Huey Newton's August 15, 1970 Speech About Gay and Women's Rights

TransGriot Note:  Another blow to the false 'Black people are more homophobic' meme.   Check out this interesting speech by Black Panther Party co-founder and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton concerning the issues of gay rights and women's rights.  Bear in mind this is one year AFTER Stonewall. 


During the past few years strong movements have developed among women and among homosexuals seeking their liberation. There has been some uncertainty about how to relate to these movements.

Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion.

I say ” whatever your insecurities are” because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth, and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the women or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us, or take the nuts that we might not have to start with.
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We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people. We must not use the racist attitude that the White racists use against our people because they are Black and poor.. Many times the poorest White person is the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something, or discover something that he does not have. So you’re some kind of a threat to him.
This kind of psychology is in operation when we view oppressed people and we are angry with them because of their particular kind of behavior, or their particular kind of deviation from the established norm.

Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or that a revolutionary should make sure that women do not speak out about their own particular kind of oppression. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite: we say that we recognize the women’s right to be free. We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society.

And what made them homosexual? Perhaps it’s a phenomenon that I don’t understand entirely. Some people say that it is the decadence of capitalism. I don’t know if that is the case; I rather doubt it. But whatever the case is, we know that homosexuality is a fact that exists, and we must understand it in its purest form: that is, a person should have the freedom to use his body in whatever way he wants.

That is not endorsing things in homosexuality that we wouldn’t view as revolutionary. But there is nothing to say that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. And maybe I’m now injecting some of my prejudice by saying that “even a homosexual can be a revolutionary.”  Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary.

When we have revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement and the women’s liberation movement. Some groups might be more revolutionary than others. We should not use the actions of a few to say that they are all reactionary or counterrevolutionary, because they are not. 

We should deal with the factions just as we deal with any other group or party that claims to be revolutionary. We should try to judge, somehow, whether they are operating in a sincere revolutionary fashion and from a really oppressed situation. (And we will grant that if they are women they are probably oppressed.) If they do things that are unrevolutionary or counterrevolutionary, then criticize that action.
If we feel that the group in spirit means to be revolutionary in practice, but they make mistakes in interpretation of the revolutionary philosophy, or they do not understand the dialectics of the social forces in operation, we should criticize that and not criticize them because they are women trying to be free.

And the same is true for homosexuals. We should never say a whole movement is dishonest when in fact they are trying to be honest. They are just making honest mistakes. Friends are allowed to make mistakes. The enemy is not allowed to make mistakes because his whole existence is a mistake, and we suffer from it. But the women’s liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends, they are our potential allies, and we need as many allies as possible. We should be willing to discuss the insecurities that many people have about homosexuality. When I say “insecurities,” I mean the fear that they are some kind of threat to our manhood. I can understand this fear. Because of the long conditioning process which builds insecurity in the American male, homosexuality might produce certain hang-ups in us. I have hang-ups myself about male homosexuality. But on the other hand, I have no hang-up about female homosexuality. And that is a phenomenon in itself. I think it is probably because male homosexuality is a threat to me and female homosexuality is not.

We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms “faggot” and “punk” should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as Nixon or Mitchell. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people.

We should try to form a working coalition with the gay liberation and women’s liberation groups. We must always handle social forces in the most appropriate manner.


H/T to Davey D's Hip Hop Corner

Black Trans History-Ajita Wilson

Stumbled across an interesting piece of Black trans history while searching for something trans related to write about.   It concerns the surprising note that cult film actress Ajita Wilson was a trans woman.   But then again, why should I be surprised about what I discover when it comes to women like us?

It's simply another fascinating piece of Black trans history that I'm bringing to your attention.     

She was born in Brooklyn, New York around 1950 and started out as a female illusionist and entertainer in New York's red light district   She had her sex realignment surgery in the mid 1970's and not long after that occurred began appearing in underground adult films being produced in the New York area. 

She was discovered by a European film producer who got her roles in French, Italian, Greek and Spanish films.  By 1978 Wilson had built up quite a following and name recognition in doing so.  
She appeared in a seemingly nonstop series of films during the 1970s and 1980's that ranged from soft and hardcore porn films to mainstream horror, light comedy, anachronistic historical epics and espionage thrillers.  

Interestingly enough one of the people she worked with during her film career was The Exorcist actress Linda Blair in the movie Savage Island.

To add another interesting note to this post about her, she was a Jet Magazine pin up girl.  Ajita Wilson appeared in the August 20, 1981 issue of the iconic Jet Magazine as their Beauty of The Week    That may make her possibly the first trans woman to hold that distinction.

While her acting career was still going strong and in a positive direction for her she was involved in a horrific automobile accident in Rome, Italy.   She passed away from a brain hemorrhage on May 26, 1987 that resulted from that accident.

After Wilson's death, speculation about her trans status began to emerge.  When director Carlos Aured was asked to comment on it, he said this in reply.to the interviewer's question.

"She was charming, beautiful and very professional. The rest is not important." he said. 

Indeed.  Ajita Wilson was as director Aured said, charming, beautiful and professional as an actress.  But I'd disagree about the second part of his comment.  

In that time period there were very few out Black transfeminine role models.  While I understand what the transition protocols were at that time and she was a product of that era, it sure would have been nice to know that Ajita Wilson was also a girl like us, too.

Black Trans History-Althea Garrison

The United States trans community is at a phase in its maturation as a movement in which we realized long ago  we need girls and boys like us to run for and win political office in order to get the trans human rights laws we need passed.

We have watched with envy as transwomen in New Zealand, Italy and now Poland have been elected to their national legislatures, transwoman Aya Kamikawa is holding elective office in Japan, and Thai transwoman Yollada Suanyot is running to do the same in the Land of Smiles..  


We have long assumed in the United States trans community that we have never had a transperson elected to a state legislature.   I've documented the attempts of Amanda Simpson and Dr. Dana Beyer to break that state legislative glass ceiling.

But it turns out that the glass has already been shattered in that regard, and the person who made that history as the first trans state legislator was an African-American 

Althea Garrison was born in Hahira, GA on October 7, 1940 and moved to Boston to attend beauty school.  She went on to enroll at Newbury Junior College and received an associate's degree. Garrison later received a B.S. degree in administration from Suffolk University, an M.S. degree in management from Lesley College and a certificate in special studies in administration and management from Harvard University in 1984 

Although Althea has never publicly announced her trans status or talked about it, we are aware that people who transitioned during that more restrictive HBIDGA era were advised to never let anyone know their trans status and live their lives.  In 1976 her name change petition was approved and filed in the Suffolk County Courthouse "consistent with [her] appearance and medical condition.". 

Keep reading to discover how this info became public, but back to the post.

Politically Garrison is all over the map.  She has been and is currently a Democrat 1982–1986, 1998–1999, 2010–present, an independent in 1988, 2000, 2008 and a Republican from 1990–1996 and 2002–2006. She's run for office multiple times under those various party labels for the Boston City Council, mayor, the Massachusetts Senate and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. .

She worked for the Massachusetts state comptrollers office and made her first unsuccessful run for public office in 1981.  Undaunted, she unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Massachusetts House in 1982 and 1986  

But you know the old saying about persistence paying off.  Despite the Boston Globe dismissing her two years before as a 'perennial loser', her breakthrough political victory fitting occurred during the 1992 political 'Year of The Woman".

She was running as a Republican candidate for the Fifth Suffolk seat in the Massachusetts House and successfully challenged several signatures that Democratic incumbent Nelson Merced obtained as part of the candidate certification process.   The successful challenge meant that Merced was removed from the Democratic primary ballot and ended his reelection bid in the process.  

That meant the Fifth Suffolk seat was now an open one and Garrison went on to a close general-election victory in November 1992 over Democratic candidate Irene Roman, 2,451 votes to 2,014.

Unfortunately Garrison only got to savor her long sought after electoral victory for two days. 

A story broke in the conservative leaning Boston Herald that revealed Garrison's old male name and the 1976 name change petition.   The author of the smear piece was Eric Fehrnstrom, the current communications director for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign who was then a conservative attack columnist for the Herald. 

The outing undermined her opportunity to be judged as a freshman legislator by the same criteria and merits as her fellow Massachusetts House colleagues and probably derailed any opportunity for Garrison to build her political career   It also unfortunately for her occurred the same year The Crying Game was released in theaters.  She was treated as an oddity or the punchline for a joke in local political columns mocking her transition. 

Howie Carr, a conservative talk show host who was at the time a colleague of Fehrnstrom's at the Herald once wrote a column in which he stated, “I’ve always liked Althea. She has a big heart. Not to mention big feet. And very, very big hands.” 

Instead of confronting the smear, no one in the Massachusetts state house, including Garrison herself was willing or comfortable discussing trans issues and their trans colleague.  

She took the lemon situation she'd been thrust into by Fehrnstrom's hit piece and turned it into lemonade. She impressed her legislative colleagues on a personal level.  "She’s a transvestite or transsexual black woman, with an Adam’s Apple, who’s a Republican, who you run into in the members’ ladies’ room," recalls one former colleague. "That being said, when you get past all those obvious things, I always found her to be very pleasant and very kind."

During her term from 1993-1995 she consistently voted pro-union and sided with the Democrats on many issues far more often than she did with the Republicans.  When she ran for reelection in 1994 her pro-union record earned her endorsements from the AFL-CIO and eight additional unions.  It wasn't enough to keep her from being challenged by Democratic rising political star Charlotte Golar Richie.

In the 1994 general election.that fall Garrison's bid for reelection resulted in defeat as Golar Richie garnered 2108 votes to Garrison’s 1718.

Since then Garrison has continued be involved in local politics and run for various offices in the Boston area   She ran as a  'Independent Progressive' in a 2000 Massachusetts House race, a 2001 Boston mayoral race, a 2002 special election for the Massachusetts Senate as a Republican for the 1st Suffolk district; 2003 and 2005 races for at large seats on the Boston City Council, and a 2006 Massachusetts House race as a Republican.

In 2010 Garrison made another run for the 5th Suffolk district Massachusetts House seat she'd once held and finished third in the Democratic primary.  She ran in a February 2011 special election to fill a vacancy on the Boston City Council, District 7 seat and finished in fourth place in the preliminary election.


Unfortunately Garrison has been on the wrong side of the marriage equality issue. 

“Furthermore, to grant special benefits and privileges to a certain group of people is discriminatory toward heterosexual males and females. The issue of same sex marriage is not like race in which a person has no control over the color of his or her skin of which they were born, same sex is a matter of choice and lifestyle not to be confused or associated with class or race.“

She called for the judges who ruled on that groundbreaking Massachusetts marriage case to be removed from the bench and in her 2003 Boston City council race she was supported by the odious anti GLBT organization MassResistance.

But the facts are that we now know the glass ceiling for a transwoman being elected to a state legislature in the United States was broken in 1992, and the woman who did so was Althea Garrison.  

Melissa Harris-Perry's History Making Show Starts Today

Cornel West and the fundies may not like her, but I definitely have much love for 38 year old Tulane political science professor and rising intellectual superstar Melissa Harris-Perry.

She is the founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Tulane and previously served on the faculties of the University of Chicago and Princeton University.

And from the bio, 'Her academic research is inspired by a desire to investigate the challenges facing contemporary black Americans and to better understand the multiple, creative ways that African Americans respond to these challenges.”   She also writes for The Nation and is an MSNBC contributor and fill in host for Dr. Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell.

Translation, the sistah got it going on to the point that MSNBC couldn't deny what she brought to the table and made her the first tenured African-American female professor to have her own national cable show.

She will definitely bring MSNBC's viewers up to speed on how African-Americans view the nation we live in from her learned perspective. 

Cornel can hate on her all he wants, he still doesn't have his own TV show and she does.

I will definitely be getting my butt up later this morning to watch the Melissa Harris-Perry Show which runs from 10 AM-12 noon EST.

The 2nd Annual African-American Trans History Quiz-The Answers

Well, did you have fun getting your learn on and discovering something about Black trans history?  

I hope you did, and here are the answers I promised y'all to the questions I posted Monday.  It was an open Internet test BTW and the answers could be found not only in the TransGriot archives but also by hitting Google.

And now, the answers to the second annual TransGriot African-American Trans History Quiz.

1.  Transman Kylar Broadus founded an organization to lobby for the human rights of transpeople of color.  What is the name of that organization and what year was it founded?

Trans People of Color Coalition  (TPOCC)   It was founded in 2010. 

2.  This People.com editor was recently named to TheGrio's 100 History Makers List for 2012.  Name her.

Janet Mock

3. True or False:   An IFGE Trinity award has never been won by a Black trans man.

True  All four African-American IFGE Trinity award winners have been transwomen

4. Last year we lost three iconic African-American trans leaders   Name them.

Lois Bates, Dana Turner, and Tracy Bumpus

5. This transperson was the first to perform for a sitting US president.  Who is she?

Tona Brown

6. What transwoman uttered this quote?  "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman.”   Bonus points if you can also answer what state she was born in.
Lucy Hicks Anderson     She was born in Waddy, KY 

7. Transwomen Patti Shaw and Diana Taylor have this in common.  What's the link?

They were both harassed by the police departments in their respective towns and sued them.

8.  In what city will the first annual Black Transmen Empowerment Retreat Dinner and Conference on march 29-April 1 take place?

Dallas

9. IFGE award winner Dr. Marisa Richmond heads this statewide trans human rights organization.  Name it.

Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition

10. This transwoman made Diddy's Band in 2009 and in the process became the first transperson to actually win a reality television show competition.  Who is she?

Jaila Simms

11. There have been three autobiographical books written about or by African-American transwomen.   Name them.  

A Finer Specimen of Womanhood by Sharon Davis, Hiding My Candy about the Lady Chablis and I Rise by Toni Newman 

12.  This transwoman in November 1995 confronted job discrimination aimed at her on a college campus.  Name her and the school that perpetrated it.
Sharon Franklin Brown   The school was Fayetteville State in North Carolina

13.  Miss International Queen runner up and London resident Miss Sahhara was originally born in this African nation.   Name it.

Nigeria

14. This internationally known trans human rights warrior is from Uganda.   What's his name.

Victor Mukasa

15. What happened to Washington DC friends Stephanie Thomas and Ukea Davis on August 12, 2002?

They were brutally murdered .

16.  What is the name of the organization that Miss Major is the executive director of?

The TGIJP   Transgender, Gender variant/genderqueer, and Intersex (TGI)  Justice Project

17.  Name the two ballroom houses that Octavia St Laurent was part of.

The House of St Laurent and House of Manolo-Blahnik

18.  True or False:  The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition's first board chair was an African American transwoman.

True.  Dawn Wilson was the founding board chair until being succeeded by Yosenio Lewis

19. This transwoman is chronicled in a 1979 JET magazine article that discusses her life, her discrimination suit suit against GM and her founding of a Detroit gender organization.   Name her.

Justina Williams

20. Toni D'Orsay now runs this Phoenix based organization founded by Regina Gazelle.  Name it.  Bonus points if you can also name what the letters in the group's name stand for.

This Is H.O.W.     H.O.W. stands for Honesty, Openmindedness, Willingness

21. What college did trailblazing NCAA division one trans athlete Kye Allums play for and what was his sport?

George Washington University    Basketball.

22. Video blogger Diamond Stylz was the plaintiff in a successful ACLU discrimination lawsuit that allowed her to wear her dress at her high school prom.  What year did it occur and bonus points for the state it happened in.

1999,  in Indianapolis, IN

23. What continental African trans woman wrote this and bonus points if you can name the country she's from?  'I don't think saying something derogatory to someone who has insulted you is being unladylike. And maybe trans women need to knock it off with this perpetual ladylike garbage. Sometimes you can't be ladylike. Circumstances preclude that.'  

Audrey Mbugua of Kenya

24. This transman was featured in the book 'Love Makes a Family' , a supporter of COLAGE and was a presenter at several True Spirit conferences in the late 90's.  Name him.  

Marcelle Cook-Daniels

25. True or False:  The TransGriot is the first Texan to win the IFGE Trinity award.

False.   I'm the first African-American Texan to win it.   Phyllis Frye and Jane Ellen Fairfax (1993) were the first Texans to do so.  Brenda Thomas (2004) and Vanessa Edwards Foster (2005) preceded my 2006 win.. 

The First All African-American Female Flight Crew

I saw it happen twice in my airline career at CAL in which we had a flight with an all African-American flight crew.   In both cases that I witnessed it at my gates it was two African-American male pilots and a combination of male and female African-American flight attendants.

For the passengers on a recent Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight, an Atlanta based Delta Connection regional carrier, little did they know when they boarded that particular trip to their destination they were witnesses to aviation and Black history.

They had boarded the first US airline flight staffed by an all African-American female flight crew comprised of Captaion Rachelle Jones, first officer Stephanie Grant and flight attendants Diana Galloway and Robin Rogers.

On one hand it is a little sad we're talking about a 'Black first' in the second decade of the 21st century, but it still makes me pleased and proud as a former airline employee to see this recent Black history made with this all African-American female flight crew.