
hand him a thirty-page document, we actually took a tour through the images and video
footage that made my project three-dimensional. It allowed me to really make use of the
work I had put into interviews and collecting footage.
322

321
http://scalar.usc.edu/about/
322
My Scalar Prospectus can be found here: http://scalar.usc.edu/students/kai-m-green/index
I would like to eventually create a Scalar version of the Book Manuscript.
Green 209
We sat in one of the study rooms at The Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum, the
institution that would later back Jerome’s Black LGBT Project and house his archive. I
opened my computer and I began my presentation. Even though I had already defended the
prospectus in my home department at The University of Southern California with faculty and
other graduate students, this presentation with Jerome caused me more anxiety. This was not
just a display of my research about a community that people in the room were not familiar
with; this was the community. Jerome was the people I wrote about. And if I did not get it
right, he would know and tell me the truth.
Jerome is older, but you would not know because of how busy he keeps himself. I
often worry about him and wonder if he remembers to eat. Sometimes he says he has a snack
or something (one of his favorite places to meet is the Wendy’s across the street from USC)
and sometimes nothing. That afternoon we went through chapter by chapter and Jerome
chimed in with questions, names of people I should consider talking to, and places he knew
of that did not exist anymore. We sat side by side, both facing the computer screen. We sat
close. We stopped and had a lengthy conversation about my outline for this chapter, then
titled, “In the Sanctuary.” I was prepared to write a chapter about Archbishop Carl Bean’s
Unity Fellowship Church. My argument was to have been that Bean’s church provided a
space for Black queer folk in Los Angeles in the early moments of the HIV/AIDS crisis, a
moment when Black churches still remained mostly silent regarding the virus unless they
spoke loudly regarding the disease as a manifestation of God’s hatred for gay people.
Jerome asked me, “Is there a place for [Black gay] folk other than gay church?”
323
I
don’t know if I understood the importance of this question at the moment, but now I see how

323
C. Jerome Woods at Mayme Clayton, interview by Kai M. Green, February 28, 2012.
Green 210
Jerome was urging me to think through the ways in which identities help people develop
space that can properly hold and affirm them. What if there were no Black gay churches?
There were still gay people in Black churches. What of that experience? Previously, I had
only wanted to imagine a Black gay church as the utopic place, a home for Black queers,
which I’ve already proved (in the previous section) to be a troubled kind of romanticization. I
searched for Black gay church only through the distinct category of Black gay, but just as the
Black gay church could not be confined to particular kinds of place (a hotel, a club), Black
gay people traversed all different kinds of churches. I had to expand my scope. The story
that follows helped me do that.
*****
The year was 1985. AIDS Project Los Angeles
324
hosted the first AIDS Walk.
325
For
the first time, federal resources were given to HIV/AIDS prevention. The first international
AIDS conference was held in Atlanta.
326
Testing for HIV/AIDS had become possible; this
was a moment where the statics regarding death, infection rates, and so on started to become

324
“AIDS Project Los Angeles,” accessed July 6, 2014, http://www.apla.org.
325
“History,” AIDS Walk, accessed July 6, 2014,
http://www.aidswalk.net/losangeles/about/history; “AIDS Walk Los Angeles,” AIDS Walk,
accessed July 6, 2014, http://www.aidswalk.net/losangeles.
326
Tara Bahrampour, “International AIDS Conference Will Have a Big Footprint in Host
City D.C. next Week,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2012,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/international-aids-conference-will-have-a-big-
footprint-in-host-city-dc-next-week/2012/07/18/gJQAAU5quW_story.html.
Green 211
more sophisticated.
327
1985 was also the year that Minority Aids Project began, the first
community based HIV/AIDS organization established and managed by people of color in the
United States. Archbishop Carl Bean and members of Unity Fellowship Church founded
Minority AIDS Project”
328
I imagine the white haired man next to me in his thirties, just as
bold then as he is now—a writer, poet teacher, dance critic. He expressed feelings of loss and
powerlessness when unable to keep his friends alive. Jerome had lived through the liberatory
disco era and witnessed the Black LGBT community change as The Catch dance floors saw
fewer and fewer familiar faces.
During this death era, week by week, fewer and fewer people showed up to the safe
space of The Catch One because they were no longer well. Jerome was always out (of the
closet), he says. So for him, The Minority AIDS Project was important; however, Unity
Fellowship Church was not the place of solace that it was for many other Black queer folk in
Los Angeles. Jerome was a member of Southern Missionary Baptist Church, a church that

327
“AIDS and Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection in the United States: 1988 Update”;
United States. Public Health Service and United States. Food and Drug Administration,
Important AIDS Information (Rockville, MD: Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1985);
Vincent T. DeVita et al., AIDS: Etiology, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1985); Centers for Disease Control (U.S.), CDC AIDS Weekly
(Atlanta, GA: Charles Henderson, 1985); Confronting AIDS: Directions for Public Health,
Health Care, and Research, accessed July 6, 2014,
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=938.
328
http://www.minorityaidsproject.org/english/history.htm
Green 212
has been located on Adams between Crenshaw and La Brea since 1946. In 1985, Joe Louis
Gates, Sr. pastored the church.
As Jerome spoke, I realized I was familiar with Southern Missionary Baptist Church.
I lived right down the street from it. Jerome had been a member for over a decade. He
became a member after accompanying his grandmother and cousin to service for years. He
eventually made this his church home, becoming an active member, which included teaching
bible study classes and Sunday school. Jerome said that he did not hide his sexuality and was
never asked to leave. There were moments he recalls having to talk to church clergy
members in casual conversations when they would say homophobic things such as
homosexuality being a result of sexual abuse. He says that he had no problem challenging
members when they made homophobic comments. Once he overheard one member speaking
to another about “the sissy” which was not Jerome, but another church member.
Jerome could handle the sometimes homophobic language and took it as an
opportunity to engage his church home and family. But in 1985, he challenged his church to
do more than just change their language. He was, at that time, a volunteer coordinator for
The Minority AIDS Project. He was compelled to take action because even though the Black
gay men that comprised his community did not fill the pews of that church, they were the
community he carried with him while at Southern Missionary Baptist Church. He talked to
his cousin and grandmother first. He told them that he was going to ask the church to donate
money to the Minority AIDS project. His cousin begged him not to say anything. It was not
because people would think he was gay - that was already known. His cousin feared that
people would think that Jerome was infected; he feared that Jerome would bring stigma to his
family and to himself. But Jerome would not be silent. He took his request to the pastor. He
Green 213
was surprised when Pastor Gates did not flat out refuse him. Instead, the pastor told Jerome
that he would not bring the cause to the congregation, but if Jerome wanted to bring the issue
to the church on his own, he would allow it. Jerome says he does not know if that was
supposed to dissuade him, but either way he was prepared to bring the issue to the
congregation. Even if the congregation was able to ignore Jerome’s sexuality and proximity
to HIV/AIDS, it was something that Jerome himself could not ignore.
Jerome did not care about the stigma. There were too many lives going too fast and
this was his community, just as this church was his community and if they refused to
understand the relation and communal obligation they had, Jerome would be the one to
bridge the gap. And he did. He remembered walking up to the podium and beginning by
giving some background on the virus and how it was impacting their common Black
community. He says that some ministers in the pulpit made snide remarks. He recalls hearing
one minister whisper to the other, “you might need that one day,” gesturing towards Jerome
possibly being infected and in need of health services and support that he, the minister would
never need because of his supposed safety in heterosexuality. Jerome details the time when
he asked the church to donate to The Minority AIDs Project,
I got that plate. I went there and I explained. I was at the podium. I looked at
them. I addressed them. I don’t think any one of my family members were
there that day so it was …just me. I was afraid that I might just be standing
there and people wouldn’t donate. But they did. I stood there and asked and
they gave. Some came up and just sort of tossed the money in the plate
without looking at me. Some people sent their children to donate. I would just
say thank you, to everyone who donated. I could hear the ministers laughing
Green 214
and making sounds in the pulpit. But that didn’t matter...I think we raised 298
dollars maybe more.
329

Southern Missionary Baptist Church, according to Jerome, was the first Black church to
donate money to the Minority AIDS project and this only occurred because one of the
members risked asking his community to stand up. Even though some gave reluctantly, they
gave when they were directly addressed and implored by someone who was their own. They
did not kick him out; instead, they grew with him. This is why Jerome asked me to think
about Black churches generally. A Black Gay church was not going to end homophobia in
Black communities. In this case, a person who embodied the intersection, a member of the
Black church – one with the ability to walk in multiple worlds - bore the task of building the
bridge.
As Jerome told me the story, I became more and more intrigued. I was familiar with
the church because it was down the street from my house, but also the current pastor, Xavier
L. Thomas, was in the news for threatening to violently remove gay leaders from the church
premises during a community meeting.
330
It was not until Jerome was halfway through his

329
C. Jerome Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview, audio/video, 2013.
330
David Badash, “California Pastor Evicts Gays From Church Meeting But He’s ‘Not
Bigoted,’” The New Civil Rights Movement, accessed May 26, 2014,
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/california-pastor-evicts-gays-from-church-meeting-
but-hes-not-bigoted/discrimination/2011/09/01/26212; “Equality California, Jordan/Rustin
Coalition, Faith Leaders Deliver Open Letter Wednesday to Los Angeles African-American
Church at Anti-FAIR Education Act Event - Equality California,” accessed May 26, 2014,
Green 215
story that I made the connection between the story recounted and the one that was most
present in my mind. Reverend Thomas had recently invited clergy from all over Los Angeles
County to Southern Missionary Baptist Church in an effort to overturn SB48, the law signed
by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011 (also known as the FAIR Education Act). SB48 provides
that the teaching of LGBT history, disabled history, and other minority community history be
a part of public school curriculum. Local Black LGBT activists including The Jordan Rustin
Coalition,
331
decided to join the meeting. These groups were asked to leave, and when they
did not, they were threatened with physical violence. When I told Jerome this story of his
home church (of which he had not been an active member in years), he seemed surprised and
his response was “I guess I need to go back.”
332

This story not only illuminates the ways in which place and space change over time, it
also shows that the transformation of spaces is highly dependent upon people. The LGBT
leaders who came to the meeting were not seen as members of the community, they were
seen as outsiders. Southern Missionary Baptist Church changed when Jerome stood up, but
when he was no longer there to stand as a bridge between the Black church and the LGBT
community, it changed again – not necessarily for the better. Institutions rely on the people
who embody the darkness to change them, and without them that change might not ever
occur. It is a great burden to place on one body to have to be the rallying call of a cause. But

http://www.eqca.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=kuLRJ9MRKrH&b=4990109&ct=1120
4953.
331
The Jordan Rustin Coalition is organization interested in electoral politics and mobilizing
Black communities to support LGBT legislation.
332
C. Jerome Woods at Mayme Clayton.
Green 216
those lone voices, more often than not, open up the pathways for further coalition. Jerome
says that after he spoke up, he not only helped Minority Aids Project with funding, but he
also helped Black people in his church with few outlets to which they might vent. He recalled
that a woman came up to him and asked him if he could talk to her brother. She thought her
brother was sick and maybe Jerome would be able to tell her if he was HIV positive. Jerome
said that he would be willing to meet with her brother, but he told her that there was no way
for him to tell by looking at someone if they were positive. He also said that if he gained
access to her brother’s status, he would not be able to tell her. He said that they needed to
communicate with each other. Jerome speaks of the mostly women who asked him for
support and resources. Jerome’s presence did not make Southern Missionary Baptist Church
a Black gay affirming church; however, his presence and the way he made himself visible did
create an opportunity for coalition and community support. Identities were not affirmed, but
the political cause was one that members agreed should be addressed even if reluctantly. This
was not sustainable without Jerome or people like him. In order for a ministry to truly take
hold and be sustained, it requires multiple people with vested interests. It would require -
instead of Jerome speaking alone to the congregation - the Pastor also speaking as an
advocate and standing with Jerome. It would require the people who heckled Jerome -
instead of saying that his requested health provisions were something only needed by gay
males - actually standing with Jerome and proclaiming their linked fated. The institution
would need to support not just Jerome, but a ministry that fundamentally made the
HIV/AIDS epidemic the church’s shared issue.

Green 217
These Bridges Named Kevin and Claudia Spears

Greetings Jerome,
Thank you for inviting me to write a few words about our son. It is a privilege
and special blessing to have been the mother of a Black Gay Man. I became a
better parent because of lessons learned from Kevin’s journey from his
childhood through becoming a strong God and people loving man…

So thankful am I for experiencing the creative intelligence of a son who loved
life, learning, work, worship and travel. I have never been to Africa, but I
experienced the kinship and love of Africa through descriptions brought back
by Kevin. His travel included several visits to the continent.

The lives and wonderful friendships of the hundreds of people that I have met
through our son are immeasurable. I consider many of these LGBT men and
women as my adopted sons and daughters. They grace our lives each and
every day. Frequently I tell other mothers “these are our children.” God gave
them to us to nurture and to love. God loves all of his children: lesbian, gay
straight, bi, transgender, healthy, crippled or otherwise challenged. We
especially being mothers, can do no less.
Thank you for your work, Keep your faith.
Green 218
Peace, Power and Blessings—Ache!
333

-Claudia Spears (See Figure 30)
334

This letter was written to be displayed in C. Jerome Wood’s Black LGBT Project
exhibition which, as I stated earlier, functions to archive and make archival materials and
stories available to people in the present. This letter was a part of an exhibition that Woods
curated at Lucy Florence cultural center on September 5
th
, 2010. This was the first Black
LGBT Project exhibition and it took place in Leimert Park. The show was titled “My Life,
My Story: Light, Illusions & Lives.”
In this letter Claudia Spears, retired nurse, Black mother, member, elder and leader at
Holman Methodist Church, member of the In the Meantime Men’s Group community
advisory board, mother to the late HIV/AIDS activist Kevin Spears (in addition to so many
other titles), testifies the importance of her relationship with her Black gay son. Kevin
modeled for his mother what it meant to be a bridge, constantly bringing her information and
expanding their “family.” Mrs. Spears did not rely on the work of her son; she went to work

333
This is a common saying in Black queer Los Angeles social and community settings. It is
a word that comes from the traditional African spiritual practice, Ifa. The term means “the
power to make things happen.” It is an affirmation akin to “and so it is” and /or “amen”
334
This was a curated piece in C. Jerome Woods’ for Black LGBT Project Exhibition called,
My Life, My Story: Light, Illusions, and Lives. The event took place in Liemert Park on
September 5th, 2010 at the Lucy Florence Center. See Figure 8. Claudia Spears, “My Life,
My Story: Claudia Spears,” ed. C. Jerome Woods (The Black LGBT Project, September 5,
2010).
Green 219
with Kevin and, even after his passing, she continued to do the work of raising awareness
around HIV/AIDS and homosexuality in her Black church community. She has become a
revered member within Black LGBT community in Los Angeles.
I first met Claudia Spears (known warmly in the Black LGBT community as Mrs.
Spears) when she sat on a community panel, Elder’s Circle, hosted by In the Meantime
Men’s group in 2010. Mrs. Spears, a short brown skinned woman, had been a member of
Holman United Methodist Church since the 1960’s. Holman church is documented in A
People’s Guide to Los Angeles as “a key Black institution that is closely associated with
social justice causes.”
335
This church is located on Adams Blvd. Between 3
rd
and 4
th
avenue
and is most remembered in this way because of Reverend James. M. Lawson,
336
who was a
leader in the Black freedom struggle in the 1960’s. Rev. Lawson is credited with being
foundational in articulating and spreading non-violence as a political tactic for Civil Rights
struggles in the 1960’s. Lawson trained many activists and was a major influence and advisor
to Martin Luther King, Jr. This church was created with social and economic justice at its
core.

335
Laura Pulido, Laura R Barraclough, and Wendy Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 146.
336
Morning Edition, “James Lawson: An Advocate of Peaceful Change,” NPR.org, accessed
May 26, 2014, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6676164; “Rev.
Lawson, Dr. King and Non-Violence - Holman United Methodist Church,” accessed May 26,
2014, http://www.holmanumc.com/2013/09/05/rev-lawson-dr-king-and-non-violence/;
Pulido, Barraclough, and Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles.
Green 220
This was the church in which Mrs. and Mr. Spears raised their three children. Kevin
Spears was the oldest, born in 1959. He attended Los Angeles Public Schools. He grew to be
a leader in the church, serving as a Director for the General Board of Global ministries, the
largest programming agency of The United Methodist Church. Kevin was elected twice to
The National Democratic Convention as a delegate (1980, 1988). Kevin often named
Reverend Lawson as his mentor for and model for his own social justice work. Before the
HIV/AIDS crisis, Kevin was an activist. He remained an activist after the virus, and even
after he discovered that he was HIV-positive.
337

Mrs. Spears and I met at the Holman church over the course of two days to conduct
our interview. I wanted to know about her, Kevin, and Holman’s H.O.P.E. ministry. The
H.O.P.E. ministry’s mission is to “reach out to the Holman family and community at large by
addressing issues that affect the well being of individuals.” The ministry hosts events and
publishes literature that brings the issue of HIV/AIDS to the congregation with an affirming
message regarding homosexuality and queerness (See Figure 32).
338

This ministry would not have come to being without advocates like the Spears family.
During our interview Mrs. Spears laughed when she recalled, “I don’t know any other person
who had double membership, membership at two churches, but Kevin did and I did too.”
Spears was referring to the relationship she and her son had to Carl Bean’s Unity Fellowship
Church. The Spears family was supported by Carl Bean and his ministry; yet, never
neglected their own church. Because of that, there is still today a thriving H.O.P.E. ministry
in existence. Mrs. Spears is still on the coordinating committee.

337
See Figure 31: “Kevin Charles Spears (Funeral Program),” October 19, 2002.
338
See Figure 32: “H.O.P.E. Ministry (Pamphlet)” (Holman United Methodist Church, 2013).
Green 221
The Spearses demonstrate the relationship Black gay people had to churches that
were not explicitly gay and how they were and are essential to transforming space. Holman
might not be a Black Gay church in the same way that Unity Fellowship is, but it is a space
that holds and affirms Black queer people. There is a major difference between the
experience Jerome talks about earlier and the relationship the Spears have to HIV/AIDS and
queerness. Holman Church as an institution sees HIV/AIDS, homophobia, and transphobia as
a part of their social justice mission, it compels them to make bridges and become bridges
that are enhanced by members, but not completely reliant on a particular member to sustain
outreach and education. Mrs. Spears like Woods has become an important figure in her
church for people who have LGBT children, family members and so on. She is a resource,
but she is not the only resource and that is key to sustaining activism.
Kevin Spears was a major influence on many Black gay men and organizers in Los
Angeles. Jeffrey King says it was Kevin who inspired him to do the work that he does now. I
interviewed Jeffrey King at his office, located just a few blocks from Holman. His office is
located at the Carl Bean House, a place that used to serve as a hospice for mostly Black gay
men in the early 90s. He first gave me a tour of the space and told me how excited he was to
use it to build Black LGBT community. We stood on the second floor and he looked out of
the window and recalled coming to visit sick friends in this very space. He told me that this
was a space of death and he wanted to reclaim it now, for the life and growth of young Black
LGBT Angelenos. The space now hosts multiple groups, transgender chats, elder circles,
sistah circles and more (See Figure 33).
339

339
“Wellness at the Carl Bean House (Flyer)” (In the Meantime Men’s Group, 2013).
Green 222
King talked to me about the early stages of the virus and the role of the Black church.
He remembered how he and Kevin Spears would meet up after their church services and go
to Unity Fellowship Church. Jeffrey had at the time been a member of one of Los Angeles’
prominent Black mega-churches. The arrival of a Black gay church did not mean that Black
queer Angelenos neglected the organizations that they had already been a part of, even if
those relationships were not wholly affirming. The creation of Black gay space did not mean
that gay folks did not remain or still produce spaces that were “heterosexual.” Jeffrey King
describes the role of Unity Fellowship Church and the HIV/AIDS crisis here:
Well, you know everything was changed right? …I do think that the onset of
HIV and AIDS in our community as Black gay men has really had an impact
on what things looked like in terms of going to the clubs and seeing men who
were on AZT, finally when they got AZT. You know? Running into your
friends in the streets and saying I just got kicked out because my family is
afraid that if I sit on the sofa or sit on the chair…

People were no longer able to go and sing in the choir anymore or the church
because they were some really noticeable changes that were happening to
them physically. And it was during a time that it was obvious that you really
got the Black fingernails because of the AZT. And prior to the AZT it was just
like gays, you know people who just started to wither away and so people
started going into hiding as much as they could hide to survive.
340

340
Green, Jeffrey King Interview.
Green 223
King goes on talk about how the image of Los Angeles as a place where the beautiful people
live was disrupted by HIV/AIDS. King describes this moment as a “devastating plague” and
even though its affects were fatal, the whole experience made Black radical technologies of
survival apparent. King reflects, “I think that there’s something about us as Black people,
maybe it’s something that we developed … that thing that has helped us to survive so
much.”
341

One of the survival tactics was Bean’s Unity Fellowship Church, as it became a
bridge institution for families, people, and other churches that may not have had access to
knowledge about the virus. King talks about the importance of Bean as bridge for a
community that was afraid, a community that needed answers to/for this plague. King
asserts,
There were little to no places that we really had to go. We relied on Minority
AIDS Project LA. Even those of us who were at that time still a little closeted.
We would make sure that we would go to our church wherever that church
would be, but then we’d make it over to Minority AIDS Project LA to get the
news and what we were hoping to hear from Archbishop Carl Bean is that
there was a solution, that there was a cure, that they had figured some things
out and they just hadn’t shared it with Black folks…Carl Bean…was magic
right? He was this guy who had all the answers and even if he didn’t we
thought he did. We needed to believe and plug into something and that God
needed to be right there and tangible and touchable...
342

341
Ibid.
342
Ibid.
Green 224
Carl Bean and the institutions that he helped to build were not just bridge institutions that
connected people and communities, but he was able to connect Black queer people to a God
many had been told had hated them. King himself was a member of one of these homophobic
churches in 1985. He says, “I would go to church and I would hear the preacher preach and
he would be beating us up because so many of us were still in the church and I couldn’t
leave…I didn’t know what to do…You leave? Where do you go? Do you end up in the desert
somewhere?”
343
The church was an important place for Black people and many like King did
not know of an affirming alternative to church. Bean provided that vision. Bean helped
enable a community of people to see themselves as interconnected:
We didn’t have a whole lot… We had to rely on each other and even though
we wanted to find community…We weren’t so invested in trying to define it.
We were just living it and doing it. It was community. We knew where to be.
We knew where we could find each other. We didn’t have the Internet, but we
knew where everybody was and we knew what time they were going to be
there. And even though we may have had our families and everything and all
of these other things we were engaged in there was still a sense of the Black
community and we knew how to get to the Black LGBT community. We
knew how to get there. And so that’s how we found community without really
defining it. It was just what we did. It was an organic process.
344

King marks a shift in the politics of the 80s and 90s to present day, he describes their coming
together as organic. There were specific ways that information traveled, there was a way to

343
Ibid.
344
Ibid.
Green 225
get to Black queer life, but in order to get there one needed access to one of those bridges.
Crisis is what galvanized people and communities, King describes the fear of not knowing all
the facts about the virus, not always being clear about transmission and Bean’s organization
became a place where people could gather Black queer knowledge:
We had were hundreds or thousands of men living and wondering if HIV was
in them. And how it would manifest itself. That galvanized us… It brought
communities together. There was much more support from allies in the white
communities vs. our communities which were still saying, ‘That is just the
manifestation of sin and the reason why it exist is because you are sinful.’ It
was God’s wrath, because you were engaging in that abomination and you
know, we lived through that all of our lives. Even when we were kids having a
sense that we might be gay, we lived under that.
345

King speaks of the homophobic rhetoric produced in his own church and how he did not
leave that church even after Bean’s ministry came about. The existence of Bean’s ministry
provided other routes to Christianity though. King is no longer a member of the unnamed
church mentioned in this story; however, he often programs spiritual leaders of the Christian
faith to come to the In the Meantime weekly chat groups. These meetings have included
ministers from Unity Fellowship Church, and other ministers who work to build
congregations in Los Angeles. Every third Tuesday of the month, the group is facilitated by
Alfreda Lanoix, warmly known as, Reverend Freda, a Black Lesbian who is a former
member and Pastor of Unity fellowship church. Reverend Freda is no longer a member of
Unity because she felt the burden of Christian ministry was too much. She instead wanted to

345
Ibid.
Green 226
develop a self-help affirming message and space outside of the church. Her monthly chats
take place at The Catch One Kick Back Room. The meetings are filled primarily with 25-50
Black gay or bi-sexual cisgender men, and women.
I recall one meeting and the message that Reverend Freda (See Figure 34)
346
gave was
about learning to trust oneself. She engaged the group from a podium and spoke and the
room seemed to be transformed into a church setting. There was call and response. We had a
break and (always during these meetings) the In the Meantime HIV testing van was open.
347

This night, Reverend Freda asked the group to give examples of some obstacles. One young
man, no older than thirty, raised his hand and said that he had just found out that he was
HIV/Positive. Reverend Freda
348
left the podium and gave the young man a hug. She also
stopped the meeting and asked us all as a group to reach out to this man and hold him up in
our thoughts and prayers. After the meeting ended, I talked to the young man and asked him
if he was going to be okay. He told me that he felt okay now because he was in the presence
of all of these people who affirmed and did not judge him. Still, he worried about his
girlfriend who he had recently started dating. The space of this chat group provided a

346
“Reverend Freda, Alfreda Lanoix and Kai M. Green (Photo),” December 2012.
347
In the Meantime Men’s group has its own mobile testing unit. They alsoprovide testing
ervices at their office. For more info see: “We Want To Be Your Personal Tester | In The
Meantime Men,” accessed July 7, 2014, http://mylifemystyle.net/itmm/2010/09/15/young-
man-in-the-city/.
348
For more about Reverend Freda see: Rev Alfreda Lanoix, Go to Hell... (Reflections
Publishing, 2013); “Alfredalanoix.com - Books Authored By Alfreda Lanoix,” accessed July
7, 2014, http://www.alfredalanoix.com/content/books.php.
Green 227
spiritual community that was not specifically Christian though there were characteristics of
Christianity being evoked to which the group could relate.

Conclusion
In this chapter I have explored the ways in which Black queer folk in Los Angeles
navigate the space of Black church not designed specifically with queer Black folk in mind.
These churches are spaces that house Black queer subjects even if they are sometimes hostile
in their rhetoric towards homosexuality. Black queer folk seek a spiritual life, a source of
power, and, often, that spiritual journey is through Christianity. Other times, it occurs
through alternative spiritual practices and venues outside of the church, as is the case with In
the Meantime Men’s group.
Though the Black gay church has limits - as every bridge does, it provides a site for
Black gay people to convene and gather information. In the earlier years of Unity Fellowship
people sometimes had joint membership. Some were like Jerome, who took what he learned
from Carl Bean’s ministry and brought that education and awareness to his congregation,
while also helping to develop a larger Black community. This meant this church, even if not
gay, had to help because of community accountability.

Green 228
Chapter 4 Figures

Figure 23: Church Map

Figure 24: Unity Fellowship Symbol
Green 229

Figure 25: Loving Ourselves, Healing Ourselves

Green 230

Figure 26: The Real Read #1 Cover

Green 231

Figure 27: Message From Black Gay and Lesbian LA

Green 232

Figure 28: The Black LGBT Project
Green 233

Figure 29: C. Jerome Woods at William Grant Still Arts Center 2011
Green 234

Figure 30: My Life, My Story: Claudia Spears

Green 235

Figure 31: Kevin Charles Spears (Funeral Program)

Green 236

Figure 32: H.O.P.E Ministry (Pamphlet)
Green 237

Figure 33: Wellness at the Carl Bean House (Flyer)
Green 238

Figure 34: Alfreda Lanoix, "Reverend Freda," at the Catch One for Go To Hell, Book
Release Party, December 2012.
Green 239
Chapter 5: In the Life and Off the Map

In the Life
In the life. I remember. Maybe I was 11 or 9 or … I remember overhearing one of my
older cousins say something about someone who was, “that way.” You know, “kinda funny-
like?” And whomever they were talking to responded with, “Yea girl, she’s in the life now.”
My ears perked up. In the life? Now? What life? Where did this life happen? And if it was
happening right now, were we not missing it? Could we go to that life? Wait, was it bad?
And which way is that way, kinda funny-like?
Ohhh, you mean he’s got a little “sugar in his tank?”
Well, I like sugar. Seems real sweet to me.
In the life. In the life. Give me life. She gave me life. Oooh girl, he gave me life. Life.
Get. Yo’. Life.
And thus began a budding Black baby queer’s search for the life.
It started for me with tragedy in Baldwin’s, Giovanni’s Room.
349
This life would
break many hearts. It would leave many lovers locked out of home and searching. Searching
for papa, mama, maybe … And then Ma Rainey came and slayed me. I was just a wandering
down some halls and a teacher gave me a book and said, “Here, here, just take a look.” I was
searching, so I took. Maybe it would provide me with a new way of life. I encountered the
big deep blue bellowing of, Musta been a woman, ‘cause I don’t like no men and Prove it on
me, baby again and again. Blue. Blues. Blue, she knew the life and took it to the floor.

349
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (Penguin Books Limited, 2001).
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Dancing all-night and dancing all day. Dancing in the transition, when night becomes
day and day becomes night. Turn off the light. Turn off the light. That light ain’t gonna lead
you to the life. This life…
Lannnngggssstoon?! Audddreee?! Where are you?! I need you. I need you now. I am
lost. And something smacks me upside my head.
Boi, open your eyes. You know where you are!
I try to open, but I can’t see a thing.
Boi, open your eyes. You know where you are!
Ohhh, yes! I’m in the life. Eyes don’t mean much here, so I reach. I reach. I stretch. I
reach. I stretch and then I feel something. I feel something mighty real. I caught something in
Marlon Riggs’ reel. And you might not know these people, but C. Jerome Woods is real.
Jewel Thais-Williams is real. Sandra Tignor is real. Mrs. Spears and Kevin Spears are real.
Jeffrey King, Sir Lady Java, and E. Jaye Johnson and, and, and I am real... But is this real
life… still?
No.
Move. Move. Move.

Green 241
Introduction into The Life
I begin this chapter with a short creative reflection that demonstrates my encounter with The
Life as a ghostly one.
350
The Life is just as present as it is gone. It is the here and now,
pregnant with the past, the then and there of yesterday and tomorrow. It is a life where one
must reshape one’s relationship to the notion of home, as place where one can always return
to both materially and psychically. Home in The Life is a shifting, fleeting, queer
formulation.
351
In the Life signals a life that exists separate from and in conjunction with, real
life. Real life here signals a heteronormative, capitalist time.

350
Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Katherine McKittrick, Demonic
Grounds: Black Women And the Cartographies of Struggle (U of Minnesota Press, 2006);
Sharon Patricia Holland, Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity
(Duke University Press, 2000); Roderick A. Ferguson, Aberrations In Black: Toward A
Queer Of Color Critique, 1st ed. (Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2003); David L. Eng et al., Loss:
The Politics of Mourning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Fred Moten, In
the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2003).
351
To read more discussion about the relationship between home, race, gender, class and
sexuality, see: Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History
(MIT Press, 1997); Anita Hill, Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding
Home (Beacon Press, 2011); Wahneema Lubiano and Toni Morrison, eds., “Home,” in The
House That Race Built: Original Essays by Toni Morrison, Angela Y. Davis, Cornel West,
and Others on Bl Ack Americans and Politics in America Today, Reprint edition (New York:
Green 242
In my interview with Steven G. Fullwood, director of the In The Life Archive, Black
LGBT Collection at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture stated that in the
life is primarily about a conscious being, a self-determined being that means, if nothing else,
the power to name yourself and your place, “because people of African descent are
constantly being named by a larger narrative – a larger racist white narrative.” He went on to
add that In the Life was also kin to the Q in LGBTQ, where the Q stands for questioning,
“because one needs to never arrive at a destination, but they are constantly on a journey. That
is why The Life appeals to me as an idea. You are on a path to discovery.”
352
The Life, is a
site of darkness, often times an unmanageable site, because it is constantly changing its shape
and form through the question. To find home in the question and not the answer, the
declarative statement, is to challenge Western epistemologies. Western knowledge practices
encourage mastery and certainty which is why both science and math based knowledge is
valued over the humanities.
In the life, as a term, was popularized in the 1980’s as lesbian and gay communities
began to make themselves a visible group.
353
In the Life signaled both the invisibility of

Vintage, 1998), 3–13; Sharon Patricia Holland, “Foreword: ‘Home’ Is a Four-Letter Word,”
in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2005), ix–xiii; Neil Smith, “Contours of a
Spatialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the Production of Geographical Scale,” Social
Text, no. 33 (January 1, 1992): 55–81, doi:10.2307/466434.
352
Steven Fullwood, Steven Fullwood Interview, July 2013.
353
“In the Life: Newsletter of the June L. Mazer Lesbian Collection, No. 14,” Winter 1997,
One Archive; “In the Life: Newsletter of the West Coast Lesbian Collections, No. 1,” Fall
Green 243
lesbian and gay people and their contributions to the world, it was also a term that people
used to mark emerging on to a new stage, one that was not just hidden or erased. The Life
was a place for great discovery. In 1983, the second issue of In the Life: Newsletter of the
West Coast Collections, contributing writer, Jeri Ewart, Black lesbian, writes a letter to her
aunt who she just now realizes (as an adult) is also a lesbian. She writes,
Dear Elise,
When I was growing up, you were the family enigma, the mystery to
be unraveled. In my childhood, you were never spoken of. I wondered
who you really were and what you had done so terrible that you were
expelled from the family. I knew such action was unheard of in West
Indian families. I finally concluded that it must have been something
relating to drugs or prostitution…

Even when I came out…it failed to register that perhaps, just maybe,
being gay may have been the cause of your banishment. I realize now
as I should have realized then, that attitudes were very different in
your time than mine ...

1982, One Archive; “In The Life Media Will Air Last Show In December,” Advocate.com,
accessed May 30, 2014, http://www.advocate.com/arts-
entertainment/television/2012/09/05/life-media-will-air-last-show-december; In the Life,
Documentary, (N/A); Joseph Beam, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (RedBone Press,
2008).
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Do you remember the night we met at that dance? It was one of the
most important moments of my life … Suddenly, I had a Herstory—a
role model. I was not the only different woman in the family…

I moved to California to ‘change my life.’…I’m now a mature lesbian
feminist who understands the value and importance of the lesbians
who came before me. As a librarian and historian, I have researched
both the Herstory of the women’s movement, and the hidden and
buried Herstory of lesbian women. I live in a politically active lesbian
community of approximately 5,000 women of all nationalities…we are
recognizing the need and importance of celebrating our foremothers.

I am planning a Herstory project on the lives of four or five black
lesbians, a multi-generational overview of our experiences since 1900
… It will mean going public—which might be scary, but it will also
mean leaving your mark for the lesbians of the future…

Please understand that although I will be very disappointed if you
can’t participate in the project, I will understand … Be excited for
me—and with me. We’re going to contribute to Herstory—for
ourselves and for those not yet ‘born.’
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Sincerely, your niece, Jeri
354

This letter opens with Jeri reflecting on her logic regarding the silence and disappearance of
her aunt, Elise. This kind of banishment must have implicated Aunt Elise in some morally
debasing activities like prostitution or drugs. But as an adult, Jeri comes to know the life of
Aunt Elise as her own. Elise took Jeri to a birthday party and that was where Jeri first
encountered her lesbian place. The place that Jeri found was not just the lesbian party, but
that party signaled for Jeri a whole Herstory and a line of women who loved women. Excited
to have found this pathway to the life, Jeri wants to build more accessible bridges so that
others might also be able to encounter their Quare pasts. Jeri asks Elise to go public so that
the future might be a place for those not yet born and we can presume she means born into
the life. In order to be a part of Herstory, Elise must leave the life and go public. This is an
essential conflict surrounding visibility and invisibility.
In the life was popularized and taken up by Black LGBT folk and used as a way to
make space for themselves, a home for themselves in a world that was often times unloving
and cruel. Joseph Beam further popularized the term when he titled his 1985 anthology of
Black gay men’s writing, In the Life. In another interview with Steven Fullwood and Charles
Stephens,
355
Fullwood speaks of an “In the life generation,” a generation of Black gay artists

354
“In the Life: Newsletter of the West Coast Lesbian Collections, No. 2,” Fall 1983, 1, 7,
One Archive, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/1464f0c2657ef0b4.
355
Charles Stephens is a contributing author in the anthology, For Colored Boys Who Have
Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and
Coming Home. He is also co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Black Gay Genius.
Green 246
in the 1980’s that created a movement.
356
Stephens writes, “In the Life became a compass for
me, to first locate myself, and then others that shared my commitments. ”
357
He continues,
Later, I would meet others that knew Beam personally, and I would read Joe’s
words much more deliberately. And what I found, which still is unsettling to
me, is how often I’ve heard people describe Joe as very serious, or angry. I
can’t help but wonder, if what we might have perceived as anger was really a
kind of urgency. Urgency because he had so much to say, so much to get out
in the world, and so it probably came out in bursts. I also think he wanted to
be whole, and perhaps, in the persona he cultivated, that was not available to
him. Maybe even as this fully realized black gay man, he still felt like he was
in a kind of prison, which speaks to his loneliness.
358

356
“Charles Stephens & Steven G. Fullwood: A Conversation on Joseph Beam and ‘In the
Life,’” Lambda Literary, accessed February 13, 2014,
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/interviews/12/29/charles-stephens-steven-g-fullwood-a-
conversation-on-joseph-beam-and-in-the-life/.
357
“Charles Stephens & Steven G. Fullwood: A Conversation on Joseph Beam and ‘In the
Life,’” Lambda Literary, accessed February 13, 2014,
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/interviews/12/29/charles-stephens-steven-g-fullwood-a-
conversation-on-joseph-beam-and-in-the-life/.
358
“Charles Stephens & Steven G. Fullwood: A Conversation on Joseph Beam and ‘In the
Life,’” Lambda Literary, accessed February 18, 2014,
http://www.lambdaliterary.org/interviews/12/29/charles-stephens-steven-g-fullwood-a-
conversation-on-joseph-beam-and-in-the-life/.
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The life, even as it signaled possibility, it also had limitations. “In the Life might have come
from many places, but I wonder if loneliness was part of the motivation.
359
”
It was a common phrase used amongst Black LGBT folk, used to signal same-gender-
loving
360
practices, connections, and bonds. In the life presumes a life that exists outside the
life we have been given and the heteronormative scripts of the lives that we are supposed to
lead. The life is the queer possibility where time changes and stops being linear, where
borders once fixed become flexible with the transformation from declaration to question.
In the life as a composition or a set of practices, people and events, challenges the
notion of the closet. One is not necessarily closeted if they are in the life.
361
Darkness, like
being in the life, is a condition. Those who are in it are not always aware. But there are those
who are conscious of the condition and its complexities, its alternative nature to

359
“Charles Stephens & Steven G. Fullwood.”
360
Same-gender-loving or SGL is a term coined by Los Angeles Native, Cleo Manago. For
more on Manago and the term see: Irene Monroe, “Cleo Manago: The Most Dangerous
Black Gay Man?,” Huffington Post, February 17, 2012,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-monroe/cleo-manago_b_1280272.html; Cleo Manago,
Cleo Manago Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, December 16, 2013; Trimiko C.
Melancon, “Towards an Aesthetic of Transgression: Ann Allen Shockley’s ‘Loving Her’ and
the Politics of Same-Gender Loving,” African American Review 42, no. 3/4 (October 1,
2008): 643–57.
361
For more discussion relating in the life to the closet see: Harris, “In the Life on the Down
Low: Where’s the Black Gay Man Go?,” in War Diaries, ed. Tisa Bryant and Ernest Hardy
(AIDS Project Los Angeles, 2010).
Green 248
heteronormativity. The life is not an end to anything, but it does show a picture of that which
exceeds Capitalist heteronormative logics and structures: it functions alongside. The closet is
a construction that, much like the dominant narratives of history, produces silences and
erasures as it simultaneously illuminates. In Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s essay, “Epistemology
of the Closet,” she outlines a theory of the closet, which has been essential to understanding
modern sexuality and gay and lesbian history. The closet is also called the regime of “the
open secret,” which, Sedgwick says, is how we come to know and understand sexuality as
what is known and what is not, what is public and what is private. It is at times constraining
and contradictory and allows people some sense of knowing simply because of the
dichotomy of in/out that prevails as encompassing the whole. The open secret does not
deconstruct the notion of a secret to tell, but rather reinforces the logic of an ultimate
obtainable truth to be had through sexuality.
362

C. Riley Snorton, in his essay “Trapped in the Epistemological Closet: Black
Sexuality and the ‘Ghettocentric Imagination’,” elaborates on Sedgwick’s notion of “the
epistemological closet.” He creates the term “glass closet” to describe “a space of
confinement and hypervisibility as a structuring metaphor and trope in representations of
black sexuality.”
363
Snorton is interested in the ways in which the epistemological closet
structures ways of knowing and maintains notions of race, gender, and sexuality
simultaneously—this is where Sedgwick’s analysis seems to be a bit limited.

362
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (University of California Press,
1990).
363
Snorton, 94.
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The “glass closet” is essential to understanding the emergence of “down low”
narratives in Black popular culture. The “glass closet” helps us to read and grasp what has
remained in the gaps of critical studies on sexuality—it gives us an “epistemological
framework able to address the complexity of black sexual expression.” Snorton goes on to
state that the “down low” illuminates the presence of this absence.
364
This essay is helpful in
that it demonstrates how to take useful yet limited theories and expand upon them, instead of
completely dismissing them.
365

Ghosting Around
“Los Angeles is filled with ghosts—not only of people, but also of places and buildings and
the ordinary and extraordinary moments and events that once filled them.”
366

“Berlin has the Kaiser Wilhelm Church; Hiroshima has its Peace Park. Some people in Los
Angeles would just as soon forget about the events that swept across the City of Angels for
five days beginning April 29, 1992. Most of the charred walls have been torn down, and
many residents have trouble remembering which empty lots were a result of the most recent
earthquake, or the uprising, or they were always just empty lots. For many, however, to

364
Snorton, 109. It might also fruitful to think about this idea of a presence of absence
alongside Evelynn Hammonds’ essay, "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female
Sexuality."
365
This is similar to what Stuart Hall calls for in his essay, “Gramsci’s Relevance…”
366
Laura Pulido, Laura Barraclough, and Wendy Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles
(University of California Press, 2012), 4.
Green 250
forget the past is to repeat it, and if little remains in way of physical reminders, psychic scars
still remain.”
367

The first quotation is from A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, a guide to Los Angeles unlike
the many other guidebooks to Los Angeles that “…convey a severely limited image of Los
Angeles as a place of glamour, wealth, and fame or the home of the eccentric, creative
individuals…”
368
A People’s Guide to Los Angeles argues that “… mainstream guidebooks
direct visitors primarily to the Westside, Hollywood, and downtown Los Angeles …
Meanwhile, South Los Angeles and East Los Angeles are regularly and systematically
excluded.”
369
This guide to Los Angeles is a guide through the lives of the ghostly as they
have lived in the darkness and sometimes as the shadows, gesturing always towards
alternative possibilities of life and living that challenge the normative.
The second quotation that opens this section comes from the second guide published
by BLK Publishing Company. It aptly articulates the violence that produces emptiness and
economic decline, neglect, and the state of not being able to remember how those conditions
came to be so (See Figure 35).
370
The second quotation speaks to the instability of lasting and

367
Mark Haile, “The 1997-98 BLK Guide to Southern California for Black People in the
Life” (BLK Publishing Company, 1997), 6.
368
Pulido, Barraclough, and Cheng, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, 5.
369
Ibid.
370
Haile, “The 1997-98 BLK Guide to Southern California for Black People in the Life”;
Jarvis Moore D., ed., “BLK 1991 Guide to Southern California for Black Lesbians and Gay
Men” (BLK Publishing Company, 1991).
Green 251
functional infrastructure in communities like South Los Angeles in 1997 after the devastating
earthquake and the uprising in 1992. Buildings were destroyed, but the people remained and
memories of disappearances remained. Psychic scars remained and inevitably affected the
lives of people in these areas.
371

In this chapter, I examine the life Black LGBT people created for themselves in Los
Angeles. This life was produced in many ways. A few I will gesture towards include: how
they map and mark their own space via directories and keys, how club space was used, and
how a major component of being In the Life was the Black queer death toll which is carried
as history.

BLK Maps
1991 marked the year that BLK Publishing Company printed four new publications
outside of its main BLK Magazine. In 1991, BLK published the first issue of Black Lace; the
Black Lesbian Erotic magazine, Kuumba; the Black LGBT literary journal, The BLK LIST;
and the BLK 1991 Guide to Southern California for Black Lesbians and Gay Men. These last
two publications were printed in conjunction with The Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership
Forum Conference, started in 1988, the same as BLK Magazine. This guide was “intended to
help out-of-town visitors find activities and places of interest quickly.”
372
Though this guide
was directed towards people visiting the city, it gave an insider perspective on how Black
lesbian and gay folks crafted their own space.

371
Norman M. Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory,
New and Fully Updated Edition, Updated edition (London; New York: Verso, 2008).
372
Moore, “BLK 1991 Guide to Southern California for Black Lesbians and Gay Men,” 5.
Green 252
This crafting, naming, and claiming of Black gay and lesbian space in Los Angeles by
Black lesbian and gay Angelenos took place on the pages of the main BLK Magazine
publication for three years prior via the community directory section of the magazine. The
community directory included listings of clubs, bathhouses, community organizations,
restaurants, and other venues to help one locate a Black queer Los Angeles. The first three
issues of the magazine showcased these listings under the column “Community Directory”
(See Figures 36-38) and all of the venues were local to Los Angeles. All three of these
listings included a key, the first issue, only included a designation of a (*) if the space was
“integrated” which meant interracial. Of the eleven “Bars and Baths” listed, three were listed
as integrated (See Figure 36). With each issue the key became more specific and telling of
said space.
373

By the second issue, the key not only designated the racial make up of the population
in the space, but also whether or not the venue was, “Mixed Gay and Straight” (See Figure
37). The third issue included an even more developed key (See Figure 38). The designation
“Whites are shot on sight” is interesting because there were no baths or clubs that held that
designation. This designation of place that goes beyond “almost all black” would logically be
“all black.” Substituting “all black” space for a place where “whites are shot on sight” maps
the perceived white imaginary in a tongue and cheek way. It also points to the fear of

373
Alan Bell, “Community Directory,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian
Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, February 1989; Alan Bell, “Community Directory,” BLK: The
National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, January 1989; Alan Bell,
“Community Directory,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los
Angeles, December 1988.
Green 253
complete darkness and blackness that inevitably destroys whiteness. In reality, that space
does not exist, at least not in this key. Still, perhaps there was an imagined place where
whiteness became the target of a systemic state violence overdetermining the death of white
bodies.
The community directory did not appear again until issue number five. In this issue,
the column was renamed, “BLK List,” and printed with this call: “If you want your
organization BLK Listed, drop a note…” Again, in this fifth issue, the designation past
“Almost All Black” is not actually used to mark a place. It is renamed in this issue, “Whites
don’t get a warm and cozy reception” (See Figure 39).
374
To rename the community directory
the “BLK List” pointed to a self-awareness regarding the danger associated with putting
one’s name or business in the public as Black and gay. There was a revaluation here in the
meaning of being Black listed.
By issue number 7, the key that comes into being is the key that remains for the rest
of the issues (See Figure 40).
375
The “****” designates “all black,” but there are still no
spaces given that designation. Issue number seven is also the first issue that expands BLK’s
mapping beyond local Los Angeles venues. Venues in the “Eastern United States” and the
“Central United States” along with a “Western United States” section are included in the
“BLK List.” This change shows the expansion from local Black queer community and place

374
Alan Bell, “BLK List,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los
Angeles, April 1989.
375
Alan Bell, “BLK List,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los
Angeles, June 1989.
Green 254
making to a national consciousness of space and connection beyond the local. Yet, the west
still has the largest amount of listings.
In issue 15, the list is expanded again to include an “International” category in
addition to “Eastern United States,” “Central United States,” and “Western United States.”
The international Black gay organizations listed are mostly based in London, but there are
some named in Ghana, South Africa, and Toronto as well. In this issue, we also see the first
places to receive the designation “****” or “all black” and the only places to receive this
designation are in the “Central United States” category which included, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Nebraska. The “Central United
States” category gave information about Black gay venues in the south and the Midwest.
376

The editors of the BLK list wanted to make the list accurate and useful; therefore;
they were open to additions and corrections. In issue 18, a reader wrote to the editor that the
designation of the San Francisco club, Blue and Gold, was wrong—it was not “somewhat
black,” it was “all black”. In the next issue, that space’s key designation was modified. This
shows the relationship between the readers and the magazine, the crafting of space or
designation of space and place happened collectively.
377

BLK magazine started as a local magazine creating a consciousness around Black and
queer space and place in Los Angeles. As the magazine continued it began to see itself as a

376
Alan Bell, “BLK List,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los
Angeles, February 1990.
377
Alan Bell, “BLK Mail,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine--Los
Angeles, May 1990; Alan Bell, “BLK List,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian
Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, June 1990.
Green 255
national and international base for the dissemination of information to and for Black queer
people all over the world. One of the ways that the magazines forged a sense of Black and
simultaneously queer space materially was by literally creating these directories and maps.
Another way BLK magazine did this, was by the way it labeled these maps via keys which
gave the reader more specifics regarding the space. “All black” space was never materially
marked in Los Angeles by the magazine as anything other than an imagined space of white
fear and anxiety.

In the Club—My first time
378

Sandra Tignor was born in the D.C. Maryland area in 1937. She moved to Southern
California sometime between 1962 and 1963. She is a retired nurse, activist, and leader in the
Black lesbian community. She is one of the founding organizers of ULOAH, United
Lesbians of African Heritage, which later became BLU, Black Lesbians United. Tignor can
be found (Figure 4) leading the Black LGBT contingent of the Kingdom Day parade. These
were her first impressions of The Catch:
I worked across the street from the Catch at the time (1972). The Doctor I
was working for had their office right across the street from The Catch on
Pico Blvd. I saw them working on The Catch and I would peek over there.
Somebody I was working with said it was a gay, homosexual place, a gay
Black place … So, I was thinking, what am I going to do? Because I certainly
wanted to go over there, but I didn’t want to get caught by these people I was

378
“Catch One Night Club,” Catch One Night Club, accessed July 9, 2014,
http://catchonenightclub.com.
Green 256
working with. I was not out to them. So I puzzled over that and I thought
about that for a long time.

I ended up going. The desire to be with my own won the tug of war with my
mind. [I thought,] “Well, I’ll go there Saturday night. The people I work with
will be at home or somewhere else. Not at work. Certainly they wouldn’t be at
work.” So, I took a chance. I thought it was a big chance.

I just remember a lot of attractive women there … there were men there also,
which was kind of foreign to my experience ‘til that date. And a lot of soul
music, Black music, R&B music. I remember it was a good time. Sitting in
the bars, drinking and watching people dance. Dancing myself and having
somewhere to dance. It was a good time. I came back more than once.
379

Jeffrey King was born in Los Angeles California (See Figure 41).
380
He is 55 years old and he
is the founder and director of In the Meantime Men’s Group, an organization dedicated to the
health and wellness of Black Gay men in Los Angeles. This is his description of his first
encounter at the Catch:
Wow... it was a trick. I had a girlfriend and we were living together in one of
the USC apartments. And Kevin Spears, one of the most powerful, forceful, in
your face, gay progressive HIV activists around this country… He lived here

379
Sandra Tignor, Sandra Tignor Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, February 14, 2013.
380
unknown, “Jeffrey King and Jewel Thais-Williams (photo),” 2012.
Green 257
and we just happened to be friends and he also had a friend who just happened
to be a lesbian and I was sort of in the closet at the time.

I was a sophomore at USC. So I was really young. Young and thought I was
all of that and all these different things, but I was really conservative. I didn’t
really go out a lot. I was really into music and I sort of went to that type of
stuff … Theatre and so I wasn’t really a big club guy and I had a girlfriend …
I was really kind of a conservative coordinated dresser. Match. Match. You
know, my shoes matched the belt with the different color Izod polo shirt for
everyday. You know, starched, ironed done. And they laughed at me later and
they told me and I said, “Well how did you guys know?” and they said,
“Look, straight boys don’t even dress like that. You just gotta be a gay boy
dressing like that. We knew you were gay.” “You were just too well dressed
to be anything but a gay boy.” and I was like, well ok, that’s the indicator, but
nonetheless there was that synergy and that energy and their gaydar was up
and they got me.

So they invited me out to a club and I went and I showed up and I was like ok,
the guys are dancing with the guys. The girls are dancing with the girls.
Whoooooa. And my girlfriend’s best friend had a boyfriend and he got a little
touchey feeley with me under the table at an event we all went to and I said,
“This guy is gay.” And when I walked into the club the first person I saw was
him, in the club and we danced and partied all night and we were together for
Green 258
years after that. It was like we became inseparable and who would have
thought? You know, that first person that I would see would be the person that
would make me feel the most comfortable and that we would become lovers
and we would live together and we would work together and we would go to
… church together… So Kevin Spears brought me there.
381

Here is Sexy DJ Claudette’s first experience of The Catch. Sexy DJ Claudette was born and
raised in Los Angeles. She was a DJ at the Catch in the 1990’s when The Catch experienced
a shift in clientele—more white patrons started attending the club. I will return to that shift
later. Sexy DJ Claudette explains,
My first experience in the Catch One, I walked in there and mind you, I was
coming out of Job Corps, I was coming back to Compton to visit and this gay
boy said, “You need to go to the Catch One, honey.” So, they picked me up
and took me to the Catch One and I walk in and I stood in that doorway for
like 10 minutes going, “I’m not the only Black gay person.”

When I began to play there, I remember the first night, I was in the DJ booth
and the guy said, “Look up, you see that ladder up against the wall?” And
literally there was a ladder there up against the wall. You climb that ladder
and you look over aaaaaaaall these people that you’re DJ’ing for. And the bass
was built into the seats. The woofers were built into the seats. I think, they still

381
Kai M. Green, Jeffrey King Interview, February 5, 2013.
Green 259
better be, because the construction of the building, it’s an old building. Wood
solid. It’s just gorgeous. And the huge wooden dance floor and the height of
the ceilings and the lights coming down and the fog and it was heaven. And I
climbed up there and the guy, Billy, showed me the set up and I started DJ’ing
and people just turned around and looked … I had my little rap just to pull
people in because I don’t want to see you standing around while I’m playing
music.

I just wanted to play and the first night people were like, “OMG the DJ’s
talking. Ooh she’s fun!” “Ooh look at her! Ooh she’s cute!” I had my head
shaved. Completely bald, but long on top, like Kid n Play ... I don’t know if
you remember his hi-top but I had a perm straight up and I would take my
clear jelly toothpaste and hairspray and everything to keep it up. I wanted to
be entertainment all the way around. From seeing Patti La Belle … oh my
God, I can remember those days and those costumes! Lady Gaga had to do her
history lessons to get her where she’s at. You know? (See Figure 42)
382

I open this section with three different memories of The Catch One. All three talk about the
Catch as a place where one could come to dance, a place one could feel free to dance Black
and gay. But this is not all the Catch is; it is also the place where Archbishop Carl Bean had
some of his first church services. It is also the place where Jeffrey King still has In the

382
Cathy Opie, “Sexy DJ Claudette with Records (Photo)” (The Advocate, 1992); Claudette
Sexy DJ, Sexy DJ Claudette Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, February 17, 2013.
Green 260
Meantime Men’s Group Tuesday night meetings. It is the place where Rue’s house, the first
home for women and children with HIV/AIDS came into being. It is also today, the space of
the Village Health Foundation, a donation based health clinic.
383
This club is a club, but it is
also a community center for Black LGBT life and organizing in Los Angeles today. Jewel
Thais-Williams is the founder and owner of the club.
Jewel is known as “Mama Jewel,” “The Business woman,” a Jewel of all trades. She
was born and raised in San Diego, California. She studied at UCLA and San Diego State. She
has had many jobs and she brags that one year she had at least eighteen jobs. At one time,
Jewel worked for the LA County Sheriff’s Department. She left because she was not able to
handle the cyclical nature of incarceration which women were caught up in. She was always
interested in creating spaces that were based on social justice so the County Sherriff’s
department did not work well for her. Jewel did not openly acknowledge her love for other
women until she was 26 years old. Similar to the three stories above, Jewel, too, found a
sense of community through The Catch. She wanted to create a space for Black LGBT
people in Los Angeles, so she decided to open up a Black LGBT club. This is how Jewel
describes it:
I first became involved in our community via [the] club… we opened… we as
in my first girlfriend…I hadn’t intended upon it being a gay club. I wanted a
supper club, mainstream folk. I had a women’s clothing store before that and
so that was how I basically got introduced to our community because I didn’t
come out until I was 26. And like I said, this was my first lover … she was

383
“The Village Health Foundation,” accessed July 15, 2014,
http://villagehealthfoundation.org/.
Green 261
from out of state and we didn’t really know any other lesbians when we got
together. … Plus in those days, women primarily went to house parties and it
was maybe once a month thing that would be happening at one of the
gentlemen’s clubs down in Compton or Gardena . … One Friday night a
month, they would have events, so we attended one or two of those and met a
few … other people, but generally we were on the outskirts of that. I had the
fear of family finding out.
384

Jewel talks about not only a fear of coming out in community as Black and lesbian, but also
about how women tended to socialize differently then men. It was less about club life, more
about house parties; this is something documented in many LGBT studies about lesbians.
385

So the club space that Jewel opened changed the face of Black lesbian socializing, providing
a space outside of the home for communing. Still, this space was not solely filled with
women, as interviewee Sandra noted, men and women populated the dance floors of the
Catch. Jewel wanted to create a club where anyone could come and socialize regardless of
race, gender, sexuality or class.
386
Though this club is remembered as a Black LGBT club, it

384
Jewel Thais-Williams, Jewel Thais-Williams Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, April
2011.
385
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-
Century America (Columbia University Press, 2013), 75; Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and
Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (Temple University Press,
2004); Ellen Lewin, Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America (Beacon Press, 1996); Olive
Demetrius and Hanifah Walidah, U People, Documentary, Music, (2009).
386
Thais-Williams, Jewel Thais-Williams Interview.
Green 262
was never a place where “Whites were shot on sight.” The club always catered to multiple
populations.
Before opening the bar, Jewel owned a boutique women’s clothing store where
women could buy clothes on a budget, but during the recession women stopped buying
clothes for themselves. Jewel says that the first thing women stop doing in times of crises is
to stop buying things for themselves. She decided after consulting with her older brother
(who owned a liquor store) that she would open a bar. He had advised her to open a liquor
store, but she did not want to bring more liquor stores into the community. A bar, she
believed, could be a space that had multiple purposes and she has used the space for multiple
purposes over the years.
In order to become a bartender as a woman in Los Angeles at this time (1972), one
had to be the owner of the bar.
387
This law along with the laws that prohibited same-sex
dancing was outlawed just as Jewel was taking ownership of the Catch. When Jewel bought
the club it was known as The Diana Club. She inherited the clientele which was, at that time,
older white heterosexual men who started drinking in the afternoons. Then the after work
crowd came in, these were mostly Black blue-collar working folks. The gay crowd arrive at
night.
388

387
Eric Felten, “Women Behind Bars,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2009, sec. Life &
Style, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124061664179455005.
388
Ayofemi Stowe Folayan, “The Many Faces of Jewel: Black Lesbian Becomes Successful
Southern California Businesswoman,” BLK: The National Black Gay and Lesbian
Newsmagazine--Los Angeles, November 1989.
Green 263
The club was renamed The Catch One in 1974. Jewel became addicted to drugs and
alcohol during the major boom of The Catch. In 1985, the club was destroyed by a fire,
which police determined to be arson. Jewel also faced other challenges.
The very first night I opened, here comes the plain-clothes folks in, asked to
see me, “What's up?” They said, “We understand that there's dope dealers and
prostitutes here, etcetera here.” I said, "Yeah, you're probably right. You
know it’s a public place. I can't do anything more than you can to single them
out." I said, "So, yeah you're probably right, there's probably some prostitutes
and dope dealers and various unsavory people here, too. One thing I can tell
you for sure is that I'm not condoning it and I'm not doing it - that much I can
tell you. That’s all that I can do.” … That was the beginning of what was to
follow on a pretty regular basis.
389

Jewel’s club was heavily policed. Her response was not to further police her clientele, but
rather to protect the rights of the patrons. She recounts another account of police harassment
saying,
One time I went to New York for the billboard awards, which I did quite
frequently then. My manager called me and said that they had closed the club
up because the police came in and made them close it. That was on a Friday I
think and he said, ‘Should I open tomorrow?’

I said, ‘You better open tomorrow [chuckling], and y'all better keep the music
going until they do like they said! Make them arrest you then, but the doors

389
Thais-Williams, Jewel Thais-Williams Interview.
Green 264
are to stay open and the music is to keep going until you guys are arrested and
taken to jail, you're not going on no threats stuff!’

I said, ‘And I'll take care of you. I'll come get you and get you out. I'll be
home tomorrow or the following day, but yeah, let them take you to jail.’ So,
they opened the next night, there wasn't any incident at all.
390

Jewel did not want her staff to cower under police threats. She took responsibility and asked
them to challenge the police by staying open. If they were to get arrested, she would bail
them out. This kind of boldness, this kind of care and protection for community, is what got
Jewel the name, “Mama Jewel.” She continues the story, saying,
When I came in the following the day … I went from the airport to the police
station and just ranted and raved for fifteen, twenty minutes, ‘But ma’ am, that
wasn't the case. We don't have any records of them even going to your club
on that night! This is not the way we operate. This not what we do. There's
nothing here.’ I said, ‘Well you know, I'm tired of you folks harassing me all
the time.’ ‘We weren't harassing you, we weren't even by there [the police].’
I said, ‘Maybe my vocabulary isn't extensive enough to know a word that
would substitute for harassment, but when you come into my club all the time,
sometimes with shot guns … run through it, knowing that people are going to
be turned away and scared of you're being there because you're the police and
most of them have had some kind of bad encounter before that wasn't very
nice - You think that's not harassment? You come in and tell my folks that

390
Ibid.
Green 265
they have to leave for no apparent reason? That sounds pretty much like
harassment to me.’
391

Jewel names the relationship between the LAPD and Quare bodies. She knows that the
community, the people who patronize the club, may have had traumatic encounters with the
police. In order to create a safe space for patrons, she had to create a space where they would
not have to worry about harassment that was quite quotidian for Black people in Los
Angeles, but also LGBT people as well.
392
Unlike the club Brothers, which was mentioned in
the introduction, The Catch was not underground. The fact that it was known and popular,
made it accessible for Black queer folks in Los Angeles, but it also made Black queer folks
easy to find and police. After these early incidents, Jewel says, the LAPD set up a
commission to handle sound abatement.
They said the music was too loud. Two detectives for one whole year every
Friday and Saturday night would be out in the back parking lot with their little
sound meters on. They finally clocked me one night, somebody opened the
door or something and they clocked me. So this whole year, I was the only
one that was cited in all of LA. I was the only one that got this citation so they
spent all this money - two detectives - to catch me with this sound being too

391
Ibid.
392
Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock, Queer (In)Justice: The
Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press, 2011); Lillian Faderman
and Stuart Timmons, Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick
Lesbians (Basic Books, 2006); Steven Kelly Herbert, Policing Space: Territoriality and the
Los Angeles Police Department (U of Minnesota Press, n.d.).
Green 266
loud. Even after that the police came by one night and they said the sound was
too loud again. By that time, I had closed up all the windows and all the things
including bathroom spaces. I said, ‘That's not the case, it might have been
earlier in the evening when they were testing the sound and the backdoor was
open but it’s not.’ They told me that they were gong to confiscate my sound
equipment and so I asked them if they had a court order to do so, and they said
‘No.’ I said, ‘Well you can take it if you want to, but I really wouldn't do
that.’ From the time that I was cited on the police report, it said weapon used,
sound equipment [laughs].
393

The club was too loud, too present, and too bold. The LAPD looked for ways to control this.
Others were also angry by the presence of The Catch and soon tragedy transpired.

Set this Club on Fire
In 1985, the upstairs section of The Catch fell victim to arson. Although the fire department
was only two and half blocks away, Jewel says it took twenty minutes for them to arrive.
And when they did, Jewel remembers,
They just kind of stood around assessing it while the flames were coming out
of the top of the building. It took them I don't know how long to put it out and
shortly after they left, it broke out again. The next morning, the real estate
broker I had bought the building from called me and said that there was an
offer to buy the club. The very next morning! I'm sitting in my office looking
up at the sky and he's talking about there's an offer to buy the building. He

393
Thais-Williams, Jewel Thais-Williams Interview.
Green 267
said that there would be a cash deal … I said, ‘Tell whoever it is, that I can't
be bought and they don't have enough money. I don't even want to hear what
the offer is … it’s not enough!’
394

After this incident, Jewel says she began “a two-year odyssey of dealing with building and
safety. I started gypsy - what I call my gypsy club because I would go and rent a hall and
we'd pack up all of our booze and stereo equipment.”
395
The club no longer had a stable
location, but it continued. It was flexible. Jewel states, “We just moved around from place to
place and had to go on. I started to try to put it back together and building and safety came
out and cited me. They said I needed permits.”
396

And though the fire destroyed much of the club, there were still parts of the building
that could be used. Jewel continued happy hours.
I could still do my happy hour stuff, which in those days was really, really big.
I mean Friday, people were in line around the corner around six o'clock,
waiting to come in. We had to make some room for people to come in
downstairs for happy hour. We still had that going, but the bigger nights,
Friday and Saturday—I had to go some place else to do that. A year and a half
into it, the first building and safety guys who came out, said, ‘This is a white
elephant you'll never open again.’ I told them, ‘I beg your pardon? I don't
think that that's true.’ I said, ‘I'm going to open, I don't know when or how,

394
Ibid.
395
Ibid.
396
Ibid.
Green 268
but I will open. So tell whoever paid you off that … I'm not going anywhere
until I'm ready to go somewhere.’
397

Jewel kept the club going while she tried to figure out ways to rebuild despite push back
from the city and police.
398
She talks about her process of rebuilding in detail, saying,
I would try and sneak plans. I had this big Caucasian lady, you know. She
would come in and do art stuff for me. I sent her down. You know, she did
telephone sex so she had this voice when she would call [laughing in a sexy
voice] ‘This is Carol, [laughing] and I'll be down to bring the plans.’ And the
inspector would go, ‘This is who?’ She would go down there and get them in.
The inspector who would be there wouldn't know. There was this big amazon
woman, big blond hair. They would have it for three or four weeks and I said
maybe it got through this time. This was after sending architects and folks that
did architectural drawings and engineers and all kinds of people down there to
try to get it by. So, finally my sister knew a lady … her husband was an
architect and she told him about what I was going through. He came by. He
was just austere and blonde. He said, ‘If your place was destroyed through an
act of violence or vandalism … you can put it back together again even if it
was wrong before the incident.’

397
Ibid.
398
For further discussion on the relationship between the LAPD and business ownership plese
see: Treva Ellison, “Towards a Politics of Perfect Disorder (Forthcoming” (University of
Southern California, 2015).
Green 269
So, we started building and hammering and doing our thing and here comes
the building and safety again, ‘Well, you don't have a permit.’ So, we go back,
but this time I go with him (the blonde man). I'd been by myself a couple of
times, but we went back and we had our little diagrams and he had his stuff
and I bought him a projector. After we had made our pitch … the guy that was
president of building and safety commission … he just turned to the other
board members. He said, ‘We need to leave this lady alone, and let her go and
get her business back in order.’ ‘What do you think?’ ‘Can we just give her
commission to go and get her place back?’ ‘We can do that, can't we?’ And,
so it was on and cracking, two years after, almost to the day, I was able to
reopen the upstairs.
399

With the help of an austere blonde man, Jewel was able to get the city to permit her to
rebuild. By herself, she was ignored and continuously denied the right to rebuild. Now that
she could rebuild, though, there was still the question of “who burned down the club?”
During this whole time, no one from the fire department had sent me or told
me anything about the arson … I kept fighting it and calling them, and finally
I got the fire chief. I said, ‘If you thought it was me, I would have been taken
to jail in handcuffs that night, so you all know who or the group of people
who did it. And, you're gonna tell me something!’ - which they didn't. They
just said, it was an MO … a lot of businesses that we used to own, Black folks

399
Thais-Williams, Jewel Thais-Williams Interview.
Green 270
used to own, were burned during the 1980’s. He did finally send me a letter
stating that … That was like two years after the fire.
400

There were a lot of fires taking place in 1985, most notably, a huge fire in Baldwin Hills that
killed three people and destroyed 48 homes in the upper middle class Black neighborhood.
There were also instances of Black businesses being burned. And though the crime rates
were decreasing, there was a 14% increase in arson between 1984 and 1985 from the
previous year.
401

400
Ibid.
401
“Yearender: Law & Order In 1984: Law and Order 1984: The Year In Review,” Los
Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), January 17, 1985,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565446622/abstract/320D255610C24A
C7PQ/1?accountid=14749; Von Jones and HAROLD JOHNSON Sentinel Staff Writers,
“Baldwin Hills: Affluent, Historic Neighborhood: Baldwin Hills: Affluent, Historic
Neighborhood,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), July 11, 1985; CHERYL BOUTTE
Special to the Sentinel, “Hamburger Henri’s Reopens,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005),
March 7, 1985; “Letters,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), January 31, 1985,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565452757/citation/320D255610C24A
C7PQ/3?accountid=14749; “County Criminal Activity Decreases,” Los Angeles Sentinel
(1934-2005), January 24, 1985; SHELDON McCORMICK Sentinel Staff Writer, “Suspect
Charged,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), January 29, 1987,
http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565432995/abstract/FF9DD828D8674
AB2PQ/4?accountid=14749; “Baldwin Hills Fire Victims Sue Pepperdine,” Los Angeles
Sentinel (1934-2005), February 13, 1986,
Green 271

Take Back the Catch
Jewel’s club came into being in the 70s, a time when “gay neighborhoods were
bursting at the seams with bathhouses, discos, gyms, sex clubs, clothing shops, restaurants
and bookstores.”
402
According to disco scholar, Alice Echols, by the 1980’s, gay club and
bath culture was “a hundred million dollar industry.”
403
It was not uncommon that the owners
of these clubs also became community leaders and organizers. This was a shift from the
earlier gay liberation movement’s call to be ‘“out of the closets and into the streets.’”
404

Echols argues that gay culture revolved around club space in the 1970’s and into the 1980s.
The Catch One was and is a business that profited from party culture; however, The Catch
did more than just host the party. When The Catch opened in 1972, Black gay folks did not
have many places to go dance and socialize, this was especially true for women.
There were private members-only disco clubs, like the Tenth Floor and the Flamingo,
which had strict dress code and membership fees in order to keep non-white men out. These
policies in private clubs were also used in public discos like Studio 54 in Hollywood, which

http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.usc.edu/docview/565461976/abstract/320D255610C24A
C7PQ/26?accountid=14749; “Photo Standalone 9 -- No Title,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-
2005), September 19, 1985; BETTY PLEASANT Sentinel Staff Writer, “Deukmejian Puts
Bounty On Arsonist,” Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), July 18, 1985; “Baldwin Hills,” Los
Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), July 11, 1985.
402
Alice Echols Hot Stuff Disco 53
403
ibid
404
ibid
Green 272
enforced elitism and exclusionism by requiring people of color and women to show 3 forms
of identification.
405
The Catch was a dance floor that welcomed everyone. For much of the
1970’s and 1980’s, it was the premiere disco for Black queer folks, but this does not mean it
was exclusive (See Figure 43).
406
In a telling interview with Los Angeles native, Donald
Norman, Norman remembers going to clubs in Hollywood, clubs like Studio 54, as a Black
man. He remembers not having trouble because he always came with a group of white men.
He is a fair skinned Black man. As the only person of color in the group, he did not pose a
threat to the general majority white male make-up of the club. He remembers watching
groups of Black men be denied entry, though. He also recalls that if there were large groups
of Black people in clubs that were usually white, the DJ might change the music to Country,
assuming it would push Black people to leave.
407

Black gay Discos in Los Angeles gave Black queer folks a place where they did not
have to show three forms of ID to get in; they did not have to worry about the DJ playing
music to make them want to leave the dance floor. The Catch was, for many, a safe space -
exactly what Jewel wanted it to be. Still, it was a business. The Catch became popularized in
white gay communities after 1980’s when Madonna visited the club. Madonna’s visits, in
addition to the popularizing of voguing, brought white partygoers who formerly never left the
Hollywood/West Hollywood area all the way to Mid-City. Alycee Lane, editor of Black
Lace, describes the shift in our interview below (after Madonna’s visits):

405
gay la and ibid 64-67
406
Kai M. Green, “The Catch One (Photograph),” 2013.
407
Donald Norman, Donald Norman Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, December 4,
2012.
Green 273
I mean I wasn’t there the time she came, but she had come and it just spread
like wild fire without a doubt. It was like she had gone to The Catch … she
had just showed up. I don’t think [there] was an announcement. I don’t think it
was like she put out a press release and was like, ‘I am going to the Catch
today.’ I do know that once she came, the boys and girls from West
Hollywood started to come into the Catch, which was great for the Catch in
terms of money and so forth … It absolutely changed the flavor to the point
where you could come into The Catch and see primarily white people. And
then it not only changed the flavor, but it changed the music. And Jewel was
like ‘Yea, OK, bring ‘em on in.’ It was money and it was also exposure… but
I think a lot of Black gays and lesbians … just decided not to go anymore
because it had changed and it just became another space that we couldn’t have
on our own. And it was just disheartening ‘cause West Hollywood had all
kinds of different clubs, all kinds of venues for white folks and we wanted to
have something for ourselves.
408

Lane says that the crowd of The Catch changed in this moment to a predominantly white
crowd. Black partygoers expressed their dismay with Jewel and at one point there was a
group of folks who pulled Jewel into a room and told her they were planning a “Take Back
the Catch” protest. Jewel’s response was, “Who are you taking the club back from? I own it.
It’s open to everyone and if you want to come just come.”
409
I have discussed this moment
with Jewel on many occasions and while she always stands by her story, there was one

408
Alycee J. Lane, Alycee J. Lane Interview, interview by Kai M. Green, May 24, 2011.
409
Thais-Williams, Jewel Thais-Williams Interview.
Green 274
conversation when she concluded, talking about the moment when the West Hollywood
crowd dwindled, “Well, it was nice when the club was ours again.”
Sexy DJ Claudette was one of the major DJs at the Catch during this heyday moment.
These were her thoughts on the shift:
Well, we Black gays and lesbians were not invited to come to West
Hollywood. … I say this, invited, because when you went to West Hollywood,
the clubs over there, they would ask for 3 pieces of ID. You couldn’t have
open toed shoes. All these restrictions the guys at the door would bring up to
keep us out of the clubs. And when it started getting around that The Catch
One was the place to be, of course the white kids wanted in on it. And they
would come gradually, but then when Madonna started showing up, they
would flood the gates and try to come in. And our rejection to that was, ‘We
can’t be in your club, why do you think you can come into our club?’
410

Sexy DJ Claudette continues revealing the stakes that Black queer people held in the Catch.
It was a sacred place for Black queer folks who had been alienated from other LGBT places.
You know, Jewel owned the club, but we felt like this was our house. We
couldn’t go to your house so don’t come knocking on my door. We called [it]
the Bring Back the Night. We would leave flyers on their cars. We would give
attitude when they came in our club … to make them think twice of how they
treatin’ us when we over in their hood. You over in our hood expect open
arms, but when we go to your hood they’re like ‘Nu uh, ma’am you can’t get
in here.’ So there was the Bring Back the Night campaign to bring recognition

410
Sexy DJ, Sexy DJ Claudette Interview.
Green 275
to the racism we were facing. We were all gay, but being Black and gay was
like a curse because we were all seen as, unfortunately, how we are seen as
African Americans ‘til this day. Not in a good light.
411

Sexy DJ Claudette describes the anger and resentment Black queer folk felt when The Catch
started to see a lot more white people from other neighborhoods come in. They wanted to
bring awareness to the racism and white privilege in which white partygoers participated.
There was also a desire to “put white folks in their place.” It was clear that wherever white
folks went, the space would become their place. Perhaps this is the reason why a space
designated “Whites Shot on sight,” might have also been a Black queer fantasy of a
preserved Black queer place. Sexy Dj Claudette continues:
Bring Back the Night campaign brought recognition to West Hollywood
because some of those sponsors wanted to sponsor The Catch One. You were
welcomed, but we’re not going to disrespect you like you disrespect us. So,
the owners start thinking about it with the clubs in West Hollywood and I
played for this girl’s club in West Hollywood … J, she was crazy. Because,
she came to The Catch by herself. She climbed that ladder (to the DJ booth).
H.H. is another one. These two white women climbed that ladder. And said, ‘I
want to talk to you’ ‘Can you do an event for me? I think you’re great.’ And
so that was my introduction to West Hollywood - which I was kind of like,
‘Well, I don’t know.’ And I kind of got over myself and they offered me a lot
more money. So, I went to check it out and I started bringing that music from
the Catch One to West Hollywood. Chicago house music. It was great, but it

411
Ibid.
Green 276
was the idea that I wasn’t playing for all my people. My Black people, my
Black gay people over there on the Eastside. I’m over here playing on the
Westside for all these white gay people introducing them to this music. I was
ostracized for a little bit because of that … girls at The Catch would be like,
‘Well I’m not going to West Hollywood.’ Some of them started to give in and
come and follow me. So it was like ‘Ooh, well this is cool. It’s still Sexy DJ.
It’s not a lot of Black women. Well, so let’s bring more Black women.’ So
my, operation began and the DJs from the Catch started going into West
Hollywood.
412

Sexy DJ felt a loss when she moved to the West Hollywood party scene. Even though she
was accepted, there were still very few Black people. Some saw her as a traitor. To others
she was a bridge that merged different communities. These communities were shifting
themselves as Sexy DJ Claudette notes.
That neighborhood where the Catch One is located at that time was a bad
neighborhood. There were people getting mugged, especially white people ...
Cars getting broken into, all kind of things were happening because there was
a lot of crack going on. And with the transition from the 80’s to the 90’s. It
became gentrified. Whites were moving in and doing the remodels and Blacks
were moving in and doing the remodels. People were buying these homes and
converting them into condominiums. It started to filter out the drug abusers,
the addicts. When you were at The Catch, you were right in the club. You
didn’t walk around the neighborhood. You went right in your car. You did not

412
Ibid.
Green 277
play, but that was the risk you took to go have a good time. You know, people
called it the hood for a long time, but you know it’s changed. It’s changed a
lot.
413

This is an example of how space was struggled over within community and across
communities. Just as the parties were declining in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the
HIV/AIDS crises came and forever changed the shape and feel of the dance floor. From the
DJ booth, this is how Sexy DJ Claudette describes the shift:
I remember clearly, looking out that Crows Nest (DJ booth), and looking
down and going, ‘Well where’s Michael? What happened to him? Did he get
married?’ ‘No, girl he got the AIDS.’ It was called The AIDS then. It was still
an unbelievable thing that certain people died and they must have been doing
something. It had nothing to do with blood transfusion. You know, it was who
you were having sex with. Safe sex wasn’t emphasized enough at that time.
And then it grew. My boy friends that I had been dancing with, laughing with,
playing with for many years, weren’t coming to the clubs. They weren’t
anywhere and the only idea you had was, ‘Maybe, he’s sick.’ And then you’re
praying … this friend you had known for years is sick and how [do] you
contact him? Then you find out that his family has rejected him. That West
Angeles Church won’t bury him because he has AIDS. Even though he was
singing in that choir and orchestrating for them for many years. They won’t
even have his funeral there because he has AIDS.

413
Ibid.
Green 278
HIV/AIDS disrupted the party as many no longer wished or were no longer able to socialize.
There was a lot of fear around how one might catch the virus, but, too, if you had the virus or
thought you had the virus you might also feel so much shame that you stayed home.
414

This crisis put a lot of pressure on lesbian and gay communities to figure out ways to
support each other. In my interview with Vallerie Wagner, she talks about the misogyny she
experienced in the Black lesbian and gay movement in Los Angeles. She reflects on the early
moments of the crisis and makes a strong declaration, “If it had been the other way around,
we [Black lesbians], might all be dead.”
415
This relationship between Black women, and
Black lesbians, in particular, caring for men with HIV/AIDS stands out in this project as at
least three of the women I interviewed were in the health care profession as nurses during the
1980’s. Sexy DJ Claudette reflects on these relations, saying,

414
Josh Sides, Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco
(Oxford University Press, 2009); Angelique C. Harris, AIDS, Sexuality, and the Black
Church: Making the Wounded Whole (Peter Lang, 2010); Kathryn Bond Stockton, Beautiful
Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where “Black” Meets “Queer” (Duke University Press, 2006);
Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of
Polio to the Age of AIDS (Beacon Press, 1994); Cindy Patton, “Illness As Weapon,” Gay
Community News, June 30, 1984; Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the
Breakdown of Black Politics, 1st ed. (University Of Chicago Press, 1999); Tisa Bryant and
Ernest Hardy, War Diaries (AIDS Project Los Angeles, 2010); Kai M. Green and Carl Bean,
Carl Bean Interview, February 11, 2013; Green, Jeffrey King Interview; Sexy DJ, Sexy DJ
Claudette Interview.
415
Vallerie Wagner, Vallerie Wagner, interview by Kai M. Green, January 14, 2013.
Green 279
The rejection …What can you do, as a lesbian sister to help your brother? ...
The separation of gay boys and lesbian girls starts to mesh together as
brothers and sisters. We were making sure they were getting their medicines,
and preparing for their deaths. They lived at hospices … The partners they’ve
been with forever … The family is not going to let him have that house that
they built together. He has no rights to anything they’ve had together. He’s
dead. He’s in heaven and we’re taking all his stuff. You don’t matter anymore
and you probably got the AIDS too. You probably gave it to him…
416

There were new bonds created between Black gay men and lesbians in this time of great loss.
New families were formed as people were abandoned by bloodlines; queer kinship bonds
were forged.
417
But as it became clear that HIV/AIDS was not just a gay disease, “It was like
a firestorm. It was like seeing a beautiful wheat field catch on fire and just travel and travel.
And you’re trying to put it out with a glass of water and now it’s everywhere. It’s not the gay
disease. It’s America, it’s the world’s disease.”
418

Conclusion
You have read in previous chapters about the work of Archbishop Carl Bean and the
Minority Aids Project and the work that was done to create support for people affected by
HIV/AIDS. Please see “Appendix 2” for a transcription of Bean’s account of HIV/AIDS. He

416
Sexy DJ, Sexy DJ Claudette Interview.
417
“Families of Choice - Devastating Illness Pulls Friends of AIDS Patients into Close
Kinship,” Sun, The (Baltimore, MD), November 25, 1991, FINAL edition.
418
Sexy DJ, Sexy DJ Claudette Interview.
Green 280
tells the story of the work that he had to do and how it affected his own life. He also
discusses the ways in which health and healing become deprioritized during this crisis.
Surviving and helping others to survive becomes essential, but what happens when the
immediate crisis ends or changes—what are we to do with the scars?
Death was a reality for Quare folks in Los Angeles. It was a reality that had to be
dealt with. On the dance floor, in the churches, and in the erotic magazines, death was
pervasive. In BLK magazine the column BLK Veil was used to keep a record and memorial
of those who had passed on. This Quare list included people like Huey Newton, as well as
Pat Parker and Joseph Beam. The veil has meaning in the African diaspora and W.E.B. Du
Bois eloquently describes it in The Souls of Black Folk.
419
The veil, the Black veil was the
death, the other life that Black folks carried so close to them as central to their consciousness.
When I asked Jeffery King how it was that he was able to make it through the HIV/AIDS
crisis, his response was not an answer but a question: “How does a people make it through
the middle passage?”
420
A question is the answer, and that is the life.

419
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Arc Manor LLC, 2008).
420
Green, Jeffrey King Interview.
Green 281
Chapter 5 Figures

Figure 35: BLK Guides

Green 282

Figure 36: Community Directory (1988)

Green 283

Figure 37: Community Directory (01-1989)

Green 284

Figure 38: Community Directory (02-1989)
Green 285

Figure 39: BLK List (04-1989)

Green 286

Figure 40: BLK List (06-1989)

Green 287

Figure 41: Jeffrey King and Jewel Thais-Williams

Figure 42: Sexy DJ Claudette with Records

Green 288

Figure 43: The Catch One
Green 289
Chapter 6: A Conclusion in Four Parts

When and Where I Entered
In 2007, I graduated from Williams College with honors and a prize for best essay in
Africana Studies. I had spent seven years on the East Coast learning how to navigate elite
educational institutions. I was awarded an undergraduate Mellon Mays Fellowship during my
junior year - at twenty years old - that meant two things: I would be able to leave my work-
study job at the campus phone office because now I’d be compensated for doing my own
research, plus, I would be able to develop stronger relationships with faculty, primarily
faculty of color who schooled me in the world of academia. I did not know then that the road
I was choosing would lead to my current manifestation as a twenty-nine year old, struggling
to finish something called a dissertation.
I cannot remember exactly what dreams I had for my own life before entering the
Mellon program. All I knew was that I was going to go to graduate school and I was going
to get a Ph.D. and Mellon would pay back $10,000 of my loans (back then that seemed like a
whole lot). One of the reasons I choose to come to graduate school was so that I would never
have to worry about being poor again. I will never forget the moment my undergraduate
professor, a woman of color, looked me in the eyes and said, “Well, you won’t be rich, but
you’ll never be poor again.” Fear can move you. The fear of poverty is a unique fear when it
is something that you have experienced before, something that you know could very well be
possible again if you fall or fail. My whole being became wrapped up in obtaining the Ph.D.
because it would ensure that I would never have to return to a place I have already been--the
place I call home, deep East Oakland. I grew up in the darkness and that became most clear
Green 290
when I got a scholarship to attend a private middle school. I had classmates and teachers who
feared my block. People were shocked that I could come from that world and still be a part of
theirs. At times I felt shame because I knew that what I carried into this white space was my
own blackness. I knew I represented the darkness - deep East Oakland - a place where the
imagination conjures images of wild beasts roaming. I was an exception in their eyes. But I
am not and I was not an exception. There were plenty of other bright dark students in my
public school who could have benefitted from such quality education, but we all could not
get scholarships (though the following year they would bring another Black student from my
former public school). We were experiments. “What happens if you take a poor Black kid out
of the hood?” I’d return years later to see the school had even more Black faces and my
former basketball coach told me, “That’s because of you.” I felt sad. I always wondered
what it would have been like if I/we did not have to leave home to receive quality
education…

Moving forward in time…

I came to graduate school to continue the scholarship I started as an undergraduate about
Black Americaness, Ebonics, Latina Americaness, and Spanglish. I was interested in the
ways in which Black and Chicana folk used poetry and prose to create unique borderland
subjectivities that were made manifest through language. My senior thesis was entitled
“Redefining the Promised Land: The Politics of 20th Century Black American Poetics,
Identity, and Language.” My goal was to show the different ways that Black and Brown
artists and thinkers made use of language to produce a unique Black/Brown and American
Green 291
aesthetic that could be understood as a wilderness space. I argued that the wilderness was not
a position that we should try to liberate ourselves from in hopes of a Promised Land. The
wilderness of my undergraduate years is an early articulation of the darkness in this
manuscript.
421

During my first year in LA (2007), I had a difficult time adjusting. I lived in Korea
Town, just a few miles away from USC’s campus. I had an advisor who encouraged me to go
to Leimert Park to find community. I participated in jazz vocal workshops with Dini
Clarke
422
and the writing workshops that occurred at the World Stage.
423
I also attended drum
circles around the fountain in Leimert Park. I discovered a Black artist community and LA
started to feel less alienating.
From 2008 – 2010, I lived in Claremont (45 minutes outside of LA) and commuted to
LA for classes and other events. I went to The Catch occasionally. I went to different cultural
events, but I was removed from the life in LA. When I moved back in 2010, I became very
active in community spaces. I went to BLU, the Black lesbian retreat. I started going to Unity
Fellowship Church. I became a known Black masculine lesbian in the community,

421
Kiana Green, “Redefining the Promised Land: The Politics of 20th Century Black
American Poetics, Identity, and Language” (Williams College, 2007).
422
“Dini Clarke - Biography,” accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.dibomusic.com/biography.htm; enhager on February 16 and 2011 at 11:01pm
View Videos, “World Stage Vocal Workshop,” accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.leimertparkbeat.com/video/world-stage-vocal-workshop.
423
“The World Stage :: Art, Education, and Performance Gallery,” accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.theworldstage.org/.
Green 292
participating in conferences, workshops, and even fashion shows.
424
This was my Quare
community.
In 2012, I decided to transition with hormones. After having been in the field for
more than a year, this personal choice was not something that could be ignored. All of my
relationships were affected. Where did I belong now? I was never formally asked to not
partake in Black lesbian events, but more and more I could feel that my presence bothered
certain members of the community who felt betrayed. I was told by one of the organizers of
BLU that I could come to the retreat, after having top surgery, as long as I did not take my
shirt off. That was more of my “man” side and that space was for “women.” I decided not to
attend the retreat again. While I had some negative experiences, I also had a lot of support.
One of the spiritual leaders, Black lesbian, Qween Hollins, who runs the Earthlodge Center
for Transformation, presided over a spiritual ceremony for my transition.
425
Hollins, an Ifa
priestess, conducts ceremony regularly; this was the first time she created a space for a
transgender person. I was not just a researcher; I was a community member. I am grateful
for the struggles, love, and opportunity to build with Black queer folk in LA.
In this manuscript, you have heard some stories from some Quare Los Angeles, but
these are not the only stories available. Even these stories have multiple translations. Still,
each narrative provides a unique perspective on the world and each has a lesson to teach us.

424
Butch Voices Fashion Show - Episode 105 (part 4 of 4), 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRz2D8m4ENI&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
425
“Queen Hollins and the Earthlodge Center for Transformation,” Queen Hollins and the
Earthlodge Center for Transformation, accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.earthlodgecenter.org/.
Green 293
The darkness that I have illustrated here does not capture my apartment building on
Crenshaw and Adams. My world is Black. My world is also very gay. When I moved into
this building, right across the street from Johnny’s Pastrami, a 24-hour pastrami stand, I was
worried. I thought it might be too rowdy and too many cops (I was half right). I moved into
my building, all Black and a few Brown folk. I lived here alone in a studio; all of the units
were studios. I looked in my neighbor’s place and noticed that they, too, had a studio. In it
lived a newborn, a toddler, and two parents. This is South LA. And while my downstairs
neighbor was likely a drug-dealer, and the manager’s “girl” drank a lot and sometimes yelled,
there were moments when she smiled, danced – moments when the babies seemed to relax
and when the manager was not shaking his head and giving that “just trying to make it” nod.
There was joy there, too. There was joy for me the week I moved in and I met two neighbors,
two other Black men, who were also gay. In my head I thought, “Why am I surprised?” In
my heart, I knew why. I too had internalized Black. A Black building meant straight, meant
homophobic, meant all of these things, even though that was not my experience.
The darkness that I have illustrated here does not capture the two Quare kids waiting
at the bus stop. A young boy, stands, early teens, dyed blonde hair, tight ripped jeans, and a
pink shirt hugging his slender light brown body. And his best friend, she is short and dark
brown, tight jeans, ripped as well, pierced eyebrow and just above the lip a stud sparkles.
They wait at the bus stop on Crenshaw and Slauson, laughing, dancing, talking loud - I am
afraid. I am afraid that he is too out and that she will not be able to protect him and they will
not be able to protect each other. I see what they carry in their Quare bond, and I roll my
window down in response to their waves. They ask me for a ride and I oblige because I know
I am not dangerous and because I know I will not hurt them, but I do not know about the car
Green 294
behind me. We ride and they ask me if they can play their music because I’m old school.
This study will not give you the story of the working stud lugging her baby to school, it will
not give you the story of the gay gangbanger, but their stories are here too, ghosting around
in the dark of these pages. I leave it to you to seek those traces.

Where I Did Not Go But Tried
An obsession with darkness permeates this manuscript. I have argued that the darkness is a
particular way of knowing that is more concerned with the ways in which what and how we
know is structured by our own positionality, rather than some objective truth. In this
manuscript, I ask how a story of LGBT Los Angeles shifts if we focus on South Los Angeles,
a predominantly Black and Brown area. The stories that have come to the forefront are
stories of Black lives and living. This living is also queer, not simply because of the subjects’
identification as LGBT, but also because of queer nature of blackness.
426

Darkness can be mobilized and allow one to know and see things that might not
otherwise be seen, it is a tool that requires perpetual work. It requires a constant turning back
and forward. The glance back is like a glance in the rear view mirror in order to make sure
you have seen it all, but always there is a blind spot. The embrace of the constant blindness is
important and generative. In this final chapter, I point out my own blind spots, not that these
are the only blind spots, but the awareness of these makes this a generative text as I leave a
lot for other scholars to find, expand upon, and challenge. This manuscript brings to the
forefront the voices of those who are not often times heard or even imagined when the

426
Cathy Cohen, “Death and Rebirth of a Movement: Queering Critical Ethnic Studies,”
Social Justice 37, no. 4 (122) (January 1, 2011): 126–32.
Green 295
discussion of LGBT arises. I use South Los Angeles as a site because it is the place that
houses the largest concentration of Black people in Los Angeles, with the exception of Skid
Row.
Skid Row has the highest concentration of homeless people in the country.
427
It is a
space that has multiple communities and economies working in and through it. In a recent
article it was described as being
… full of color [in the morning]. It's the fashion and toy district.
Wholesalers put out sidewalk displays of huge rolls of fabric with
flowers and paisley prints. And dozens of toy stores are filled with
every imaginable plastic bauble. But when the sun sets, all the fabric
and toys are dragged inside and secured behind padlocked metal
gates.
428

Skid Row is a segment of Downtown LA. Since 1870, it has housed the poorest people in
the city. In 1870, it was the place where seasonal workers traversed because it was a

427
“Dumped On Skid Row,” accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dumped-on-skid-row/; Jordan T. Camp and Christina
Heatherton, Freedom Now! Struggles for the Human Right to Housing in L.A. and Beyond,
1ST edition (Los Angeles: Freedom Now Books, 2012); Christina Heatherton et al.,
Downtown Blues: A Skid Row Reader (Freedom Now Books, n.d.).
428
David Weinberg, “Skid Row Was L.A.’s Solution for Homelessness. Now That’s
Changing,” Marketplace.org, accessed November 29, 2013,
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/skid-row-was-las-solution-homelessness-
now-thats-changing.
Green 296
transportation center. The city worked to move this poor population in this concentrated area
by moving many of the social services here. Because LA is such a large city and a driving
city, not many people ever encountered the poverty in Skid Row, even if they were LA
residents. This started to change in the 2000’s when big developers took an interest in the
area.
429

Now that the poverty of Skid Row has become visible and more difficult for people to
ignore, some folk are doing things to change the face of Skid Row, by removing the homeless
from the street, which often looks like a lot of policing, further displacement and
gentrification.
430
There are also community organizations like the LA Community Action
Network that fight for the rights of the homeless.
431

429
Ibid.
430
“A New Plan to Help Skid Row’s Homeless,” Los Angeles Downtown News - For
Everything Downtown L.A.!, accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/a-new-plan-to-help-skid-row-s-
homeless/article_35b029a0-0e5c-11e4-a009-001a4bcf887a.html; Gale Holland, “L.A.
Leaders Are Crafting New Plan to Help Homeless on Skid Row,” Los Angeles Times, July
15, 2014, http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-skid-row-police-20140716-
story.html#page=1; “LAPD Officer Calls Skid Row An ‘Outdoor Asylum Without Walls,’”
LAist, accessed July 23, 2014,
http://laist.com/2014/07/01/dtla_police_officer_calls_skid_row.php.
431
“Los Angeles Community Action Network | Los Angeles Community Action Network,”
accessed July 23, 2014, http://cangress.org/.
Green 297
In what follows, you will read what I think of as the ultimate failure and triumph of
this project. I went searching for the darkness of my darkness. I went to Skid Row to figure
out what it might tell me about Quare Los Angeles. What I discovered were two worlds, two
histories intersecting violently.

1. How to Enter the Darkness—I do not think this is the right way—Is there a right
way?

I decided to take an Out and About LGBT walking tour of downtown Los Angeles,
which is described online as:
GAY LA Downtown Walking Tour

Nobody walks in LA? Sooooooo not true! Join Out & About Tours for their
first of three walking tours in the City of Angels. Downtown LA houses the
most rich and vibrant LGBT history our city has to offer. From the gay
friendly Native Americans who first settled the land centuries before
Columbus arrived to LA's first gay porn theatre that opened in the 1800's to
the grand hotels and bath houses that sated the secret desires of the Hollywood
elite - this tour is unlike any other in Los Angeles. Enjoy a brisk two-and-a-
half hour walk in sunny LA. Snacks and water included.
432

432
“Out & About Tours | Book a Tour,” accessed July 23, 2014, http://www.outandabout-
tours.com/book_a_tour.html.
Green 298
This tour was prescripted by whiteness even as it acted to incorporate histories of Black
people and people of color. I became implicated in this story as I walked through this tour of
Skid Row, Black bodies spilling into the streets, tents leaning to the side, piles of garbage
bags and carts, all the things you must carry when you are without home. The question of
home has been central to this study—where does the Black LGBT person find home? How
do they make it? What are the conditions? Is home an (im)possibility? These are, in many
ways, theoretical questions grounded in material conditions. My study focuses on a people
who are not homeless, but what of this large population of Black people in Skid Row? What
of the LGBT people here? My entry into the field here is vexed from the start. This gay tour
of Downtown Los Angeles occurred in a place deemed the “Meanest City” in 2009 because
of this area.
433

****
The sun comes down hot on my neck. My legs sting from the leather seats in my car
and I do not have tinted windows to protect me from the burn. I rush to Union Station,
weaving in and out of lanes. I hope I can find free street parking. I am always running late in
LA even when I leave early, I end up late. Traffic never ends here, not even on Sunday.
Though I know some shortcuts, LA is still a maze to me.
I pull into Union Station and grumpily pay the parking fee. I run to the station and I
am amazed by the hustle and bustle—it almost feels like New York in here. There are so
many people moving around - walking, running, talking, waiting on buses and trains. A

433
“National Coalition for the Homeless,” accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/criminalization.html.
Green 299
mother drags her small child away from the candy stand. Another toddler, feet stumbling, he
tries to keep up with mom rushing and looking away. I remember taking the bus when I lived
on the east coast. I remember taking the greyhound all over New England, but in LA I drive
everywhere. Viewing the city as a driver, feeling the city as a person cooped up inside a car
most of the time affects the experience of this place. I choose the music on my radio, silence,
or a podcast—my experience of the city is often filtered through my car. I do not often feel
like I get to touch or be touched by the city without the armor of my car. There is a definitely
feeling of detachment between this city and me.
Well, I’m late, but not as late as Tim.
434
Once Tim arrives, there are four of us on tour
and one guide. It is me and three white gay men. The first thing the guide asks us to do is to
pick something out of a brown paper bag. I am worried. I do not know why, but I feel
uneasy. I see the two guys before me pick pins that have pictures of LGBT icons. Each figure
pulled will be talked about during the tour. So far all the icons are white. I reach my hand
into the bag and it is as if my ancestor jumps out, “I’m here with you.” I look at the pin and
the image and I wonder if this is orchestrated. I am the only person of color on the tour and I
just happen to pull a person of color out of the bag. Tim stretches his neck and squints his
eyes, “What is that? A drag queen?” He edges in closer and answers his own question, “Oh!
It’s an Indian guy!” The tour guide quickly interrupts, “Well kind of, but that’s what we’ll
get to on our first stop.” I look at the pin and I feel sad and embarrassed that I’m taking part
in this. My pin is a Native American two-spirit person.
As we leave Union Station, I notice that the tour guide and I share the same backpack.
I wonder about the other things we may or may not have in common. Jake, the guy in the

434
Tim is a pseudonym.
Green 300
turquoise polo shirt asks if we are going to walk through Skid Row. The guide responds, “I
promise no one will spit in your mouth. It’s cleaned up a lot. But you know you always want
to lock your doors because it is a rough area.”
We walk to El Pueblo, just across the street from Union Station. He describes the
Tongva Native Americans who stewarded this land before Spanish colonization. He applauds
Native Americans, declaring them a people “ahead of their time” because “they had gay
marriage, gay adoption, and they were accepting of transgender people.” He then goes on to
say that the reason Native Americans are so advanced is because “they understood sexuality
isn’t a choice.” Here, similarly to the authors I mentioned in the introduction, the Native
American narrative is used to justify a present LGBT existence that is usually imagined as
white and male.
435

As we walk through Skid Row, I feel self-conscious, aware of my blackness. I’m
walking through this Black space with a group of white men. Where do I belong? If I were to
hold a sign, what would it say? “I’m not really with them!” “I’m Black and I love Black
people!” “I know what this looks like, but it is just research.” We walk past and sometimes
over Black people in order to get a better look at LA’s LGBT history, the new dog spa,
former site of Cooper’s Donut’s and the LGBT uprising in 1959.
436
We pass a cart filled to
capacity and spilling over. A Black man lay sleeping on the ground. As we walk we can

435
See also: Walter L. Williams, Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian
Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
436
“Before Stonewall, There Was The Cooper’s Donuts And Compton’s Cafeteria Riots,”
Queerty, accessed July 23, 2014, http://www.queerty.com/before-stonewall-there-was-the-
coopers-donuts-and-comptons-cafeteria-riots-20111007.
Green 301
smell the weight of all that he carries. The tour guide stops us as soon as we pass the man and
his cart to introduce our next historical site, an old bathhouse, “We can take this as a scratch
and sniff moment because back in the day, baths were rare.”
We move through the LGBT history of downtown LA ending at Biddy Mason’s
house. Biddy Mason was a successful Black nurse, founding member of the First African
Methodist Episcopal Church and real estate entrepreneur in Los Angeles in the 1800s.
437
The
tour guide stops us here. “The interesting thing about Biddy Mason is that she had a lover.”
When I ask about his evidence, he tells me that he just knows. I do not push because I realize
that history now is not about evidence, but narrative. This tour gives a story of LGBT people
in Los Angeles, some of those people may or may not have been LGBT, but in this telling
they all become LGBT. If they are not claimed in that way, then they are ignored. We walk
over and past them, not realizing those things and people are also essential to LGBT LA’s
past and present. What if the tour guide talked about Biddy Mason and the most important
part of her story was not about her alleged lesbian identity, rather, what her story might have
to tell us about freedom struggles?

When and Where I Exit
I re-read Transgender Migrations
438
and it helped me to further my own formulation
of darkness as a Black Trans* optic. My reading and rereading of the text made me more

437
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (MIT Press,
1997).
438
Trystan Cotten, Transgender Migrations: The Bodies, Borders, and Politics of Transition
(Routledge, 2012).
Green 302
excited and certain of Trans* as a tool. The fourth and final section of the anthology is called
“Troubling Trans and Queer theory,” though neither of the essays speaks directly to
Transgender studies or Queer studies as unique fields with different intellectual origin paths.
The title of this section would lead one to believe that the reader will leave with a sense of
Trans* theory and Queer theory. I hoped to gain clarity regarding the differences between
Queer and Transgender Studies. But these closing essays did not help clarify those
distinctions. Instead of seeing this as a flaw, I view it as rather productive because both
concluding essays engage the notion of home, and the many ways home might not always be
the place to which one returns. In Nael Bhanji’s essay, he writes, “As such it is neither
‘home’ per se that is contested within trans theory, nor the mechanisms that shape home as
that contested space. Rather what are at stake are the things that must necessarily be
sacrificed, or disavowed in order to engage in the very act of imagining home.”
439
Making
home requires sacrifice, and what Trans* reading practices allows one to do is to be aware of
the sacrifices or the erasures that occur in order to make home legible as a distinct and
specific location. For the transgender body to be home, to feel right, the narrative is one that
ends in a homecoming. But what if you never get home? And what of the travels to get there?
What of the journey? Many queer and transgender people have a troubled relationship to
home, whether it be home in the body, or home as in the place one was born. These final
chapters trouble home as stable or cohesive. Perhaps there is no home to be had in Trans*.
Perhaps, Trans* is a perpetual taking off in flight.
Trans* is very useful today as we see more and more Africa entering the popular
sphere as the “uncivilized homophobic other.” The US condemns these policies abroad while

439
Ibid., 174.
Green 303
erasing the homophobic and transphobic present here and now in the US. Trans* studies is an
ever evolving critical lens, that challenges us to think Trans* as a way of thinking diaspora.
Trans* might have the same ability to transform Transgender, Queer, and Feminist Studies in
the same way that the diaspora perspective redefined the landscape of Black Studies.
440

Trans* can be used to examine different scales, allowing us to see the multiple interlocking
processes that produce different spaces and places. It also can make us aware of how the
body is made different as it moves through the different scales, the challenges and
entanglements that occur when scale jumping, or border crossing. This dissertation
manuscript helps us to understand the richness of the journey, the constructions, and the
movement, instead of an investment in homecoming. I am interested in creating the tools
necessary for a possible perpetual, generative, home-making, aware always of the darknesses
that are simultaneously and inevitably produced.
Trans* describes a generative, permanent and constant state of flux, not to be
confused by all the words that have been tethered by or to it like, as gender, duction, or
mutation. Trans* is the present excess that is often times obfuscated in order to make two
opposing binary positions apparent: Black/white, dark/light, man/woman. Our western
worlds have been organized via these binaries and those who challenge these paradigms are
often times extinguished because their positionalities of neither here nor there disorient the
axis upon which orientation might make its base or center of gravity. There is no way to fully
situate Trans* just as there is no way to ever fully illuminate the darkness—but the journey is
still important because it will help us to find our way to a new and move livable future.

440
Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement
Became an Academic Discipline (JHU Press, 2010), 203.
Green 304
*****
An opportunity arose and it changed everything or everything made sense in a way
that it had not before. I was talking to Jeffrey King on the phone. My fieldwork was
supposed to be over. And I realized that I failed as a scholar, as an academic, as an
ethnographer, I failed at allowing those identities completely be the heart of my work. It was
driving me crazy. I could not leave the field because there was no field, there was only this
life, which I lived Trans*. Throughout the manuscript, I have argued that one of the ways to
get Black organizations to change, to grow, to expand, is to show up and become a member
of the community. From inside the church, Jerome was able to make an ask of the
organization – an ask that, that had he not been there, might not have ever been brought to
the attention of the congregation (and we see that when Jerome leaves, the church changes).
Just before the New Year, Jeffrey reached out to me about the transgender segment of
the Black LGBT Network, a network that brings together groups to support the Black LGBT
community. There was a group run by the transmen organization, Alpha Omega Nu,
441
but
they were not able to keep the group going. I frequented those meetings; I was always happy
to be around other transmen and transwomen of color. Jeffrey reached out to me for advice
about the group. He eventually asked me to reconfigure the group and take the role of main
facilitator. I agreed even though I knew I was already stretched beyond capacity. I agreed, as
long as the group would be understood as a group for Black queer folk. Jeffrey and I debated
for a while because he felt Black people did not identify with the term “queer.” I told him
that I could show him different. I was challenged, too, because I knew a lot of Black queer

441
“Alpha Omega Nu Fraternity, Inc. | Fratres Aeterni-Eternal Brotherhood,” accessed July
23, 2014, http://alphaomeganu.com/.
Green 305
folk in LA who were organizing and building radical movements. I knew there was a Black
community, a people of color community that did not know the Black LGBT Network, or
Jeffrey King. I could be a bridge. I would become bridge. I chose to become bridge…
Many academics wear multiple hats: scholar, activist, organizer, artist, parent, and a
whole host of other things. We bring all of those things with us wherever we go. The
differences we bring allow us to see how a space might be Trans*, in other words, how a
space might become different. When working with Jeffrey, who primarily works with
cisgender Black gay men, I often times felt that only parts of me were accepted. And that
became more apparent in one of the Black LGBT Network community advisory board
meetings when I asked the question of a group for young Black gay men, “Why is Boi
Revolution, B-O-I, boy?” Boi is a term that I have come to know only through masculine
lesbians and transgender men, but Boi Revolution was not for this group of people.
A fight then ensued. A young Black gay organizer - after telling me that he wanted
me to come to the meetings and that I was welcome - declared, “Kai I see you as my brother,
I see you as a Black gay man and you might tell me you’re these other things, but I see you
as a Black gay man.” He said this to me out of love and a sincere desire to make me feel
included, but in his declaration were also stipulations. I could not be all of the things that I
said I was; I was too much.

In the Presence of a Future Past
I live in West Adams. I spend a lot of time just a few blocks away in Leimert Park. I
love Eso Won,
442
the Black-owned bookstore where you can find things like, greeting cards,

442
“Eso Won Books,” accessed July 23, 2014, http://www.esowonbookstore.com/.
Green 306
old recordings of Malcolm X, and of course books. I attend the drum circles here on Sunday
and eat the free beans and rice served. I like passing the giant wooden giraffes that line the
streets. The best part is the store, Zambezi. In Zambezi, there is an attic filled with old
magazines: Negro Digest, Ebony, and other items to keep a Black nerd’s interests. I often
come to this attic to ask the universe for guidance when graduate school seems too heavy a
burden. While Obama calendars and Black Love incense fills the store’s bottom floor, my
ancestors can be found up in the attic.
443

There is a man that you should meet.
I think he might have what you’ve been looking for.
We’ve found him before, but he’s kind of difficult.
He’s kind of hard to find.
He’s kind of a recluse.
He has all these Black LGBT materials, but he doesn’t talk to just everyone.
He won’t talk to me.
He’ll only talk to me.
Maybe he’ll talk to you.
Maybe he’ll trust you.
Maybe you can get him to trust us.

443
enhager on March 1 and 2014 at 3:49pm View Blog, “Zambezi Closes as Leimert Park
Village Meets to Plan Its Future,” accessed July 23, 2014,
http://www.leimertparkbeat.com/profiles/blogs/zambezi-closes-as-leimert-park-village-
meets-to-plan-its-future.
Green 307

I had heard whispers of a man who had a whole Black LGBT archive that primarily
centered on Los Angeles. I tried to get his information through other classmates who had
encountered the man and his collection. I tried to get information from local archives that had
also been trying to find him and get access to his collection. The rumors I heard made this
man seem difficult, cold, and mysterious. I can remember sitting in the archive and scanning
the boxes for anything Black and LGBT. There was a lot of information, but there were also
a lot of disappearances and erasures. Looking through some of those boxes, the old
newsletters and event flyers, I felt like I needed or wanted to liberate this past. This history,
Black and queer, lived in these boxes, but something did not feel quite right. I was missing
something. I was missing the life. I knew I had to find the mysterious man who did not
normally like to talk to people, because he would help me find the life for which I was
searching. It was not a search for my past that would somehow resolve all my feelings about
being Black and queer and the alienation I often times felt. That was partially it, but I was
also becoming more and more interested in why history meant so much to Black queer folk
in Los Angeles. It was my mission to find this man and I did.
I met him in 2011, somewhere between Crenshaw and Western we both showed up,
dressed in all white to participate in the annual Kingdom Day Parade where we both marched
under the banner, Black Gay and Here to Stay. This was my first year joining the parade, but
it was the third year in a row that a Black LGBT contingent marched. I filmed the parade and
interviewed participants and onlookers about their parade experiences. I asked people why
this parade, this march, was important. I met a lot of Black LGBT community members that
day. For many, this was my initial introduction to the Black LGBT community as
Green 308
ethnographer, videographer, and documentarian. I was not expecting to meet the mysterious
man that day, mostly because it was such a public setting and from everything I had heard,
this man was a recluse. When I met the grey haired, brown skinned man, we laughed as he
made some joke. Then we talked about history. I told him about my work and he told me
about his. I do not know when in the conversation I realized this was indeed the mysterious
man that no one could find or hold on to, C. Jerome Woods. He was friendly and talked a lot.
He gave details about the work he had been doing, the difficulties in finding help and in
collecting materials. Here he was so open. But who was that man people had told me about
earlier? It did not matter much anymore. This day would be our first of many conversations
and projects regarding Black LGBT histories and archives.
C. Jerome Woods has been one of my greatest teachers during this project. I am
interested in how the darkness as a framework might enable us to access what C. Jerome
Woods helped me to understand as “an archive for now.”
444
This phrase has double meaning
naming the constant fluctuation of what that archive might include, its’ impermanence, and
histories’ flexibility. An archive for now also names the importance of relationship and
community in naming and shaping their own histories that are necessary “for now,” but never
for always. I end this manuscript with my thoughts about history, memory, and their
importance for the lives of people right now. I went to visit and interview Steven Fullwood
(the person who inspired Jerome) at the Schomburg and below is my retelling of that event.
*****

444
C. Jerome Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview, audio/video, 2013.
Green 309
I told Jerome
445
that I was heading to New York to visit and interview Steven G.
Fullwood, founder and director of the In the Life, Black LGBT Archive at the Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture. Before I left, he gave me a large manila envelope
stuffed to capacity with items to hand off to Steven.
Jerome gave me a package to carry. It was a package filled with magazines, “X-
homophobia”
446
bracelets, and other items that give a sense of Black LGBT Los Angeles
today. I carried the future past in my backpack. And if it is true as Assata Shakur asserts,
“Love is contraband in hell,” then the items I carried were both love and contraband.
447

I carried items that illustrated Black LGBT people’s will and struggle to live in a
capitalist country of contradiction. This is a country where “the expansion of sexual
citizenship is being articulated alongside the dismantling of policies and programs fought for

445
C. Jerome Woods began The Black LGBT project in 2010. This project is invested in the
preservation and display of Black LGBT lives and materials. Woods has amassed over two
garages full of Black LGBT Los Angeles material, dating as far back as 1930. This project
emphasizes that the collection and preservation of Black queer materials is about the present
moment and the future claim to history. His work includes creating exhibitions of current
Black LGBT artists along with archival materials. This project has not simply been a lesson
in reading the archive, but also a lesson in creating and extending the Black LGBT Los
Angeles archive.
446
“In The Meantime Men: Week-Long X-Homophobia Campaign,” accessed July 25, 2014,
http://lgbtpov.frontiersla.com/2013/02/05/in-the-meantime-men-week-long-x-homophobia-
campaign/.
447
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago Review Press, 1999).
Green 310
and won by Black social movements.”
448
This is a country where racism, homophobia,
sexism, and transphobia are normalized. Those of us who continue to point out the reality of
those things become race baiters unable to let go of the past and unable to adjust to a post
race reality. The items I carried that day were the fruit of a people who were never meant to
survive. In my backpack, I held a piece of a collective will of a people to survive
449
– I
carried the Black Radical Tradition on my back.

Just Before the Archive--> Why We Must Arm Ourselves with Love/Contraband/Histories

Before heading to the Schomburg, I sat in on my friend’s Hip-Hop feminism course.
She was teaching a group of primarily Black women who would be entering college in the
fall. She posed the question to the class “What is the Civil Rights Movement?”
The young woman next to me eagerly responded, “It was when we bombed Japan.”
No.
And then, “Oh, I know, it was women’s rights movement for voting.”
No.
And then, “The tea party?”

448
“Dispatch from the ‘Very House of Difference’: Anti-Black Racism and the Expansion of
Sexual Citizenship – OR – We Need to Do So Much Better at Loving Each Other,” The
Feminist Wire, accessed July 25, 2014, http://thefeministwire.com/2013/07/dispatch-from-
the-very-house-of-difference-anti-black-racism-and-the-expansion-of-sexual-citizenship-or-
we-need-to-do-so-much-better-at-loving-each-other/.
449
That collective will is shifting, diverse, and a thing to be struggled over.
Green 311
No.
This student did not know the Civil Rights Movement - not even the standard icons
like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
This student and I were only 8 years apart, but all history had been lost in the time
between us. While I carried something powerful in my backpack that had been handed down
to me, I was angry because no one had given her anything to hold on to. This is sad, but even
more, it is dangerous. If there is no recollection of our pasts, there can be no understanding of
the seriousness of our current losses. How can a young Black person understand "the
defanging of the Voting Rights Act”
450
if there is no reference for its original occurrence?
My fear for this young person is that without intervention and reeducation, she will be
lost. And if she is lost, then what I carry in my backpack will also be lost. If we have no
recollection of our Black/Quare/queer/POC/poor-peoples/radical histories, then we make
ourselves susceptible to a future that will gladly dis(re)member us, our bodies, our lives, and
our struggles. The record will state we killed ourselves without objection—and we cannot let
it go down like that. We must show that as “The poet Claude McKay once said, ‘Though far
outnumbered, let us show us brave…we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack. Pressed to the
wall, dying, but fighting back!’”
451

450
“Dispatch from the ‘Very House of Difference.’”
451
This is the final line in the collective statement from the Black Youth Project (BYP100)
after Trayvon Martin’s murderer was deemed not guilty. BYP100 is a collective of young
Black activists from across the country convened by the Black Youth Project to mobilize
communities of color beyond electoral politics. “MUST WATCH: 100 Young Black
Green 312
As painful as this interaction was, it let me know how sacred and important that
package in my backpack was and is. Our knowledge is our liberation because our histories
are not just tales of the past; they are the examples, the weapons that we will use to defend
ourselves today against a future and present that works through its insistence upon post-
raciality as racism and white supremacy remain.
Today if you talk about race and racism, you risk being labeled as unwilling to let go
of the past. One of the logics behind changing the Voting Rights Acts was an argument about
history. “Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.
“While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the
legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
452
We must
articulate the ways in which our present illuminates the changing-same.
453
We must arm
ourselves with subjugated knowledge, counter narratives, and the will to know and love our
stories, and ourselves even if no one else does (especially if no one else does).
During my interview with Steven he reminded me of the role of love in archive:

Activists Respond to George Zimmerman Verdict,” Black Youth Project, accessed July 25,
2014, http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2013/07/byp100/.
452
Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act,” The New York
Times, June 25, 2013, sec. U.S., http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-
ruling.html.
453
Imamu Amiri Baraka and William J. Harris, “The Changing Same,” in The LeRoi
Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (Basic Books, 2000), 186–91; Deborah E. McDowell, “The
Changing Same”: Black Women’s Literature, Criticism, and Theory (Indiana University
Press, 1995).
Green 313
I’m nurtured by Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Essex Hemphill, and a
number of people because I’m trying to learn how to love while I’m here. And
while I’m learning how to love, these are the things I want to do to express my
love and to express my gratitude that someone like Essex Hemphill wrote
these beautiful poems or that Audre Lorde came out and said ‘I am these
things,’ and that she refused to minimize or downplay any part of who she
was…And so the least I can do while I’m here in this center is to provide
portals for people to get to them and to get to that work.
454

The least we can do, all of us, is to provide portals for people to make their way towards
freedom. Whatever you carry on your back, share it—that is love.
I am grateful for Steven. I am grateful for Jerome. I am grateful for Don, Mrs. Spears,
Jeffrey, Vallerie, Terry, Steven, Pastor Curt, Jaye, Rev. Freda, Sexy DJ Claudette, Sandra,
Jerome, Mark, Jewel, Dale, Alan, Luckie, Imani, Iyatunde, Valerie, Eko, O’Shea, Andre,
Milton, Sinaa, Rodney, Li, Daisy, Paul, Archbishop Bean, James, Cleo, Treva and the list
goes on. These are some of the people who teach me the practice of loving as archive. The art
of loving is the act of (re)membering and because there are not many structures in place to
facilitate that (re)memory, we must do it ourselves. I thank those named above and all the
others who have and continue to do this work.

He handed me a package:
“Carry it on your back for now
But you will have to learn how to hold this in your heart and mind

454
Steven Fullwood, Steven Fullwood Interview, July 2013.
Green 314
You may not be able to hold onto me like this for always.”
I took the package and carried it to a safe haven,
A place where Black queers spirits rest in power and in peace.
I took the package out of my bag and left them,
But my bag didn’t feel any lighter.
The past won’t let go of me.
I carry it heavy and deep,
A contraband in the United States called Black love.
I am armed with this concrete love—
It is that dandelion that rises over and over again. Love.
#BlackLivesMatter
Love.

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Green 315
Appendix 1: In the Presence of A Future Past

Where does this Black queer knowledge go? After these Black LGBT magazines are
no longer in print? Who teaches Black queer essays in classrooms? Who has access to Black
queer knowledge? These questions regarding LGBT history came to the forefront in 2011
when Governor Jerry Brown signed the FAIR Education Bill, also known as SB48, or the
Gay History Law (even though the law ensures that both LGBT Histories and histories of
People with disabilities be included in all California Public school curriculums).
In the November 2011 issue of Vanguard: L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center’s Monthly
Newsletter, there was an article entitled “Un-FAIR Forces Hit Roadblock in SB48 Repeal
Efforts.”
455
This article talked about the failed efforts of those opposed in gaining enough
signatures to repeal the FAIR Act that Governor Jerry Brown signed early in 2011. This
article states the ways in which opponents of the Act attempted to mislead voters into
believing that the law would somehow hurt the children. The article then goes on to support
its claim of why those attempts are simply a way of eradicating and disappearing LGBT folk
from history:
Just as students learn about Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and
other important historical figures, they might in the future learn about
such pioneers as Harvey Milk, Gertrude Stein, Barbara Jordan and so
many others.

455
Stevie St. John, “Un-Fair Forces Hit Roadblock in SB48 Repeal Efforts,” Vanguard: L.A.
Gay and Lesbian Center’s Monthly Newsletter, November 2011.
Green 316
This paragraph is exemplary of a logic of incorporation of difference that is dangerous in so
much as it presumes the following:
1. Historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King are taken up in high
school curriculum and have indeed been added to the canon of American history
which is not always the case
2. If we learn about historical figures it means we have accomplished something in
terms of equality and diversity without taking into account the masses of people who
will be still further silenced and marginalized by these figures.
3. It could lead to the belief that what Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King fought
for (freedom from slavery and racial oppression) are battles that have been fought and
won.
There is a desire to say the method of winning equal rights for Black people is what will
work for LGBT identities. However, this logic forgets something: what people were asking
for in the 60s continued to rear its head for the next tree decades through student protest,
third world organizing, the Black Panthers, and feminist women’s movements which were
making claims on the state (as Roderick Ferguson writes in his book, The Reorder of Things)
for “redistribution and representation.” Still, representation seemed to be the thing that the
institutions were able to incorporate in order to quell calls for redistribution of power.
Our movements cannot solely be based upon our identities, but might we form a
politic around systems that work or enforce laws relying on such hierarchies? What are the
limits of identity politics? How might a Black queer lens help us to see those limitations?
Green 317
What follows, are excerpts from three interviews.
456
The conversation includes
collector, founder and director of The Black LGBT Project, C. Jerome Woods, the director of
The One Archive, Joseph Hawkins, and the founder and director of the Schomburg Research
Library’s In the Life collection, Steven G. Fullwood. These archivists evidence the conflicts
and contradictions that occur while attempting to forge a cohesive Black LGBT archive. In
the transcriptions below the archivists discuss the role of language, love and labor in the
making of a Black LGBT archive. Black LGBT Angelenos demonstrate an urgency for an
archive for now, an archive that moves and brings into view a past that is usable. I am
interested in how the interviewees go about making a home for Black LGBT archives—what
can home not house? All interviewees agree that race plays a major role in determining
where Black LGBT archival materials eventually go, but alongside race, love and labor are
essential factors that C. Jerome Woods and Steven G. Fullwood say affect where papers find
home.
457

456
C. Jerome Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview, audio/video, 2013; Steven Fullwood,
Steven Fullwood Interview, July 2013; Joseph Hawkins, Joseph Hawkins Interview,
interview by Kai M. Green, March 24, 2013.
457
Joseph Hawkins is the only non-Black person that I conducted a full length interview with.
Green 318
INTRODUCTIONS

Steven Fullwood: My name is Steven Fullwood. I am the project director for the In The Life
Archive, here at the Schomburg Center for Research of Black Culture, New York Public
Library. The In The Life project – formerly known as the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive
started with my own materials in my home. When I moved to New York City in 1997, I came
to the Schomburg in February of ’98 and I realized they had all these really wonderful
collections: Joseph Beam, Assotto Saint, Melvin Dixon. I knew there were a lot more Black
queer materials out there. We didn’t have any identifiably lesbian collection, or LGBT – or L
– or bisexual collections, or trans collections. And I said: ‘I know these people; I know this
work is being done. So I’m going to start a Black gay and lesbian archive.’

C. Jerome Woods: My name is C. Jerome Woods. I am the founder and director of the
Black LGBT project in Los Angeles. The actual project, The Black LGBT Project…It’s
something that’s sort of an end product after all these other things I’ve been doing. I love
keeping papers here and there, a positive account of Blacks and particularly Black LGBT
persons—of people doing things in the community like, Jewel Thais-Williams, like Cleo
Manago, Ron Grayson…That (The Black LGBT Project) came after I saw Steven Fullwood.
There was a program called, “In the Life” on TV and I happened to turn it on and there was
this guy talking about a Black archive and I was so happy that someone was doing the same
thing I had been doing for decades, but doing it more whole-heartedly—he actually had a
facility, had some background in library management and organization. I found out he’s a
manuscript librarian, but seeing him there and talking about some of the things he had…I sort
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of said ‘Well, hell why don’t you do some of that or do it similar to the way he’s doing?’ So I
just kept doing what I was doing. I didn’t contact him or anything, but I kept it in my mind.

Joseph Hawkins: My name is Joseph Hawkins. I’m a faculty member in the USC libraries. I
am the director of One National Gay and Lesbian archive, which is the largest gay and
lesbian archive in the world. It is also the longest running, continually running LGBT
organization in the US. I teach gender studies and anthropology most frequently. I also teach
some things in East Asian culture and other than that I do a million other things.

WHEN AND WHERE THEY ENTER

Steven Fullwood: I’m originally from Toledo, Ohio. I majored in Communications and
Broadcasting. I knew I could not do that for a living. I didn’t have the interest. I was told by
someone I knew at the library that they were hiring a children’s librarian in the neighborhood
that I grew up in – my branch library. I practically ran to the Human Resources Department
and said, ‘I want this job.’… I got the job. I was hired and I realized that being a librarian
was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had this fundamental understanding that
archives and libraries were the lifeblood of the community where you can go and get
information. It’s one of the last places where you can go and just sit and not pay. You could
get information.

After about 3 years of being a children’s librarian, I decided to go back to school and get my
masters. I knew that I would not return to Toledo, Ohio. I went to Atlanta, Georgia, which
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was a Black Gay Mecca at that time. I went to Clark University for two years, got my
masters, and I wanted to open up a center like the Schomburg. So when I found out there was
a center like the Schomburg, I found out who was running it – it was Howard Dodson. And
Howard Dodson is a very grand man. Right now he’s actually running the libraries at
Howard University.

I was a part of the Student American Library Association and they were giving away 10
tickets to go to the American Library Association Conference in San Francisco in 1997. I was
number 11, but somebody lied on their application so I became number 10!

The only mission I had was to find Howard Dodson and say, ‘I want to work for this
institution.’ I found him. I gave him my resume and he gave my resume to my former boss
who just retired here April 30
th
, 2013. She interviewed me and February of 1998 I was
working at the Schomburg Center as an archivist.

It fit within my spiritual mission to be around people who were helping other folks get to
information in some kind of manner, shape or form – whether it was as an academic or
someone on the street who wanted to find out about their mother through genealogical
research. I love information. I like thinking about how it transforms lives, ‘cuz it’s always
transforming mine.

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C. Jerome Woods: So on a visit to DC with a friend we said, ‘well let’s go to New York.’ I
had it in my mind that I’m definitely going to try to get to the Schomburg and see Steven
Fullwood. So on the Bus route from DC, I let him (my friend) know that and he said, ‘well
are you sure, you gonna ask this guy, you gonna go?’ And I said ‘yea!’ and then when we got
there he said ‘well are you gonna ask to see him?’ I said ‘most definitely!” He said, ‘well
he’s probably busy and won’t come out.’ Steven came out! It was excellent! We just spoke
and talked and I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, but I wanted to get to know him
a little bit and to get to know the project. He did some explaining… I told him I was serious
about doing something similar so we exchanged some information and then after a visit to
the museum, we were on our way.

Subsequent to that… I was in Brazil and I just started putting these ideas down. I would sit. I
have a favorite spot and I would sit at this table look out the window and look over at the
ocean and I’d write. Well, I ended up with a rough draft of the Black LGBT Project. Didn’t
have a name for it, but I had just told Steven that I was interested and he said, ‘well why
don’t you do sort of, I call it a zonal area-- You’re East Coast. I’m West Coast….’

I didn’t have a laptop. I went to an Internet café and I just start putting what I had in mind…a
topical outline and I sent it to him. Well somewhere I have my original copy because it never
got to him! It’s in cyber space somewhere, but I did find my rough draft. But that was the
beginning. But I have material that I still haven’t uncovered in several places, at least two
residences.

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Joseph Hawkins: I am trained as an anthropologist. I think my real interest is in people. I
like culture. I like people. I like being around people, I like talking to people. I am also very
interested in all kinds of gender issues. My own research is in Japan. I studied the modern
period in Japan. I was invited to come here by Walter Williams who was a professor at USC,
who is now retired. I basically came here for two or three weeks just to help them out. Then I
came onto the board. I was going to stay a year or so and then ten years later I am still here.

It’s just really hard to not fall in love with this collection. The history of gay people in the US
is basically under this roof in one aspect or another. It’s a really cool thing to come to work
everyday and know that you will learn something, every single day that you didn’t know
yesterday. That’s kind of the experience that I have and that’s why I stay.

WHY THIS PLACE?

Steven G. Fullwood: I chose the Schomburg (to house the collection) because they already
had Black gay and lesbian materials here and they had been collecting them ever since
Arthur Schomburg decided to build an archive. He had materials by Langston Hughes,
Countie Cullen, and Claude McKay. He started with these people who weren’t identifying as
queer, but had queer lives essentially. When I got here, the Joseph Beam papers were here.
When Joseph Beam died in 1988 he was working on Brother to Brother, the book that Essex
Hemphill finished. Essex Hemphill moved into the basement of Dorothy Beam’s
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house
and completed the book there. After they finished the book, they started to collect the

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Joseph Beam’s Mother
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material and sought out the Schomburg as a home for it. And my boss – along with one or
two other staff members – were really thoughtful. They’re not queer people, but they were
really thoughtful about this. Prior to that they knew Melvin Dixon, who came here as a
researcher. Later on Assotto Saint’s mom came here and she donated stuff. So by the time I
came here, there was a sensibility about Black queerness. They knew it fell within the Afro-
diasporic experience: it was as simple as that.

So it wasn’t a homophobic place for me. I don’t know if it was for anyone else prior to me.
So when I came on I was already out and already doing work in the community. I felt like: 1.
The Schomburg had a reputation for keeping the history – the local history, the national
history, and the world’s history around blackness. And it came through in a variety of
ways—through the political, the creative, and through institution-building. So you could find
something about anything here on Black people. Not just in this division, but in other
divisions that hold other formats, including: moving image and recorded sound, photographs
and prints, art and artifacts, and the general section of Genie Blackwell Hudson Research and
Reference division.

I felt like it was a good place; I trusted my boss. When I told her I was going to do the
archive, she said, ‘Great.’ She was happy because she knew that even in her late 50s/60s she
understood it, but she had no energy and she didn’t know the players. She knew some people,
and if it weren’t for HIV/AIDS in some regard, I don’t know if an archive would have started
here as explicitly as it did. Because as I said before, there were people like Langston Hughes
– but HIV and AIDS really pushed people, you know? Essex Hemphill helped the Joseph
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Beam archive come here, and his papers, his letters are in there along with Barbara Smith and
Jewell Gomez and a number of people that Joe talked with.

Then Assotto Saint’s mom made sure the materials came here: it was actually in his will.
And she came in on Assotto Saint’s birthday I think in 2008 or 2009, just to look at his stuff.
Haitian woman, spoke very little English, but just wanted to remember her son. That means
everything to me. Particularly in this environment where so much about what’s discussed
about Black queer life is negative.

‘Why aren’t we doin’ this? Why aren’t we doin’ this? Why can’t we live? Why can’t we be
together?! You know, we need to be together!!’
[laughter]

I think we are together.

So I think the Schomburg had the integrity to manage what was called then the Black
Lesbian and Gay Archive. Quite honestly, when I start something and I decide to do it, I just
decide to do it. I run, I run and then I go, ‘Oh is that how you do it?’ And I just keep running.
And fortunately, this was the environment in which I could flourish through programming,
through exhibitions like the one you see here.

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This is GMAD’s
459
25
th
anniversary in words and images. So you see on the walls here, just
images of Black gay men and Black lesbians who inspired these Black gay men to do this
institution building. Essentially, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde and my beloved Cheryl
Clarke.

C. Jerome Woods: Mayme Clayton is very important and political for the growth and the
process of the Black LGBT Project. I had spoken to one of the sons a few years back, a few
weeks before he died. And he said ‘Jerome, we have a place for you here at Mayme Clayton.’
Then, when he dies, I had to speak to the board members, the new director and so forth. I
didn’t know if they would even want that sort of material even though it was probably hidden
in some of the things, in the music, in the posters, in the books, it might have been there, but
not directly as a Black LGBT Project.

But, Mayme Clayton inspired me because she was a librarian, a Black librarian. She had
worked at UCLA…She took that task on when she realized that Black children need to see
our greatness—she wanted to have something available for them and generations to come.
But, she did not have the space and she did not have the money. She took her own money.
She started off where she was. She did not have the money to present it in pristine order she
didn’t have the opportunity to present it places or even house it (institutionally). I remember
what we call a shotgun house in Louisiana. Well, she had it over on 7
th
ave. in a shotgun
house not too far from where I live. Mayme Clayton inspired me to drop those buckets where

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http://www.gmad.org/
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they were and start because otherwise it never gets done. People are leaving the planet.
People are going rapidly. So, a lot of the information is going with those people.

Mayme Clayton Library, they did more than talk. They have given financial support to the
project. They have allowed me to use that space for presentations not only for the project, but
through the project I get to share other work. Like, “On These Shoulders We Stand,”
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which
is a movie about LGBT history that includes blacks from 1950-1980 by Glenne McElhinney.
Some of these events, these collaborations pull people in, from Pasadena, Pomona, Mid-City,
West Hollywood, from South…Mayme Clayton [library] has facilitated that. There was a
fellowship I applied for and it was received, but that was through Mayme Clayton [library] so
they have someone there on fellowship now that will help me organize the project better.
They have also allowed me to learn about the expertise of pulling this project together
whether it’s working with forms that I need, a release form or a donation form, whether it’s
an inquiry letter or any of those things. I still need lots of help.
461

Other people want to house the project…There are two people at UCLA who want the
project. One Institute and library, I was just at last week, wants the archive there because it

460
Glenne McElhinney, On These Shoulders We Stand, Documentary, History, (2009).
461
Jerome discusses his project as a way to connect Black and other projects that are LGBT
to build a broader bridge between Black and LGBT. He also discusses the events bringing
people from all over the city. A big part of the archive is its ability to move and to bring
people out to learn together. He also articulates, here, the need to learn science how to be
institutional, ownership.
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[One Archive] is established. It’s been there for a long, long…they are celebrating at One, I
think it’s 60 years plus. Their major thing is 60 years, but I think it’s been a little bit longer
than that with the changes. And then of course I would consider Steven G. Fullwood and the
Schomburg. However, I would like to see them do something on the West Coast. We have
lots of history here. We did things long before Stonewall when it comes to speaking out and
publishing things. Before Stonewall and the drag queens and protesting, we had Cooper’s
Doughnut’s downtown. We had other protests that might have been small and in our minds,
great.

As Black people and people of Black African descent, we should try to represent. We should
be responsible. We should be accountable for our history and the material for this project, we
should be able to house it, to care for it and to present it, to maintain it. Nonetheless, I think if
that cannot be accomplished, then it should go where someone wants it, where it can be taken
care of and where people can use it. And right now, I haven’t decided even though Mayme
Clayton is definitely in my corner, so to speak and as I said they’re the ones that do more
than lip service. They actually take efforts and put forth personnel, a venue and monies. And
time. The director, Larry Earl is exceptional. They welcome me and the lady that is there on
fellowship, C. Powell is exceptional. She’s very warm. Whatever she knows, she seems to
share it with me and I can call on her anytime. But, I still have not decided where it will go.

I think a lot of this goes back again to where this needs to be housed and kept. If it’s not
available, if it gets thrown away, if it’s sitting there with earwigs and silverfish and termites,
coffee stains or gets used as a coaster then it does none of us any good. And I was with Jewel
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Thais-Williams last night, I picked up a box of materials that came from Atlanta, someone
named Carlton is coming for Jewel’s celebration of her 40
th
, but he sent a box of materials
that had some things in it that we might be able to use for the archive.

I want to make certain again that our history is told first and foremost and that it’s there for
other people. So, I will direct people like Alan Bell and other people that have material to
Steven G. Fullwood at the Schomburg or to Joseph Hawkins at One. And then sometimes, I
am finding that I’m helping them to start to document themselves, they are throwing stuff
away and they don’t know, save 3 or 4 sets. You need to document, audio, video. How it will
be used, I do not know.

CHALLENGES

Joseph Hawkins: Well, there is a two-fold problem here that I want to address with you. I
just talked about history erases LGBT people, but another problem occurs in which we
internalize our own homophobia. We think we are not deserving and we are fearful. In the
Asian American community in the US, there are many people from many generations who
have actually decided very forthrightly not to come out because they were afraid of the kind
of shame it would bring on their parents. And they made a conscious decision not to do that.
And I’m not indicting anybody here for doing that. Everybody has their reason for doing
what they do and I’m all for it. But the problem is that we find it really difficult to get
collections from the Asian community.

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It’s not like I don’t try. Believe me, I’ve tried. And the same thing is true of African
American communities or Latino communities. We have materials here. There are great
materials here from the Latino community. Homeboy Beautiful, the magazine, we’ve got
that. We’ve got a bunch of really interesting works from some Latino artists here. We’ve also
got really great Asian materials. I mean, the organization’s name: ONE comes from Bailey
Wittaker who was an African American. It’s from a [Thomas] Carlyle poem, the mystic bond
of brotherhood makes all men one.

I think that for a lot of Black folks and for a lot of people of color, there’s a kind of self-
editing process going on. You know, we talk about the down-low and that sort of thing. Well,
a lot of people are just not putting themselves in the archive. And so what happens is we have
what people bring us, we have what we can get people to give us but if they are not going to
give it to us then they are not going to let go of it…

We compete. What is your master identity? So are you a Black gay man or are you a gay
Black man. So, if you are a—and I don’t mean to be disrespectful when I am saying this
but—If you are a Black gay man, you probably don’t live in West Hollywood. And you
probably don’t see yourself as being completely open all the time. If you are a gay Black man
then you probably live in West Hollywood and you probably have a completely different
perception of yourself as far as gay being your primary identity and blackness becoming
almost second to it. I am not saying that it’s that simple but I do think that that has a lot to do
with how people give their collections here. The identity construct puts papers in different
places.
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Steven G. Fullwood: When I surveyed the ONE Archive years and years ago – I think they
got a new building, it was before that – so they didn’t know what collections they actually
had at that point. They were only able to identify a couple of collections at the time. They
had, of course - like a lot of libraries - James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and whatnot, but they
couldn’t tell me what they had at that point. I’m assuming that the ONE Archive now knows
what they have, they have a better sense of the material they have that’s been processed to
some degree. They could give researchers a much better answer than they gave me over a
decade ago.

But it’s not about whether or not they actually can find them, it’s more about how they
identify what they have and are they actively collecting Black queer materials. Typically
what I’ve found over the years is that, if you go to an institution – a library or an archival
institution… there’s nobody… they’ll go “What are you talking about?” I could point to them
in their community organizations … Just say ‘I don’t know.’ Stick with that. Don’t go to
lying.

I’ve been frustrated by some institutions – not all. Because there are some really good
librarians who aren’t even queer who actually think about these issues. They think about
collecting the communities around them. They either know people or they go to different
events and they might talk to them and will acquire some of their books and archive some
stuff. There are some good people out there. I don’t want to lambast the entire profession or
the industry itself.
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Joseph Hawkins: I mean we talked about internalized homophobia. I think there is also an
internalized racial perspective that people think of themselves, too, as people who are not in
the record …we don’t belong in that record, we belong in another separate record. I am not
so sure that that is true. I would love it if we could have everybody’s materials but you know
sometimes people will give materials to other places. You know they will give to
universities, to Black organizations, they will give it to Asian organizations. I have to be
cordial, we can’t compete for every collection and so you know, that’s a part of it. I also want
to say you know that for me it’s my only goal for me really in the end is that everybody’s
story gets recorded. That’s the big deal. If you can just get the word out that all these people
existed and they lived lives that were meaningful and have done papers on it then I think I
have done my job.

C. Jerome Woods: I think some don’t know the value of it and some don’t want to know the
value of it. Some don’t place value on it and some of us don’t place value on our lives, some
LGBT Black persons. We sort of sit on the periphery or we let everyone else tell us what to
do, when to do it, where to do it, and even why. I think that that’s difficult, but when we
don’t have part of history, we don’t see the images, we don’t see the activity that folks have
done. We don’t see how they live on a daily basis. It becomes critical that someone put it out
there or someones. I’m just tired of only one person being in charge. We have one Black
leader, one LGBT person, there are many and I think it’s absolutely crucial that the message
and the information get out.

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Steven G. Fullwood: I’m very pro-sex… Most libraries do collect pornography and erotica,
it’s just they don’t make it known because they’re afraid that the funding that they get from
the government will be [makes teeth-sucking sound to indicate disapproval]. But for some
people this is pornography.

But I want to say that when it comes to Black queerness, it’s still largely invisible, except as
a down low thing. I don’t understand why the down low is still hot among Black people. I’m
just like, ‘This doesn’t make any sense to me.’ I think I got the root of it. I think I have
maybe 2 or 3 points to make about that and then I’ll move on. When it comes to the down
low … Black people still do not own their bodies, so their sexuality is always sort of suspect.
When Manning Marable’s book came out about Malcolm X,
462
there were people who hadn’t
read the book who said that it was wrong. Now, that type of insanity makes me angry.
Because I’m like, ‘At least have a conversation with me about the issues, about the quality of
the book or what theories or, do that.’ And it was an issue of Malcolm being fucked. That’s
what it was. Sucking some white dick, or giving some white guy – maybe up his ass, right? It
made, for me, Malcolm a much more interesting person because he changed, he changed, he
changed. That was the biggest lesson I got from Malcolm was that he decided that, in his life,
he was going to change. I appreciated that.

That was one of the insanities that was sort of associated with, ‘We don’t want our Black
heroes torn down.’ As if their sexual lives were of no business to us. The only reason why
they’re not business to us is because of the threat of whiteness is right here. So our dicks

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Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Penguin, 2011).
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don’t belong to us. Our vaginas don’t belong to us. Our bodies don’t belong to us…
Therefore, there is no logic. There’s just hunker down and try to make it through the day.
You can’t even articulate why you like this, or why you like that. You got the church over
here, you got institutions over here, you got your momma in front of you. You got somebody
behind you. You got the spook who sat by the door. You got somebody in the closet. You got
somebody under the table regulating your fucking behavior. This is why I’m happy that the
archive exists.

Usually I’m preaching to the choir, but every now and then I’ll come up against somebody
who says, ‘Well, why? Why are we talking about this?’ And I’m like, ‘Because you don’t.’
And you do talk about it in a way, but … as faggots, or bulldaggers, or something derogatory
that only leads me to believe that you have not had a conversation with your body.

The curious part of it for me would be this: that the power of the erotic to transform people’s
lives is a daily thing. Herukhuti’s book, Conjuring Black Funk,
463
that I published – I’m
going to work with him on some other stuff – has some really interesting points. One of the
things he said – I love it – he said that the reason why fidelity means so much to people in
relationships is because everything else has failed them. The city, the government, their
church, certainly their education has completely failed them in some ways. And he goes,
‘People demand fidelity! You going to be with me for the rest of your life!’ And I’m like,
polyamorous so I have no space for any of that. You’re not owning me.

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Herukhuti, Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality (Vintage
Entity Press, 2007).
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The erotic part of it is more in sharing and more being open and vulnerable and not acting as
if you don’t hurt, because we all hurt. It’s about living in hurt or identifying the sources of
hurt and pain because pain is only there to say ‘move over.’ Pain is not something to avoid or
deny, it’s not something to make evil, it’s a part of your emotional life and if you can’t accept
and go through pain you can’t mature. The US is not interested in your maturing. Shit, even
your community, sometimes, is not even interested in your maturing; they just want you
around. Be responsible for your emotional life … [don’t] make me responsible for it.

Last thing about the body, it really is a beloved moment though, these hands and this body.
It really is a moment where you honor something that is so unique. There’s only going to be
one of you and while you’re here you need to have the best erotic experience, which may not
even include sex. You need to look how erotic … the room is set up, the color in it, the
smells, the textures that you put on your body, all these different things that I’m trying to
figure out for myself personally…because I came from people that didn’t talk about sex.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS AN ARCHIVE CAN BE USED?

C. Jerome Woods: [Using the word “project” instead of archive] gives me a wider reach. I
can include lots of components. With the archive, not only do you collect and organize this
information, you want people to use it, particularly researchers, but … not only researchers in
the technical sense or academic sense.

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I think for archiving, there needs to be a home, where people have access to. I think it needs
to be funded and people need to be aware of it and all those other things that go with what I
consider archiving. And then some ability to maintain it. And not just maintaining the sense
of having some things in a building, but having the right paper, the right folders, the right
encasement for presenting; whether it’s a book or … a piece of clothing. So I think that for
folk in Los Angeles, it’s very important that we represent. I think that initially it’s that we
have a story to tell and it should be told and that it’s important in the fabric of this America,
and the fabric of Los Angeles and the fabric of LGBT history and then in the fabric of Black
people. We are part of the Black community. Often times, we are the Black community and I
think that needs to be shared whether folks like it or not. And that is something I would like
to shove down someone’s throat. I’m just tired of folks. They don’t have to accept it but at
least recognize our needs and acknowledge it. I love acknowledgment; I think that
acknowledging that we exist in so many different ways and in so many different stations.

I think that for those generations coming after, but even more important for those that are
here. I think we need to start where we are. I think we can’t always plan to have something
for those that are after us. We need history now. You know, Black history, LGBT history,
Black LGBT history and all those forms now. It’s every day, not one day, not one month, it’s
just woven, part of a tapestry.

Steven G. Fullwood: We’re looking to digitize some parts of the In The Life Archive. We’re
hoping to do that. We do programming all year long; we’re waiting for the videotapes so that
people can actually see the programs.
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So, we’re digitizing materials, we do programming … I’m interested in archival institutions
around the US and the world archiving material. I’ve been pushing that ever since I started
archiving here… Everything didn’t need to come here. If you have an institution that you
pay taxes to and they are not archiving your stuff, that’s a problem. The community needs to
make sure that their cultural history is being archived. So like … Jerome is doing what he’s
doing; there’s an effort at the Atlanta University Center to collect some queer stuff, the
Auburn Avenue Research Center on African American Culture and History has Black queer
stuff ... there are places like Yale, the ONE Archive, I believe the Gay and Lesbian Cultural
Center in Manhattan has an archive and a library, and I’m not sure how actively they’re
collecting this stuff. But I think that where you are, is where you should begin to archive
things that were produced by those people there … honor them by taking care of it. But also
honoring the people who are going to come and see this stuff – who deserve to see
themselves in different lights and refracted in all these different ways that they are. I want to
see archives everywhere.

This archive, even though it’s more based in the Americas – and primarily New York City
and the larger cities like Philadelphia, DC, Atlanta, Los Angeles: places where there’s just
much more cultural activity – [we do] have materials from Africa, but they’re largely about
homophobia. We have things from the UK, a few things from other places like Canada. It’s
interesting when you’re being talked about, versus when you talk. It’s a very different game.
And the Schomburg is dedicated to interpreting these materials, even if they’re produced by
people outside of our community, we still take them.
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Joseph Hawkins: Archiving, to me, has become really interesting. I’m not trained as an
archivist, but I’ve sort of become one, de facto, by being here. I never thought of it as
something that was largely or even partially theoretical. So when you look at an archive, how
the intellectual order is or how a particular collection is put together seems to me to be a
fascinating concept. How did that person leave their papers? Why did they leave them in that
particular construction? What are they thinking about themselves? What are they trying to
leave? Because when you leave your papers you’re leaving them as intimate part of yourself.
Last year, I processed my first collection. Something really wonderful about first order
primary resource materials is that it is definitive. There’s no arguing with a birth certificate.
There’s no arguing with someone’s words about their own childhood. There’s no arguing
about what that meant at that particular time. It’s so interesting to me because it provides you
with so much insight into what’s really out in the world.

HOW DOES COMMUNITY AFFECT THE ARCHIVE?

Steven G. Fullwood: As far as community goes I don’t think that we have anything else. I
grew up in a community where there were no community organizations. I grew up in a
community where there was white flight. I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. We were at the tail end
of factories closing, so the economy was going down and there weren’t any technologies
replacing factory work except there was Jeep and Orange Corney; [Corney] was a glass
manufacturer. We had a sense of community, but it wasn’t based on struggle. As I got older,
at the library and with the other community organizations outside of the community that I
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lived in, folks had to do more work to address issues of housing and discrimination and that
had an impact on me.

My community came largely through books, through literature, through Black queerness—
community is so critical for a healthy mind. Online communities are complimentary because
there’s nothing like this,
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breaking bread, getting a drink, talking about stuff, letting loose.
When I’m online I post a lot because I love Digital Steven! But he’s not this person; he could
never be this person because I have an odor and I take up space.

This is a community even though it’s a public library, it is also considered in some minds a
community center—it’s a research center. When a woman comes in and she’s older and I ask
her, ‘Why didn’t you fill this out and this out?’ she might look at me and go ‘Oh just go back
there boy, and get me that stuff!’ There’s two ways I take that, one, “Lady, you’re gonna
have to fill out this stuff!” and two, you feel comfortable enough with me to talk to me in a
certain way. I get that, but we’re gonna have to formalize this relationship because this is
how - under the auspices of this institution - this is how we do this.

I’m a community person. I’m a cultural worker and I need to work for that title. It’s about
bringing people together. I know I can connect people. I know that I can think through things
and I make shit happen. But, it’s only because I work within a community of people who
help me and who are part of that. I rarely do anything alone.

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Fullwood is referencing our face-to-face interview.
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… If you really love the work and you really want to connect with people you will find the
patience. It won’t always be there, but if you come from the most honest place you can …[
if] you’re willing to learn, listen, improve, grow and not constantly defend yourself, you
might actually have a chance to be a community organizer.

There are women like Ella Baker and other women whose names we will never know who
are the engines of progress because they sat there and they cooked and they created flyers,
folded them up, and licked the envelopes, five hundred envelopes, and they went to sleep at
three o’clock in the morning and did all this work.

If you’re not expressing love, it’s going to be hard being here because you’re not giving off
anything that anyone can use. So, community for me is being my best self.

Joseph Hawkins: We had the zine exhibition - so we included Alan Bell (who is editor of
BLK), Jerome Woods (who you know). I’ve been reaching out to him to get him to at least let
me photocopy the stuff that he has. Loni Shibuyama, who is on our board, has reached out
through API Los Angeles who has gay Asian Pacific Islanders. That whole group, we are
always constantly trying to change it. I am really concerned that we don’t have more
representation in who works here. I’m trying to hire people in fact who are diverse so that we
are getting an actual sample of that. I try to make sure that all the exhibitions that we have in
the space include everybody, so that when people come in they see themselves reflected here.
I try to make sure that we are including materials that are produced by people in communities
of color and diverse groups around the world.
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I am trying to reach out to get a more global perspective. I think that we’ve been kinda
successful in America about struggling for gay rights. I didn’t think that when I was young
that we would be sitting here today with this kind of freedom. Somebody out there is talking
about gay marriage and that is revolutionary and wonderful. I would have never predicted
that that would have happened in my lifetime.

Overseas, people are still struggling with the very rudimentary problems. … My feeling is
that … I want to ... include a conversation that is global. I think that we need to be thinking
about brothers and sisters in other places around the world and how we can spread some of
the wealth that we are getting and see how we can help them to champion themselves in an
environment. A Chinese scholar actually used materials here at ONE to help remove
homosexuality from the DSM in China. That’s empowering, that’s a really big deal. If there
is someone that can make a film out of [the archive] - an article or an essay - that really
changes people's lives, and that’s what we want.

HOW DID/DOES HIV/AIDS AFFECT THE ARCHIVE?

Joseph Hawkins: A lot of the men who are involved in this organization have seen … many
of us have seen 30, 40, 50 of our friends die. I think we are the most experienced at dealing
with death of any generation ever. And I mean there is an entire generation of gay men who
missed the men right before them to teach them, to bring them up, so there are all kinds of
perspectives and ways to look at it.
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We have an entire wall of materials, 25 or 30 feet long and it’s floor to ceiling with double
boxes going back. And that’s just material about HIV. I think HIV is so interesting in that it
has created so many opportunities and there’s so much that is misunderstood about it. I have
heard recent evidence that they found cases of it that go back before the 20
th
century. I have
heard people talk about the initial phases in a historical perspective, the confusion about what
it was and when it first came into existence ... Ronald Reagan’s response was to just ignore it
and the gay and lesbian community came together.

A lot of the separatism between gay men and lesbians went away during the initial response
to AIDS because the lesbians were at the side of gay men, helping them to fight off the
infection. Those historical moments are really interesting to me because they teach us
something about a community’s response and also the social implications of disease. I think
it has great implications for nationalized healthcare. Because the conversation has been so
focused on white men - especially gay white men - and has been so little focused on women
of color or poor people until very recently…Why has that been something that we have failed
to discuss?

C. Jerome Woods: I think it has done several things. On one hand, I think it brought some
people together. I saw how lesbians and Black gay men became tighter. I saw how illness,
death and dying, something catastrophic could bring people a little closer. I saw how AIDS
brought in some of the Black churches.

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There were plays being written. People were performing. People were talking about it. It
was a time of revelation and hardship. It was a time to see the community pull together even
though it was a devastating illness. We would go to, as an example, General Hospital, LAC-
USC medical center and we would start on one unit and go from floor to floor because even
the medical staff would not feed patients. Sometimes they would put food at the door and
patients were sometimes too weak to get it.

We would go into folks’ houses and they would have blacked out drapes - in July or August,
some of the hottest months. I remember one person … we walked in … the sofa was facing
the opposite way, we walked and his back was to us. He was there and there was no light as
we entered from the doorway. There was cat feces and food all around.

Dr. Wilbert Jordan
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was seeing folk and he would see those patients, and he opened Oasis
Clinic and we would see Jewel providing him with money to send him to France to look at
something that might be a cure or work with medical professionals that were going to
Mexico. She didn’t worry about what it would take to get him, just tried to get him support.
Celebrities, people really poured their energy and hearts out, and [their] money.

I saw people that were taking the wrong medicine. I saw that some people had doctors that
didn’t know as much as the client with AIDS did. They were educating the physicians. I saw
some people make mistakes with the sexual activity. I saw people give up.

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“Wilbert C. Jordan,” accessed July 30, 2014,
https://www.blackaids.org/component/content/article/72-hits-bios/589-wilbert-c-jordan.
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AIDS just took out dancers, ministers, a bunch of people. Then, as well it made people sort
of become hermits and sort of reclusive. Mental health issues as well as physical health
issues became a great concern.

It’s very difficult for me to see people 22 and 23 … and they have been HIV positive 5 or 6
years. When I hear of someone that is 15 or 16 and HIV positive, it’s very difficult for me to
look at that and not feel miserable, not feel let down or as though I didn’t do my part – that
somehow as a Black man, I didn’t directly contribute to that. You know, I can’t save the
world, I can’t do everything, but I can certainly take part and be some positive resource and
influence. And I think that there are some people that are in positions now that are really
helping the Black community when it comes to AIDS and HIV.

Steven G. Fullwood: That’s a really beautiful question. Health has impacted our community,
regardless of if it’s HIV or breast cancer, or so forth. The impact is still just arriving in my
head because those were just people that we knew, that were doing cultural work. So we’re
not really talking about people that worked in cultural organizations like the Salsa Soul
Sisters – to some degree, GMAD and other organizations because they produced either
monographs through books or whatnot, or anthologies.

The fortunate thing about it is that they left a record - through books, film, video, and other
types of cultural products – but also their archive[s]. What I’m profoundly moved by is that
they were doing this work at a time when it was unfathomable for most queer people to even
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think about articulating some sort of political or social stance. And so, for example: Barbara
Smith met Joseph Beam in 1985 the first time. It was either ’84 or ’85; this was before the
neighborhood was blown up in Philadelphia. And I’m interviewing her for a project I’m
doing, and she says: ‘I remember very clearly because the neighborhood was there.’ And the
next time she met Joe, they were walking through this smoldering neighborhood.

… [T]he impact that has had on the archives is that people simply throw things away. What
we don’t have -- I am still searching for, and I think I have to do it through oral history in
some cases – are those folks prior to that, the people who were hit by HIV/AIDS, breast
cancer and all these other ailments. People who were just beginning to articulate a political
and social stance. And how we missed their narratives and we don’t know it. We don’t know
it. We have no idea. And it’s hinted when I’m reading Toni Cade Bambara, when I’m
reading Audre Lorde and I’m hearing her voice for the first time going, ‘This is how Audre
Lorde sounded!’

Or there’s a guy in San Francisco who had a radio show “The Black Gay Liberation Radio,” I
think it’s called, “Pan African Black Gay Liberation Radio.” And he actually had a tape of
Joseph Beam. And I played a little bit of it and I almost started crying because I’ve been … I
got In the Life in 1988. I had no idea that I’d have access to his papers when I came here, or
that they even existed – or what the hell papers were! You know?! But, whenever I give talks
now I try to make it multi-dimensional. So I show images, I want people to hear peoples’
voices because it is a remembering project. An archive is a remembering project. It is a
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bringing together of these moments that are now gone in some ways, but are still lingering,
still have an impact on the way we see each other today and deal with one another.

So, going through Audre Lorde’s letters, or Joseph Beam’s letters, or Essex Hemphill’s
letters, you just… there’s a hunger that I see in you, David Green,
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and a number of other
people who are both in the academy and doing activist work. And I go, ‘Thank you for
living. And I’m at your service. And I have a lot of shit to give you.’ Because you guys are
entering something… it’s necessary to keep a community developing and growing – but you
deserve to live in your entire body, and not just in your fingers or in your color or whatever.
You need everybody and everybody needs you. So hopefully this – the work that you’re
doing and the work that you will continue to do – will give other people inspiration to be
themselves and to be larger than what they’re being told. You can never risk your self-esteem
to any institution – anybody, quite honestly.

My project is a love project, it’s a reclamation project, and it fits in with the other things I do
in terms of producing material culture by us, about us. And I don’t feel like I’ll be doing
anything for the rest of my life because here it is, here it is, here it is, it’s under here, and…I
work to celebrate struggle, to applaud the tradition of struggle in our community, to bring
center stage all those characters – just ordinary folks on the block – who’ve been waiting in
the wings. I would only amend that by saying, they’re not waiting to be interviewed. They’re
not waiting to be on television, despite this YouTube … or blogging [or] Facebook moment.

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David Green is another graduate student conducting research on Black queer literature.
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No, they’re waiting to simply be acknowledged as human beings, as being people of worth.
And that’s my work.

My mother passed in ninety-seven, my father is still alive and asks me how I’m doing. ‘You
ain’t getting the AIDS is you?’ Seventy-six. ‘No, dad, I ain’t gettin’ the AIDS.’ I want to do
a one-man show about my father, but he would have to pass first because it would kill him if
he knew I kept all these statements about him. He tries, he tries, he goes, ‘I don’t understand
it, I just wanted kids from you. I wanted you to do specific things. You could have been the
president of the United States.’ [Laughter] I appreciate that, but the system is really fucked
up and I’ll have no part of that except as a person trying to change or abolish it. But I love
my father and I think that there are a lot of stories similar to mine that you never hear about
and I’m hoping to get some of the material in the archive.

WHAT IS THE SIGNIFIGANCE OF THE FAIR EDUCATION ACT?

Joseph Hawkins: The FAIR Education Act is a bill passed by Mark Leno here in California.
Well, it’s actually not him, it’s the state bill that basically addresses the fact that up to now in
high schools in California, you are not allowed to put Gay and Lesbian Studies into the
curriculum. And you weren’t allowed to put disabilities stuff … in the curriculum, not
specifically disallowed so much as they weren’t included. So this mandates that they be
included and it’s a very forward thinking thing, I think; it’s about time that it’s done. It’s
exciting but everyone’s scrambling to figure out how it’s going to be included. FAIR
Education basically means that Native Americans, Latino Americans, that all of us are
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included in this history and the history that we are teaching in California High School is in
fact inclusive of all people. And I think it’s a brilliant thing. I hope it really takes when the
rubber really hits the road; [I hope] that they begin to do it because I think it will be really
exciting to see how people change as a result of people seeing that [information].

I think there is something really wonderful and empowering about knowing the past. To
know where you came from - to know that you have people in your life that provided
examples for you - can be deeply inspiring. It brings me to tears often when I think about it
or I talk about it. I think that there’s something really fantastic about people who stand up
and do something and then [they can just be erased] from history. It just seems so horrifying
that I, as a high school student who am gay, lesbian, or transgender coming out … don’t
know that there are other people that I can look to for example for a heritage or some sort of
foundation. It’s so empowering to know that these people were here before and [that] I am
gonna go kick some butt and be who I am. And [that I] can be who I am and succeed, and be
who I am and … don’t need to sit around and worry about what these fools are telling me
over here on the side. That’s irrelevant to me. I need to hear what it is from history that I am
gonna get so I can be empowered. So that to me is a really big issue here. The other thing that
I think is a really big part of it too is the denial of history leaves you in such an ignorant
space.

When I lived in Japan, one of the things that I was hyper aware of was the fact that the
Japanese don’t teach anyone about the Second World War. They do it on purpose. They do it
because as they say it was a dark period. I actually saw a diorama in Tokyo that said ‘from
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1931 to 1945 and then there was a dark period.’ So history just got black during that period,
there was nothing else. So nothing happened, it was empty. We do that for gays and lesbians.
‘Oh they just weren’t here. Or they didn’t exist.’ We do that for disabled people, we put them
away and then we can ignore them. So, it seems to me that bringing them back into the
historical conversation, saying something about them is really empowering to everybody.

History seems to just be a narrative. A narrative that often times people don’t have their own
ability to construct. I don’t have control over my life history. Someone else will probably
when I’m dead - unless I write it myself.

We have actually erased a lot of stuff from history. I think what’s really interesting about
history is to uncover it so that we all belong in it. So it’s not just a history that’s told by a
certain group of people. It’s a history that includes all of us … If we don’t control our past
then we don’t have a future. So, I’m really invested in trying to bring that history here so
that people like you … can have access to it.

Steven G. Fullwood: I’m interested in everybody’s history. I may not know about it, but I’m
sure once I hear about it, I’m like, ‘Wow, I did not know that Chicano was a bad word at one
point. And now that people have adopted it, you just call people Chicanos.’ Stuff like that is
critical … I have so many stories in my head about reading something and later on finding
out it’s so much more complex. But where were these players who were in the room?
They’re not in the history books. I’m going to follow [Fair Education Act] to see how they
integrate LGBTQ history into the various curriculums because, unfortunately, it’s probably
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going to be white, unless Black people push it. Unless people of color go in there and say
BARBARA SMITH. Unless people say STONEWALL – a bar that was populated by
BLACK and LATINO DRAG QUEENS and BLACK FOLKS that is largely whitewashed
out of the movies ... You just see a buncha white males.

So Black folks have to constantly push it. No one is responsible to save our history or to
interpret our history but us. Nobody else. And there’s something interesting – Toni Cade
Bambara’s going to come up a lot in this conversation because she sits right here; she is my
patron saint. I’m not a religious person, but she is my patron saint. She said that there are
people who wait on the official version of things all the time. Whether the media has to say
about it, whether they gripe about it … and so, for me, unless you respect your own
experience and can interpret your own experience and can share that with people, you are
constantly at the mercy of the media. You are constantly at the mercy of what other people
think about you. You are constantly at the mercy of institutions that have no express interest
in your mental, spiritual and physical health – none. And you pay them to do it.

So, with my dying breath, I will be aware of these systems. I want to be aware of these
systems and I want to talk about alternate ways of being and thinking. To me, it’s less that
the information isn’t there. A lot of the time, stuff is in our libraries or archives, but also in
people, and they can tell you. And I’m not talking about people who want to be your guru, or
people who want life coaches…

CLOSING THOUGHTS
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Woods
467
, Fullwood
468
, and Hawkins
469
articulate the fact that identity has a way of putting
papers in different places. Of course, it is not as simple as Black gay versus gay Black. What
stands out to me is a question about ownership and relationship. What would it mean for
Jerome to simply hand over this Black LGBT archive to the ONE Institution? Something that
is so essential for his own life and the lives of other Black LGBT people right now?
I could ask about what this means for the implementation of the SB48 Bill. Who will be
consulted for this new curriculum on Gay History? If institutions like the ONE Archive are
consulted, certain silences and erasures could already be predicted. Still, even if Woods were
to also be consulted, there would yet again be silences and omissions. Therefore, I am more
interested in how the darkness as a framework might enable us to access what Woods calls
“an archive for now.” This phrase has double meaning naming the constant fluctuation of
what that archive might include: its’ impermanence as well as history’s flexibility. “An
archive for now” also names the importance of relationship and community in naming and
shaping their own histories that are necessary “for now” but perhaps not for always.

467
Woods, C. Jerome Woods Interview.
468
Fullwood, Steven Fullwood Interview.
469
Hawkins, Joseph Hawkins Interview.
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Appendix 2: Carl Bean on HIV/AIDS and Death
470

Well it was really for me, it was the continuation of ministry. The first
pamphlet says ... the first brochure says, “Unity Fellowship of Christ Church’s
Minority AIDS Project.” That’s how we printed the first pamphlet. We only
got that name because they couldn’t fund religious organizations with some of
that money. But for me, it was the continuation of what I always knew the
Black church to do and be—to be present at the time of sickness and
death…[this is what I saw] from my aunts and my grandma.

I was born in the 40’s, so when someone would die, usually they’d die at
home and I would see the women go to that home immediately … clean their
body and prepare it for the undertaker to come pick it up. In Baltimore, in my
youth, once the body was embalmed, they would bring the body home and
they would put what they called a crepe on the door … so people can view it
in the home setting. And so I saw that whole process of transitioning from life
to eternity in Black community as a part of what happened in community. And
then again, that kind of set me up for what was coming in my future. I saw the
people of the church always answer that widow or widowers calls, be present,
to do the food, help prepare the body, to be there, to sit with the weight, to go
to the cemetery. And I saw widows in those days who would wear black for
like a year. I saw a man wear a black heart or band on his sleeve for a year.

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Kai M. Green and Carl Bean, Carl Bean Interview, February 11, 2013.
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So I was steeped in this African tradition of ‘you do what is necessary to take
care of community’ and I’m sure before that it was the tribe. So, I, Carl Bean,
just continued to live that reality really and I would adapt to what the system
said you had to tack on to it.

Like the 501-C3, this thing called a proposal you need to write, but the people
who helped me with that gave me the language because I didn’t know the
language, like the word proposal. I had never heard anything like measurable
objectives. I was a singer. So basically, I would dictate to them what I knew
from the village, or the diaspora, if you will. I would dictate my experience
and they would put it in the language that, quote, the system wanted. And so
we would get the funding to do what we felt was necessary.

I think my resilience came from my young training in the Jackie Robinson
Youth Council of the NAACP … steeping us in the need to fill whatever need
there was to ensure our people’s survival. All those early trainings in
Baltimore… where they would watch us march around and throw water on us
and spit. Caucasians in your face and you cannot flinch, you cannot get angry,
you cannot get out of line. They would choose which ones of us could do it
and who couldn’t and they would say the word “nigger” and all the ugly
things. That early training, those experiences. My first big march was ‘57,
and it was the prayer pilgrimage in DC before the ‘63 march. That is what
gave me the ability to be resilient and to not quit. It was just a continuation of
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my people’s journey to full freedom, acceptance, and equality in this apartheid
system. That’s what it was for me. It wasn’t separate. It was the continuation
of my people as a Black people, we were just identified as same-gender-
loving … This was just a continuation of that march for me of that walk
towards full freedom and acceptance. And I was walking in that knowledge
that had come down from my ancestors. And from my grandma’s and from
my grandpa’s and from my uncles and from my deacons.

My youth in the ELKS. In those days we had secret orders that we would join
that gave us big parades in the streets as a sense of Black pride. I was a junior
ELK ... I was a drum major, a baton twirler, so I was always upfront, even if I
was a little effeminate baton twirling drum major. I was still out front, proudly
being a part of who my people were, all of that made me. No matter what we
have to endure, we have to do it bravely and with pride and we have to force
the change to take place. And that’s the training we got at 6 or 7 years old … I
was walking with that and the only difference [between my youth and the
AIDS crisis in the 80’s and 90’s] was the constant death and dying. I think I
am recovering from that now, as I’m about to enter my 7th decade. The thing I
never had any respite from. It was a constant. There were times I would do 10
to 15 funerals a week.

In those days, the social workers would call me from the hospitals because
there was no one that would respond to Black people that were in their
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caseload, their client caseload. So they would call the number … put in an
article in the Times, and my phone would ring and they would say, ‘Reverend
Bean would you come because I think it would be good for this family?’ I
would go and I would give the mother, the grandmother, the father some sense
of ‘they weren’t alone’ and ‘they weren’t abandoned by their people’ and
‘they didn’t have to go home out of shame and not letting their neighbor
know.’ I would tell them simple things like, they would say, ‘Could I bring
my boy home?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes.’ And if he coughs, no one was going to
catch AIDS.

No one said anything about the sisters, because white women weren’t being
infected. It was when I went to the centers and got all the information that I
could get, that I found out … there was this group of women that were
infected. So I had to come back to South Central and say to people, but it’s not
just gay men, it’s also Black women who are infected with this virus. So then
I had to talk to them about babies being born with the virus. So then again, it
was a very different profile from what white gay men had to deal with. I was
dealing with not only Black gay men being infected, but also Black women
and babies being infected. So I had to bring that message to people in South
Central.

I started getting talked about in the media and the Black Civil Rights people
were knocking and saying, ‘Bean, would you come to this town and do a
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prayer service for us?’ So I wound up on a lot of little prop planes in LAX
flying to a lot of small communities where the NAACP was basically an
answering machine, with one or two people trying to keep the guard up in that
local principality around Black issues. They would do private little prayer
services where I would talk to these preachers behind closed doors because
many of them were married, but really same-sex attracted, and the virus was
beginning to break out in many different places. So, that’s what I never really
got a chance to talk about.

I’d run back to LA on Sunday morning, just taking that red eye all night, to
just get here in time - 11 o’clock - to come down that aisle to make Unity a
reality for the local parish. But I would be out all week, flying around to the
Carolinas, Virginia, Mississippi, Oakland and other places. Talking to these
small groups of people about the reality of AIDS amongst Black people. So
you know, Kai, the truth of it is, I didn’t have time to get tired. I didn’t have
time to recognize being tired is more of the truth. I was going so much and
doing so much and being pulled so much. And I felt the obligation to do it,
because of the death. I don’t know if it was really resilience as much as it was,
I got to do this. I got to do this. And I had to say I was gay. That was a part of
it. That I would say that and not back off of it, so then that gave people
permission to say, ‘my son…’

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At a conference during early outbreaks of the virus… I was keynote, a Black
representative to speak about the virus and this sister said to me, ‘Reverend
Bean, I got AIDS and no one is speaking for me.’ And I said, ‘Well let’s talk.’
And I didn’t know. She was very butch and she said to me, ‘Many of us turn
tricks so our wives can be at home.’ And so these butch women would be very
secretive about going out and turning tricks with these men … that’s how they
supported their households. And so that’s how this butch woman had come
down with the virus.

I was constantly in this mode of discovery … The sense of duty I felt in that
environment, it’s what was driving me. And I just didn’t have time to get
tired. I just didn’t, which is why my body’s a mess now. I’m just (now) crying
from 35 years of grief. Because I always had to be there for everybody else.
And I knew the importance of being there. And I was losing everybody. I was
not only losing my parishioners who had come into my life, because I had
started the work, I was losing the other gay leaders who had come to LA
because they considered it Mecca. And so I would look up and there would be
Joe Beam, and all the other writers who would show up … to see Unity … to
see what was going on in LA, and I’d get to know them. And it seemed that as
soon as I would get to know someone, they would leave, because they were all
diagnosed in the process. Then I would get calls from Baltimore, the people I
was telling you about earlier who were quote, girlfriends, who were walking
down the streets dressed in girls clothes very young. I would get a call from
Green 357
them that they were sick. And I was losing them. Then the natural progression
of aging, I was losing family members, like grandmothers, and great aunts and
stuff. And so people were just dying all around me. And see, I just didn’t have
the time to just break down, so I just kept rolling, and I kept rolling, and I kept
rolling. And it’s just now that I’ve stepped out of the work into retirement that
I’m dealing with feelings that I should have been dealing with long ago. The
emotion … I’m losing the feeling in my leg little by little and all of that. I’m
finally allowing myself to feel, allowing myself to cry, allowing myself to all
that. I’m allowing myself to grow through what I guess would have been a
healthy way to do it then. But then again no one knew because no one
expected anything like AIDS to show up, because we had penicillin and we
had everything and we never expected anything like a plague to show up that
would just take lives and the medical community would be afraid of it and the
church was afraid of it. No one expected that.

We thought we were so modern and so hip that nothing like that could
happen again, so everyone was afraid. They were finding scriptures to say
people were cursed. I couldn’t talk to them. Many doctors had been afraid to
take the cases because at the time they hadn’t proved how it was transmitted.
Undertakers [were] afraid to work on the bodies. It was just unbelievable. I
was trying to make everyone comfortable with this phenomenon. From the
undertaker, to the preacher, to the family member, to the person living with it
themselves and then there was me. This person who I loved died and also the
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people who I had been with were dying. So I was always waiting ... I [feared
I] was going to wake up and have the symptom.

The least little bruise, I always thought was sarcoma. Bruises I had ignored
prior. Client, after client, after client, parishioner after parishioner, friend after
friend—If I would bruise myself I would think it was a lesion and I would be
traumatized for a week or two until it would go away. Just some bruised blood
and it was gone… I would try to be able to give a message to my brothers and
sisters that would alleviate that trauma if they saw a bruise. I would take the
lessons I was learning in my own body, my own journey, my own fears, my
own thoughts, and I would help them process all of those same things without
them becoming overwhelmed.

That’s the truth of that. And I would deal with spirituality in ways, in
whatever way it presented itself. I would go out to the beach and I would ride
the Wilshire bus out to the beach. Out to Santa Monica take music that I
loved, Nina Simone, stuff like that and just sit at the water’s edge and just
commune with nature and embrace God anew because I was having to
embrace God bigger than what I had gotten out of Christian theology, because
I was dealing with death and dying all the time and so I had to deal with the
truth of what that process really was. And I had to help people do, what we
called, crossover. I had to hold people’s hands as they left the body and then I
had to deal with the things that were going on, that was in those dreams and in
Green 359
those visions that I had in the early 70’s [that] … became a guiding force. I
had had an outer body experience. I had [learned] all of that Eastern thought
around spirituality. Those were the things that gave me the grace to keep
moving forward. The actual spiritual experiences I was having that had
nothing to do with what I had been taught in the European Christian way of
things, but was much more African. And that’s what got me through.
Green 360
Appendix 3: Interview Schedules
471

Standard Interview Questionnaire

Introductory/Background Information:
1. Name:

2. Date of Birth:

3. Address:

4. Where were you born?

5. How long have you lived in Los Angeles?

6. Where have you lived in Los Angeles?

471
All of my interviews were semi-structured, meaning I had a basic question guideline, but I
also engaged in conversations that were not directly in response to these questions. For
specific interviews, I also added specific questions. I was interested in oral histories, personal
narratives, and the topic of Black LGBT life in Los Angeles. Much of the information gained
in the interviews exceeded the bounds of this project. It will be used for a future project on
Black nurses.
Green 361
7. What is your profession? What have your professions been?

8. What is your racial/ethnic background?

9. What is your Sexuality/gender identity?

10. Do you have a “coming out” story?

More In-depth Questions:

11. Is there a particular kind of support you need/have needed as a Black queer
Angeleno? Did you find the support you needed?

12. What communities do you align yourself with? What does that mean?

13. How have your race, gender, and/or sexuality shaped your lived experience and your
endeavors?

14. Is there a “Black Queer Los Angeles?” Where is it located? Who is there?

15. Do you see yourself as having made contributions to a Black Queer community in
Los Angeles? What are they?

Green 362

16. Have there been any major obstacles doing the work that you do?

17. Did the HIV/AIDS epidemic have an impact on your community? What was the
impact?

18. Did the HIV/AIDS epidemic have an impact on the work that you do? What was the
impact?

19. Can you talk about being Black and Queer in Los Angeles in the 1980’s?

20. Can you talk about being Black and Queer in Los Angeles in the present moment?

21. What does the future look like?

Additional Questions for Claudia Spears

1. Before Kevin did you have any interactions with the LGBT community?

2. What was Kevin like? Other children?

3. Did he come out to you? What was that like? What were your fears?

Green 363
4. Were you worried about your image at church?

5. Can you tell me about the Black Church week of prayer for healing for people with
HIV/AIDS?

6. Where did you get support?

7. What are you most proud of about your son?

8. Do you think he would be surprised by the work you do now?

9. How has Jewel/The Catch been influential for you?

10. What about Carl Bean and the Minority Aids Project?

11. Are there other organizations or groups of people doing this work in LA?

12. Do you think it is important to document the work you are doing? Why?

Additional Questions for Jeffrey King

1. What is the importance of your mobile testing van?

Green 364
2. Can you tell me about the billboard campaign? Challenges? Support?

3. Message in the Meantime? How long has it been in existence? Who is it for? Why do
you think a publication is important?

4. How did you come to this work? How long has ITMT been around?

5. What relationship do you see between ITMT and Black Lesbians? Do you/can you
support one another?

6. What about transgender folk? Do you think about transgender men who are also
MSM? Transwomen? Is there space for them in ITMT?

7. What is the purpose of the Tuesday night meetings?

8. You do a lot of spiritual grounding in the meetings. Why is this important for the
population you work with?

9. How has Jewel/The Catch been influential for you?

10. What about Carl Bean and the Minority Aids Project?

11. Are there other organizations or groups of people doing this work in LA?
Green 365

12. Do you think it is important to document the work you are doing? Why?

Additional Questions for Joseph Hawkins

1. Can you give a quick history of ONE? What do you all do here? Who does it? How
has that changed over time?

2. Why are history and preservation important for queer people?

3. What kind of POC collections do you have here?

4. What have some of your struggles/challenges been in terms of gathering Black LGBT
material?

5. How do you think the HIV Aids epidemic affected/affects the Black/LGBT archive?

6. What does your collection have to tell us about (LGBT) Los Angeles that other
archives will not or cannot?

7. SB48, requires the California Board of Education and local school districts to adopt
textbooks and other teaching materials that cover the contributions and roles of sexual
minorities, as soon as the 2013-2014 school year. Do you think or know Black LGBT
Green 366
histories will be included in the new curriculum? Do you think it is important
legislation?

Additional Questions for C. Jerome Woods

1. What is the Black LGBT Project? When, where, how did you conceive of the idea?

2. Why is history and preservation important?

3. You always say that you want to document the lives of all Black LGBT folk? Why is
this important versus, say, simply documenting Black LGBT heroes?

4. You are in the process of housing your archive now. What has that journey been like
for you? Why did you choose M. Clayton? Why not an LGBT archive?

5. What have some of your struggles been during this process? Highlights?

6. How do you think the HIV/AIDS epidemic affected/affects the Black LGBT archive?

7. What does your collection have to tell us about LGBT Los Angeles that other archives
will not or cannot?

Green 367
8. SB48, requires the California Board of Education and local school districts to adopt
textbooks and other teaching materials that cover the contributions and roles of sexual
minorities, as soon as the 2013-2014 school year. Do you think or know Black LGBT
histories will be included in the new curriculum? Do you think it’s important
legislation?

Additional Questions for Steven G. Fullwood

1. Can you give a quick history of The Schomburg and the role of Black LGBT people
and papers? What do you all do here? Who does it? How have things changed over
time? How did you get the idea?

2. Why did you choose The Schomburg for your LGBT collection? Could you have done
this work anywhere else?

3. What does archive mean generally? Does the meaning of it change if it is Black
LGBT? How Do Black and queer change the meaning of the archive?

4. What does your collection have to tell us about Black LGBT that other archives will
not or cannot?

5. What have some of your struggles/challenges been in terms of gathering Black LGBT
material?
Green 368
6. How do you think the HIV/AIDS epidemic affected/affects the Black/LGBT archive?

7. Is there a Black trans presence in the archive?

8. Does anything stand out in the collection regarding LA? Are there any historical rifts
that divide the archive via class, etc.? Like SGL? Important debates?

9. Your archive does not travel. One of the challenges Jerome has is trying to create a
space for papers and also displaying the work. Now that you have collected, how do
you get people to experience it?

10. Where else can people store their things? Is there a copy of the collection here in
another location?

11. I see you have been involved in many Black pride events. Normally when we think of
pride, we think of lots of partying. Is the archive an essential part of Black pride
celebrations?

12. Why don't you find as many Black LGBT materials in places like ONE?

13. SB48, requires the California Board of Education and local school districts to adopt
textbooks and other teaching materials that cover the contributions and roles of sexual
minorities, as soon as the 2013-2014 school year. Do you think or know Black LGBT
Green 369
histories will be included in the new curriculum? Do you think it’s important
legislation?

14. Do you think we need a Black LGBT history month?

15. Do you know C. Jerome Woods and the Black LGBT Project? Did you know you
were his inspiration?

Questions for MLK Day Marchers
1. Name:

2. Where are you from?

3. Tell me about the poster you are making/made?

4. Are you marching in the parade? Why/why not?

5. Did you march last year? What do you most remember about that moment?

6. What do you say to someone who says, “Gays have their own parade they shouldn’t
infiltrate ours?”

Green 370
7. If you’ve ever felt some opposition from the Black community at large or a specific
incident--can you tell me about it?

8. How would you respond to the comment Malcolm X made? —“The government has
failed us; you can’t deny that. Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and
you walkin' around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed us.
This is part of what’s wrong with you — you do too much singing. Today it’s time to
stop singing and start swinging. You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up
on some freedom.”

9. What are the most important issues for the Black LGBT community today? Are they
same issues of the larger LGBT community?
Green 371
Appendix 4: Interview and Event Directory
472

Interviews:

1. Donald Norman, 2012
2. Claudia Spears, 2013 (Multiple)
3. Jeffrey King, 2013
4. Vallerie D. Wagner, 2013
5. Terry de Grace Morris, 2012
6. Steven G. Fullwood, 2013
7. Curt D. Thomas, 2013
8. E. Jaye Johnson, 2013
9. Alfreda Lanoix, 2013
10. Claudette Colbert, 2013
11. Sandra Tignor, 2013
12. C. Jerome Woods, 2011 (multiple)
13. Mark Haile, 2012 (multiple)
14. Joseph Hawkins, 2013
15. Jewel Thais-Williams, 2011 (multiple)
16. Dale Madison, 2011 (multiple)
17. Laura Luna, 2011

472
This is a partial list of formal interviews and major events attended. Not all interviews and
events are listed here.
Green 372
18. Jessica Pace, 2011
19. Alan Bell, 2011 (multiple)
20. Mignon Moore, 2012, 2013
21. Elaine Harley, 2012, 2013
22. Alexander L, Fuller, 2013
23. Breeze Vincinz, 2013
24. Latrice Dixon/ Iyatunde Folayan, 2011, 2012, 2013
25. Valerie Spencer, 2013
26. Eko Canillas, 2011
27. O’Shea Myles, 2011
28. Andre J. Mollette, 2011
29. Milton Davis, 2011
30. Sinaa Greene, 2011
31. Imani Tolliver, 2011 (Multiple)
32. Rodney K. Nickens Jr., 2011
33. Li Arnee, 2013
34. Daisy Lewis, 2013
35. Paul Scott, 2013
36. Carl Bean, 2013
37. James Hightower, 2011
38. Cleo Manago, 2013

Green 373
Events:
1. State Of Black LGBT LA 2013 panel discussion / ITMT / CATCH, 2011-2013
2. MLK Day 2013, on street interviews, speeches, and march, 2013
3. National Black HIV AIDS Awareness Day Leimert park, 2013
4. MLK Day Parade / poster-making party, 2011-2013
5. Black LGBT Project panel discussion / William Grant Still /CA LGBT ARTS
ALLIANCE, 2011
6. BLU / Black Lesbians United Retreat, 2010
7. Alan Bell / Black LGBT Project / William Grant Still, 2011
8. Dale Guy Madison – One Person Show, 2011
9. Black LGBT Project Exhibition at LA GAY and Lesbian Center, 2011
10. SPIT-open mic night at ITMT/CATCH, 2011
11. David Kato Vigil - Leimert Park, 2011
12. Elder's Circle Catch, 2011-2013
13. In the Meantime Men's Annual Umoja Retreat, 2013

Green 374
Appendix 5: List of Archives
473

1. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Historical Society (GLBTHS) – San
Francisco
2. ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (ONE) – Los Angeles
3. Southern California Library for Social Studies & Research – Los Angeles
4. Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum— Culver City
5. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—New York
6. The Black Aids Institute—Los Angeles

473
Much of my archive came from community collectors.
Green 375
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Asset Metadata

Creator Green, Kai M. (author)

Core Title Into the darkness: a Quare (re)membering of Los Angeles in a time of crises (1981-present)

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program American Studies and Ethnicity

Publication Date 09/18/2016

Defense Date 08/15/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag African American studies,Black feminist thought and praxis,Black Los Angeles,Black queer geographies,Black queer studies,Black studies,ethnography,gay Los Angeles,LGBT,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,queer studies,trans*,transgender

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Keeling, Kara (committee chair), Callahan, Vicki (committee member), Jacobs, Lanita (committee member), Kelley, Robin D.G. (committee member)

Creator Email Kai.m.green51@gmail.com,kianagre@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-481074

Unique identifier UC11286740

Identifier etd-GreenKaiM-2959.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-481074 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-GreenKaiM-2959.pdf

Dmrecord 481074

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Green, Kai M.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA