Was listening to Essential Pittsburgh on the radio last evening, and was really struck by the differences as well as the similarities between the 60’s and the Civil Rights Movement of that era of American history, and the current struggle for full civil rights by the LGBTQ community. One thing I realized as listening, is how little I really know about that civil rights movement. Oh sure, I know who Martin Luther King Jr was and I know about Bayard Rustin,  lunch counters, and bus boycotts, but past a surface level, I don’t really know enough about the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps one of the most significant actions of an advocate is to take the time to learn history, and to know it at a level deeper than the general public. It is possibly the advocates role to help that history keep from being forgotten, and our job to embrace lessons from past struggles so that we can employ then anew in new struggles against the same old power structure of oppression.

There are some within the African American community who dislike the linkage of today’s LGBTQ civil rights struggle to that of African Americans. This has always struck me as odd, but as I realize how much I don’t know about the lives of real African Americans who lived before and during that tumultuous time in our past, I am starting to better understand that perspective. I do believe in the depths of my being, that today’s struggle is a continuation of that struggle, and at the same time, we fail that movement and those brave people if we suggest our fight for equality is the same as theirs was. Both movements grow out of the desire to make a more perfect Union, dedicated to a proposition that all human beings (my edit) are created equal. But the ways in which our communities have experienced oppression, isolation, hatred and violence are not exactly the same. Yes, oppression is oppression, but that viewpoint looks only at what is “being done to us” and not looking at the experience of that oppression by the people who are “us.” I hope that makes sense.

The broadcast is linked below and I encourage anyone who cares about Equality to listen to it. We, meaning LGBTQ activists and advocates need to learn about the Freedom Summer, and we need to contemplate the very basic “right” these persons were fighting for- the right to vote. If I understood this broadcast properly, Mississippi had the largest black population and the smallest number of blacks registered to vote. The efforts of Freedom Summer were to get people registered to vote.

Few gay, lesbian, or bi persons have trouble being registered to vote. (For trans persons, it may be harder- I’ve written before about voter ID laws and the impact on trans persons.) And yet, do we adequately exercise that right to vote? How many LGB voters stayed home in the last election and didn’t bother to cast a vote? Probably about the same percentage of the rest of the population which was enormous. So many of the problems we face in our country are the result of a government created over decades off a lack of voter engagement. And even worse than that- decades of politicians making deals and backing down and compromising simply to take the easy way out.

But the right to vote wasn’t the end-all any more than marriage equality is the end all today. Oppression isn’t impacted only by a change in legislation and the government. It is cultural too, and these are ways the two civil rights movements are alike.

During the broadcast, a caller comes on the line and describes her experiences working for a department store at a time when blacks were only allowed to be janitors and other similar jobs. She relates to how she was removed from the candy department because whites did’t want a black touching the candy they would eat. Black men were not allowed to be shoe salesmen, because they could possibly touch the foot of a white woman. These seem absurd and unbelievable and it is so sad to hear these realities recounted. Yet, there is a way that the astounding absurdity is echoed today, in the claims expressed as to why LGBTQ persons must be denied equality.

A theme I have been trying to wrap my head around, and figure out how to write about is the changing identity of the LGBTQ movement. Too often, this has been a movement operating out of a place of being the victim. This has been an authentic struggle for sure. But as we gain rights, and we own the places where we have power, I’m not sure it remains a useful framework for activism. Perhaps the more I learn about things like Freedom Summer, I will find ways to formulate those thoughts and ideas.

http://wesa.fm/post/rebroadcast-50th-anniversary-civil-rights-act-and-freedom-summer