Serving The Black Gay Papers: My Collection at the Auburn Avenue Research Library

I was a closeted 15-year-old getting ready for school when I received my first Black gay history lesson. It was the morning I heard the song “Born This Way” by Carl Bean being played on WBLS, New York City’s most popular R&B radio station. The voice was unmistakable, a Black man announcing to the world “I’m happy, I’m carefree and I’m gay. I was born this way.” My father overheard it and quickly mocked the song’s refrain “T’ain’t a fault it’s a fact”. My heart pounded with all the awe and dread this praise song summoned. I had no way of knowing this was a Motown record by a gospel artist who would eventually launch the Unity Fellowship Church movement and the Minority AIDS Initiative, one of the earliest Black AIDS organizations. I did, however, recognize that he was speaking to me, and that knowing terrified me. For I knew enough about myself and the world I feared, to know that this was an act of tremendous courage, and that such an act would somehow hold me accountable. 

I am now 65. Five decades have passed since I received Archbishop Bean’s invitation to walk in the light of liberation. On May 17th I presented the collection of my papers archived at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. The collection is entitled The Black Gay Papers not because it is the quintessential record of all Black gaydom. I intentionally named it so that folks could not mistake the nature of its contents. As a people who are suppressed both within and outside of the larger communities to which we belong, as a people who are taught to barter faux acceptance with silence and invisibility our liberation requires of us to say who and what we are. It is just as incumbent upon us to accept and assert the ways in which we are queerly different from these majorities as it is to note our commonness. 

True history can confirm or correct the known stories. It can divulge the secrets that we ourselves may have hidden for our protection and the known facts that were omitted to obscure us. How is it that in the decades before and after the oft centralized Stonewall Riots, that Black queer folk discreetly gathered at that spot, shared our bodies and our everyday lives freely with beloveds, invented norms to conform and to disrupt? The transfer of wisdom and ways across generations be it through Harlem Renaissance Niggerati narratives or disco anthems, must be ensured by heightened care.  

The collection rightfully bears my name, yet its value far exceeds its association with me. It reflects the lives and labor of artists, journalists, AIDS organizations and hole-in-the-wall nightclubs in various cities. It is a body of record for all those who seek or may unintentionally gain knowledge about a people whose victories and contributions far outweigh their adversities. 

I appreciate that most of what my collection records was situated in Atlanta, which is  culturally progressive oasis nestled squarely in the seat of the former Confederacy.  Black queer Atlantans had to have constructed community in many ways quite differently from New York or Washington DC. There is a grand Black queer Atlanta history that deserves to be preserved and presented to Black queer audiences. 

Much of the recoverable history is largely unknown even among residents. Where are the placards to show where Loretta’s, TRAXX or The Palace once stood?  How might we learn about the Atlanta Committee, a social organization that began meeting in the sixties? Who knows about the impact of Venus Magazine, or the activist Venus Landin after whom it was named? What did Henri McTerry do, and why was he dubbed the “Father of Black Pride”. What activities might we innovate that could inflate interest in saving and sharing such a rich past?

I am thrilled to have given this gift, one that the Auburn Avenue Research Library has made available to the public. I pray that it will stimulate more interest in related research and scholarship. Whether IRL or virtual, through podcasts, old school storytelling circles or seminars, we have precious memories to preserve. The more we discover of our past, the more readily we will wear the crown that James Baldwin assures “has already been bought and paid for”.  As we recognize the divinity within us, we will no longer need to seek it outside ourselves. As Archbishop Carl Bean exalted, ‘it ain’t a fault, it’s a fact” and we can all be “proud to tell it”.