TATCHELL HITS OUT AT ‘STRAIGHT’ BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Writing in today’s Guardian, gay and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has said that the current Black History Month fails to highlight and celebrate past and present black LGBT figures, including the revered black US liberation hero, Malcolm X, who Tatchell claims was bisexual.

Accoring to Tatchell, the People section of the official Black History Month website lists few accomplished black figures who are known to have been LGBT. “Why these omissions?” he asks. “Black people are not one homogenous heterosexual mass.” Tatchell went on to write that in contrast, February’s LGBT History Month devoted a whole chunk of its website to listing the achievements of leading black LGBT figures. “Disappointingly,” he added, “this solidarity is not reciprocated… perhaps it is unintentional, but Black History Month often feels like Straight Black History Month. Famous LGBT black people are not acknowleged and celebrated. Either their contribution to black culture and history is ignored or their sexuality is airbrushed out of their biographies. A good example of this neglect is the denialism surrounding the bisexuality of one of the greatest modern black liberation heroes: Malcolm X.”

Malcolm X was probably the most famous and prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement. A gifted, fierce and eloquent speaker, he was committed to black upliftment, freedom and power. He was assassinated in 1965.

In his 1991 book, Malcom – The Life of a Man who Changed Black America, Bruce Perry interviewed hundreds of people who had been close to Malcolm X at various stages in  his life, some of who claimed he had not only worked as a hustler from his mid-teens to his early twenties but had also enjoyed relationships with other men that were not financially motivated. Tatchell says, “Dope-dealing, thieving and pimping were sources of income he pursued with success. There was no imperative to sell his body. Why then, did he prostitute himself?” Tatchell added that Malcolm X’s sexuality in no way detracts from his acheivements and towering reputation, therefore people should have no qualms in acknowledging it. Malcolm X later married, and there is no evidence he ever took up sexual relations with men again in his life. If nothing else, Tatchell says, we know he was “not wholly straight.”

Billie Holiday

Other significant black LGBT figures include Blues singers Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, poet Langston Hughes, writer and activist James Baldwin, soul singer Luther Vandross, Rock ‘n’ Roll singer Little Richard, writer Alice Walker, political activist, professor and philosopher Angela Davis and Olympic diving gold medallist Greg Louganis.

www.black-history-month.co.uk