Harry Hay~Leader in the American Gay Rights movement

Harry Hay is one of the most significant people in the "liberation movements" of mid-20th century America.  Most people have never heard of him because Gay history is erased as quickly as it occurs.  

I hope you enjoy this re-cap of Harry's life.

HARRY HAY, American activist  http://www.harryhay.com

Born:

 Henry Hay Jr. 

April 7, 1912  in Worthing, Sussex, England, UK

Died:

 October 24, 2002  (age 90) in San Francisco, California, USA 

Nickname

The Duchess

A leader in the Gay Rights movement in the United States, known for founding the Mattachine Society in 1950 and the Radical Faeries in 1979. He was raised as a Catholic.

Harry was born in 1912 in the coastal town of Worthing, Sussex, England where he grew up until his parents emigrated to California in 1919. Starting in Los Angeles in 1950, Hay worked with a handful of supporters to found the Mattachine Society. At this time, nineteen years before the Stonewall Riots, virtually no Gays or Lesbians were publicly out, it was illegal for homosexuals to gather in public, and the American Psychiatric Association defined homosexuality as a mental illness. Very slowly, he gathered members to this group. The Mattachine Society met in secret, with members often accompanied by a female friend to prevent being publicly identified as Gay. Though Henry Gerber’s Gay Rights group The Society for Human Rights had briefly flowered in Chicago twenty years earlier, it was quickly shut down by authorities. Hay's successful launching of a lasting national Gay network makes him a plausible entry for the founder of the American Gay rights movement.

Although Harry Hay claimed 'never to have even heard of the earlier Gay liberation struggle in Germany - by the people around Adolph Brand, Magnus Hirshfeld and Leontine Sagan - he is known to have talked about it with European emigrés in America including Mattachine co-founder Rudi Gernreich. (However, Gernreich arrived in America at age 14, and Hay had already written his Gay manifesto when they met).

Hay (upper left) with members of the Mattachine Society in a rare group photograph. With Hay are (l-r) Konrad Stevens, Dale Jennings, Rudi Gernreich, Stan Witt, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland (in glasses), Paul Bernard. Photo by James Gruber, about 1951.

A married man (beard/wife Anita Platky) and a member of the Communist Party USA, Hay composed the first manifesto of the American Gay rights movement in 1948, writing:

We, the Androgynes of the world, have formed this responsible corporate body to demonstrate by our efforts that our physiological and psychological handicaps need be no deterrent in integrating 10 percent of the world's population towards the constructive social progress of mankind.

In 1950, in the midst of America’s most conservative decade, Harry Hay started the Mattachine Society, the country’s first successful gay liberation organization. Harry’s ideas would become the guiding principles of the US gay rights movement. 

Harry began his activist life in the 1930’s fighting for worker’s rights in the labor movement. Soon after meeting fellow activist Will Geer, Harry became an active member of the Communist Party and a celebrated Marxist teacher. While later abandoned by most activists, at that time the Party was on the cutting edge of social change in the US. As fellow activist Frank Pestana says, “They were fighting for workmen’s comp, job security, medical care, social security - all the things that we have now.” 

It was Harry’s experience organizing in these activist movements that gave him the tools he needed to create a secret, underground homosexual organization in Los Angeles. In a climate of extreme oppression, Mattachine provided enough safety and security for homosexuals to gather together and take steps towards their own liberation. The Mattachine Society would eventually spread to major cities across the country.

He soon dispensed with the apologetic language and ideas entirely. Though it may seem dated today, the group was very radical compared to the rest of society at the time of its beginnings. It and Hay were among the first to advance the argument that Gay people represented a "cultural minority" as well as being just individuals, and even called for public marches of homosexuals, predicting later Gay pride parades. Hay's concept of the "cultural minority" came directly from his Marxist studies, and the rhetoric he and his colleague Charles Rowland employed often reflected the militancy of Communist tradition. As the Mattachine Society grew with chapters around the country, the organization saw the Communist ties of its founders, including Hay, as a threat during that McCarthyite witch-hunt era, and expelled them from leadership. The organization took a more cautious tack so that by the time of the Stonewall riots the Mattachine Society came to be seen by many as stodgy and assimilationist.

Hay later became an outspoken critic of Gay assimilationism and went on to help found both Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and the Gay men's group the Radical Faeries, as well as being active in the Native American movements.

A Faerie gathering in 1986, with Hay in bottom left corner

"We pulled ugly green frog skin of heterosexual conformity over us, and that's how we got through school with a full set of teeth," Hay once explained. "We know how to live through their eyes. We can always play their games, but are we denying ourselves by doing this? If you're going to carry the skin of conformity over you, you are going to suppress the beautiful prince or princess within you.”

One of his first lovers in the early '30s was actor Will Geer, who found fame as "Grandpa Walton" on The Walton’s. Hay later wrote about their political activism and how he and Geer were present at the San Francisco General Strike in July 1934. Hay, along with Roger Barlow and LeRoy Robbins directed a short film Even As You and I (1937) featuring Hay, Barlow, and filmmaker Hy Hirsh.

Harry in the 1980s

In 1963, at age 51, he met an inventor named John Burnside, who became his life partner. They lived first in Los Angeles, and later in a Pueblo Indian reserve in New Mexico. After returning to Los Angeles to organize the Radical Faerie movement with Don Kilhefner and Mitch Walker, the couple moved to San Francisco, where Hay died of lung cancer at age 90. Burnside passed in September 2008 of brain cance

Harry Hay in September 2000

Hay was the subject of the 2002 documentary by Eric Slade, "Hope along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay" (2002). He also appeared in other documentaries such as "Word is Out" (1978).

*Thanks to our good friends at The White Crane Institute and gaywisdom.org. Are you getting their FREE daily emails on gay history?
(go to: http://www.gaywisdom.org/list.html to sign up now!)
And if you can you help support their important work for our community with any amount...please do!

A White Guy on "Privilege"

Greg is from the Midwest, grew up in Nebraska, lived in northwest Arkansas (the hills where the Waltons of Wal-Mart and other wealthy folks live) and now resides in southern California.  He has a Bachelors in Philosophy, is a trained chef, and works in social services.

He is also a very great father to his son Logan, seen below.

Greg sent me his thoughts (below) on the reality of "White privilege" in American history and current American life.  I am sharing them, with his permission.  
****************************************************

Robin Morgan is a poet and an author and is using poetic language for artistic and metaphoric effect. Don't take it literally.

“My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.” Robin Morgan, a key radical feminist member of the American Women’s Movement

This was posted to facebook, with a meme that stated "This si why Feminist are scary". 

Below are my thoughts on the subject. 

Yes, we (feminists) are scary!

Being born an US citizen is a privilege and grants us certain benefits in this world. It's not very fair that a baby born in a third world nation will never be given those benefits. That baby could try to earn them, but it's hard and takes real effort. You and I personally did nothing to earn them. We got em. That foreign baby doesn't. That baby is of equal value and worth and yet we inherently have it better and easier in life.

It is shameful that the human race hasn't resolved this global inequality yet. It is shameful that many people on this bountiful planet are starving, especially as so much food is wasted. It's shameful that American consumers rely on low prices that still generate massive profits for the 1% leaders of American corporations that utilize third world slave wage labor.

American Privilege is real. White Privilege is real. So is Male Privilege. And it shouldn't be. 

That's what feminism is all about, eliminating privilege and advocating for equality.

Acknowledging your own privilege and actively recognizing that others do not get to benefit by the nature of their birth is the very heart of feminism: seeing all men and women as equals and advocating for that ideal.

Those who reject the label of feminism and reject the very concept of privilege usually do not understand the word equality in this context. They incorrectly think that political and social equality means that all people are identical. They obviously are not. 

Think of it as of equal value, worth, and limited only by personal differences.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

Notice it did NOT say All men are created identical! And obviously, the Founding Fathers didn't think women and black people were their equals, because they saw them as inferiors and subordinates.

The Founding Fathers thought of blacks as 3/5ths a person and some owned slaves and some even had sex with those slaves while denying their very humanity. Thus, bestiality with these 3/5ths manbeasts. The Fathers were highly flawed. And they were wise enough to accept that possibility and build in the ability to amend the Constitution.

A majority of them agreed to the 3/5ths and all of them signed off on it, with a minority of them compromising their own beliefs. A bunch of white men decided everyone else was worth less than they were. The rest of the white men across the newborn nation benefited from it too, for many generations to come. 

That... is white privilege!

The dominant group in almost all areas of life in America is white. Look at the latest award shows for actors. Almost zero non-white nominees. Minority groups of all kinds can only gain power and status in society by banding together, along with allies. And those in power recognizing their unfair treatment of those minorities. 

This isn't about racism, it goes beyond that. It's about the abuse of power and the effort it takes for the less powerful to rise up. Compare it to the labor unions against the owners and corporations. If they don't organize and band together, the powerful mistreat them. 

The powerful have no ethical need to band together and it is wrong for them to be exclusionary. What's the purpose of that... to pool even more power? That's White Power in a nutshell.

***************************************************************************

I (Ed Garren, blog host) would add to this that the other more personal element of "privilege" is that those who are privileged never have to ask the question "Do THEY let people like me do that?"  Members of minority groups live with that question constantly, along with "Will I be safe?"  "Will my children be safe?" etc.  Most "majority" people never even think about these issues, much less feel constrained by them.  

This is a constant issue in Mental Health for members of minority groups, and completely off the charts for majority folks.  This is why it is called "Privilege."
*************************************************************
Greg read this post, noted my closing comments (above) and sent me this to add:

I have a white friend in Albuquerque who is married to a Black Woman. They have three children obviously of mixed heritage. He worries about exactly those things when it comes to his kids. Are they safe. What discrimination are they going to face. He has had to deal with a considerable amount of it himself just by walking around in public with his wife. 

I have another friend in Phoenix that is married to an Indian, he worries about the same things and has endured the same level of discrimination,

I was talking to a lady from Oklahoma who lives out here went out on a few dates, we really were hitting it off. Then one day something set her off about the Native tribes of the America's and she went on a tirade about how they aren't even humans less then animals etc. etc. I finally had to stop her and tell her that I was part Native American, that my great great grandmother on my fathers side was a Cherokee survivor of the trail of tears, and with that I walked out of the restaurant and have never spoken to her since. 

Sleeve Gastrectomy April 14, 2015

I am pleased to announce that in two weeks, I am "giving birth to the baby" (the 80+ pounds I've carried for WAY too long).

The last time I got up to Runyon Canyon, with much huffing and puffing.  This photo tells it all.  It's time to get rid of this extra weight !!  310 pounds, 42" waist.

**********************************************************

After over a year of research and talking to many people who have had the surgery, and now that I finally have Medicare, and a good supplement policy, I am having a Sleeve Gastrectomy.

The reasons are best stated on the USC Keck Medicine website:

Obesity is a serious disease with symptoms that build slowly over an extended period of time. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) define morbid obesity as:

• Being 100 pounds or more above your ideal body weight
• Or, having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 40 or greater
• Or, having a BMI of 35 or greater and one or more co-morbid condition

The disease of morbid obesity interferes with basic physical functions such as breathing or walking. Long-term implications of the disease include shorter life expectancy, serious health consequences in the form of weight-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and a lower quality of life with fewer economic and social opportunities.

I meet all of the above criteria.  And my left knee is bone on bone on one side, so walking is both difficult and painful.

One of the major benefits of the surgery is that in most cases, the Type 2 diabetes goes away instantly.  

For any of you who love to eat, we often quip that our stomach "has a mind of it's own."  It turns out that is probably true.  Apparently there are nerve endings in the stomach that regulate energy, blood sugar, appetite, etc.  By removing most of the stomach, all of those things change.

Here is the website for the hospital:  http://weightloss.keckmedicine.org

Here is information about the surgery and an animation about how it is performed: 

http://www.surgery.usc.edu/uppergi-general/bariatric-glossary-sleevegastrectomy.html

This is NOT a "By-Pass" surgery.  No tubes are cut and reconnected (as in traditional by-passes).  

This surgery has fewer complications than Gall Bladder surgery.  

My brother Gene is coming out to be with me for the event.  I am looking forward to seeing him and having time together.    

Please keep me in your prayers, good thoughts, etc.

Here are some photos of me in earlier years when my body weight was around 200 pounds.  Ironically, due to low self esteem, I felt "fat and ugly" even when I wasn't.  

Thinnest I ever have been (as an adult) 185 pounds.  Note the very bony wrists, waist was 34"

Age 27

Around 200 pounds, 36" waist, age 31

Age 29, around 205 pounds, 36" waist.

Please celebrate with me as I begin this chapter of my journey and reclaim my health.  

Thanks,  Edward George Garren

Before, 42" pants, 300 #                                                   

2 months later, 38" pants, 260#  My weight is stable here so far, will have to push to lose more.

September 2019

September 2019 After some ups and downs, I decided to make a "push" to lose more weight.  The surgery is postured as a "tool" and it is a very powerful tool that no amount of "willpower" can match.  It remains one of the best gifts I have ever given myself and I recommend anyone who has serious weight issues consider having it.  

===================================================================================

December 2019 UPDATE:

I hit a plateau at 260# that would not budge, mostly because I would get "triggered" by food and it was difficult to resist cutting back to less than 2,000 calories a day, which is necessary for me to lose weight.  I had a work up at the weight loss clinic at USC in Pasadena and the doctor suggested I try a relatively new medication, "Contrave" which is a combination of Naltrexone HCI and Bupropion HCI.  Each is used to curb drug cravings for addicts.  Food IS an addiction, and so far, the medication IS working.  I've been able to cut my food intake significantly, and I've lost 7 pounds in 2 weeks.  In my youth, I was around 200 pounds, so that is my new goal weight, which is in line with the weight charts.  

Losing the next 50 pounds should eliminate any need for blood pressure medicine, reduce or eliminate my chronic edema (swelling in my lower legs and feet), eliminate most of my joint pain, and increase my energy levels (even more).  I take a LOT of vitamins to compensate for not eating much.  "Gummy" adult vitamins are best, as they digest and absorb very easily.

Remembering 9/11 on Vista Street in West Hollywood California

The morning radio went off, playing KFWB, "A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York." I thought to myself, "Oh great, a private plane hit the WTC" and turned off the radio to go back to sleep. About an hour later, Sallie Fiske called, she sounded even more grim than usual, "Are you watching the news?" she asked? When I expressed my thoughts, she responded, "No, this is much bigger, turn on the TV."

Call me the world's original cynic, cold hearted, realist, whatever, but nothing surprises me anymore, and 9/11 was no exception. When Bush/Cheney stole the election in Florida, I sent out an eMail to associates in the Democratic Party stating flatly, "They've stolen the election, they have control over all three branches of government, they are not just capable of doing anything, but they will."

These are also the same people who destroyed the mental health system in 1981, turning thousands of mental patients out into the streets and creating the flood of homeless people we now have in this country. They have systematically taken food away from the children of poor people, destroyed quality public education in America, are bankrupting Social Security, and have repeatedly cut benefits for the very veterans they are sending into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They have also eliminated overtime pay for most employees, replacing it with "comp time" (at the employer's discretion), along with destroying a host of other employment laws that once protected American workers from abuse in the work place.

But the thing that I remain the most livid about is how the Reagan administration (and "Daddy Bush") completely ignored the thousands of dying Gay men (and others) in this country who were murdered by their inaction during the AIDS Plague years.  That story is best chronicled by the recently released documentary, "How to Survive A Plague."  

If you want to read a book about where HIV came from and what was behind the spread of the virus globally, I highly recommend a provocative book, "AIDS and the Doctors of Death" by Alan Cantwell Jr. M.D.  Order it here:  http://ariesrisingpress.com/books/

I was perhaps the only person in my circle who noticed that four days after the Supremes declared Baby Bush the president, we suddenly had a shortage of electricity in California. The week before, we had the largest per capita surplus of electricity in America, now we had rolling black-outs and a "crisis."

About the same time, gasoline prices mysteriously shot up about 30 cents a gallon, and natural gas tripled in price.

I got the usual "Oh Ed, you're just being paranoid" from most of my associates, particularly leadership in the Democratic party, many of whom are now out of a job. 

Only a handful of friends, mostly fellow mental health professionals, and people of color shared my sinking feeling that something great about America had died. All of us had sleepless nights, or nightmares about totalitarian states, where dissidents simply vanish and are never heard from again. 

Even my brother (who is a retired Army Sgt. Mjr.) started joking with me about "Jack booted officers" taking me away in the middle of the night.

Anyone who lived in or remembered Chile under Allende (pre Pinochet) remembers the same thing, fabricated shortages to give cause to declaring marshall law and installing a dictator. The California "electricity crisis" has since been proven to have been fabricated by the Texas owned generating companies, so much for my paranoia. The "set up" and ensuing expensive "fix" to get electricity flowing cost the sate billions, setting the stage for re-calling one of the best governors we have ever had, and a Democrat.

I was not surprised when the re-call for Gray Davis was launched. It played out like a "B Movie" script, complete with the expected outcome, the Terminator come to destroy and conquer. Why was anyone surprised?  Were they expecting "fair play?" These people go for the jugular, with a razor blade. Why were they surprised?

So on September 11, 2001, as I watched the TV, I was neither horrified or frightened. I knew exactly how it was going to play out, but I told almost no one because I knew no one was listening. Denial is a powerful instinct. Who in America want's to believe their government is out to get them?

Years of working with alcoholics, addicts, spouse beaters, abused children, foster parents who warehouse kids for profit, declaring them "hyperactive" for elevated compensation, then overmedicating them, starving them and making them sleep on the floor, nothing surprises me. I know what fear and greed does to people, and the lengths some will go to to make even more wealth. Sallie Fiske and I often joked over dinner that when the rest of the populace would be saying "The would never", we would be saying, "The hell they wouldn't." For her it was years of journalism. For me it was years of watching the poor and the powerless be simply turned out to fend for themselves.

See more about the life and work of Sallie M. Fiske at: 

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.obituaries/tK2KtZljLdg

and

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt6b69s110/entire_text/

and

http://edwardgarrenmft.blogspot.com/2012/12/sixth-day-sallie-maranda-guthrie-knox.html

The problem with 9/11 is that most people responded to it as if it was a genuinely unexpected attack. What if it was not? What if it was planned and staged?  That would more clearly explain all that has happened since. If you look at it from that perspective, it makes a lot of sense.

I remember when John Kennedy was shot wondering how they found Lee Harvey Oswald, and had photos of him holding a rifle to put on national TV, less than two hours after the shooting. It was too cut and dry.

I looked at Lyndon Johnson on the TV a few days later, saying something about how he regretted the circumstances of his coming to the presidency and thinking to myself, "Liar." 

I liked Lyndon, he did more for civil rights than any president in history, but I still think he had some connection to the assassination of John Kennedy.

Few remember that the explosion on the battleship Maine in Havana harbor, which sent us into war with Spain, occurred under very questionable circumstances. That war, which we won easily, gave us all of Spain's former colonies, including Panama, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and created an independent (but very obliged to us) Cuba. A Cuba that after years of meddling by our government, and having it's poor and powerless ruthlessly exploited by American interests, including the mafia, revolted into an equally ruthless communist regime.

One of the things I figured out about the Republican "spin" machine is that they are experts at the tactics developed by the Nazi's, Goerbels, Hitler and the rest. Tell the same lie over and over, and people will believe it. It helps if you own most (if not all) of the media outlets in the country).  The technique is called "Big Lie."  You just keep telling an outrageous lie over and over again, and people will eventually believe it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

Years ago I was told by Bruce Decker, a VERY "inside" Republican "Log Cabin" type, who was chair of the first AIDS Commission in California (He often referred to himself as "The Governor's "House Fairy") what Republican leadership does when they decide to pull something, they create spin, accusing the Democrats of it.

In other words, if you want to know what the Republicans are doing, listen to what they accuse the Democrats of doing.  It is very predictable.

If you think the label "Islamic Fascists" is a correct use of the term, think again. It is intentionally created to distract Americans into associating "Fascists" with "them", while the Bush administration was one of the most Fascist regimes in the history of the United States.  They gave us "The Patriot Act" which made legal all sorts of spying and eliminated "Habius Corpus" (the requirement of "cause" before someone can be arrested).  If you're not sure about the meaning of the word, check out any dictionary or encyclopedia about the word Fascist and Fascism. It reads a lot like the Bush administration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism  

Another example of this was how they frightened the congress into voting for a "bailout" in the last days of office, got it passed through congress with virtually no oversight, and then re-named it the "Obama Bailout."

As the post 9/11 events unfolded, as Colin Powell was (in essence) lying to the world, and the spin was being created, I just looked on, thinking "These poor suckers are buying it, hook, line and sinker." We have made the Arabs the new Russia, the new "Communists." Remember the "Red Scare?"

America has always needed an enemy. In our formative years, it was Great Britain, who we had two wars with before they finally left us alone. After about 100 years of leaving us alone, we became allies for WWI and WWII. During that 100 years it was Native Americans, then "Rebels", then Native Americans again. For about fifty years, the first part of the 20th century, we enjoyed our isolationist existence, and an innocence that was shattered at Pearl Harbor. After that, the Russians stepped up to the plate. Twenty years ago, when that fizzled out, we started looking around for a new enemy.

Fortunately, the Arabs were more than ready to step up to the plate. Few Americans realize that between the U.S. and Great Britain, we've really angered the Arab/Muslim world. Israel is just icing on the cake, it started long before that.

Ask any American of color about our ability to de-humanize people we don't like. My nephew (who is half Korean) jokes about the impossibility of going through any airport in the U.S. without being "profiled" and frisked. He says it's because they know he must be related to Kim Il Jong. And so it goes, we see photos and footage of angry Arabs, waving guns, etc. all fueling the de-humanization spin.

I ask myself, "were the Arabs born that way?" I have to conclude that they were not, and that if energy interests in this country can jack around we Americans with oil and related products (gas prices up and down constantly) what does that same industry do to the people who are at the source?  Take the time to dig a little into our history (and that of the British) in the region, it's not pretty.

It's pretty awful. It's not much different from what they do and have done in Latin America for decades. It's why they hate us. To them, America represents exploitation, manipulation, and cruelty. 

Much like the experience of employees of any large U.S. Corporation, but without any legal restraints (the few that are still in place after they were gutted by the Bush administration). With us, it's our own corporations that work us hard. Over there, it's "them", and the "them" is the United States and it's business interests. It's sort of like working for Wal-Mart, except they are also the government, police and army. Only Wal-Mart (by comparison) is the kinder, gentler version.

So, I watched, occasionally talking to friends with the same perspective as myself, seeing the disaster that greed perpetrated and realizing just how bad it is.

The only mystery is where flight 93 was headed. Here's my take, enjoy the possibilities.

President Bush did not like being stuck in Washington. He'd have rather be in Texas, on his ranch, away from all those people who don't like him. Remember that his itinerary for 9/10 and 9/11 showed him at work in the White House. We have yet to get any explanation as to why he and his entourage just happened to be in Sarasota Florida that fateful day, nor will we be likely to get one.

I think flight #93 was headed for the White House. It was going to crash into it, utterly destroying it, giving even more "spin" about how Bush narrowly escaped death. "They tried to kill me, that's how much they hate freedom."

With the White House destroyed, the President would have the perfect "out" to return to his Texas ranch, and avoid Washington altogether.

We finally found and executed Osama Bin Laden. Ironically, it took a Democrat, with a "Muslim" name to do it.  After all, the Bush family had business dealings with the Bin Laden's, you don't kill a business partner's son, even if he is a jerk.

The Bush administration is the same group of folks who were negotiating with the Ayatollah in Iran to hold the embassy hostages to sabotage Carter during his re-election.  All Carter did was pass a windfall profits tax on the oil industry. and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (C.A.F.E.) standards that doubled the rated fuel mileage of American cars.

Reagan went on to give us, "Ollie North in the basement of the White House selling the same Ayatollah weapons to pay for training Contras in Central America."

So to think they, or someone close to them, might not be involved in Osama and 9/11 is somewhat myopic. Osama's half brother financed Bush in his early years in the oil industry.

Anything is possible, some things are probable. My brother was in Special Forces in the Army for 18 years. Thirteen of those years he was stationed at an elite and invisibly small post in Virginia, just west of DC. He would call my parents and tell them, "I'll be on a mission for a while, if there is an emergency, call this number. Otherwise, don't expect to hear from me for at least nine months." To this day, he cannot talk about what he did, but one thing he is very clear about, his disdain for the Bush administration, and how their agenda is to turn America into a third world nation, with the wealthy elite living luxurious lives behind gated and exclusive enclaves, while the rest of us work very very cheap to assure their wealth and comfort.

There are elements in our country that do things we will never know about and if you think this is being "paranoid" then you need to talk to some people who are darker than you.

As usual, it's about money, and making lots of it for a very small group of people, who invest heavily in the Republican party. By design, few of us have any contact with these people, who consider themselves much better than us, another form of de-humanization that is the necessary part of life in the most upper of classes. The rest of us simply exist to serve them.

We elected a black man, who promised change, and then he was promptly tied down by the most massive barrage of insane lies and propaganda in the history of the country.  It is living proof of how divided we remain as a people, and how powerful the worst elements of our human nature have played out in American life.

I don't cry on 9/11.  I'm still too angry, and will probably remain so for the rest of my life.  I just know one thing, in spite of their ineptitude and cowardice, I only vote for Democrats.  My mother said it best, "Politics is a dirty business and all politicians are crooks.  But at least the Democrats are OUR crooks."

Zora Neale Hurston, fellow Floridian, fellow traveler

Zora Neale Hurston, fellow Floridian, fellow traveler, a woman well ahead of her time, yet timeless in the greater sense of living a full life in the face of a world that was constantly challenging.

Zora was the first African American student to graduate Barnard College (the women's college at Columbia University).  She was an anthropologist, a fellow student with Margaret Mead, and was a graduate student at Columbia University as well.  In addition to her formal studies, she was one of the leading writers of the "Harlem Renaissance."    

Many of her collected songs are available on iTunes.

Below is her essay about being Black in a White world.  It is both serious and tongue in cheek humor.  It is a fine example of how one very creative and intelligent woman was able to make an enjoyable life in the midst of complex and often difficult circumstances.  Below it are some quotes that are favorites of mine.  

I hope you enjoy Zora Neale Hurston's

How It Feels to Be Colored Me

I AM COLORED but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.

I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town. The only white people I knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando. The native whites rode dusty horses, the Northern tourists chugged down the sandy village road in automobiles. The town knew the Southerners and never stopped cane chewing when they passed. But the Northerners were something else again. They were peered at cautiously from behind curtains by the timid. The more venturesome would come out on the porch to watch them go past and got just as much pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village.

The front porch might seem a daring place for the rest of the town, but it was a gallery seat for me. My favorite place was atop the gate post. Proscenium box for a born first nighter. Not only did I enjoy the show, but I didn't mind the actors knowing that I liked it. I usually spoke to them in passing. I'd wave at them and when they returned my salute, I would say something like this: "Howdy do?well I thank you? where you goin'?"  Usually automobile or the horse paused at this, and after a queer exchange of compliments, I would probably "go a piece of the way" with them, as we say in farthest Florida. If one of my family happened to come to the front in time to see me, of course negotiations would be rudely broken off. But even so, it is clear that I was the first "welcome to our state" Floridian, and I hope the Miami Chamber of Commerce will please take notice.

During this period, white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there. They liked to hear me "speak pieces" and sing and wanted to see me dance the parse mela, and gave me generously of their small silver for doing these things, which seemed strange to me for I wanted to do them so much that I needed bribing to stop, only they didn't know it. The colored people gave no dimes. They deplored any joyful tendencies in me, but I was their Zora nevertheless. I belonged to them, to the nearby hotels, to the county, everybody's Zora.

But changes came in the family when I was thirteen, and I was sent to school in Jacksonville. I left Eatonville, the town of the oleanders, a Zora. When I disembarked from the river boat at Jacksonville, she was no more. It seemed that I had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl. I found it out in certain ways. In my heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast brownwarranted not to rub nor run.

But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less. No, I do not weep at the world.  I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the line! " The Reconstruction said "Get set! " and the generation before said "Go!"   I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that 1 have paid through my ancestors for it.  No one on earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to think to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep.

The position of my white neighbor is much more difficult.  No brown specter pulls up a chair beside me when I sit down to eat. No dark ghost thrusts its leg against mine in bed. The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.

I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achieve the unconscious Zora of Eatonville before the Hegira. I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.

For instance at Barnard. "Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.

Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathens, follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww!  I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue, My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something, give pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.

"Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.

Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.

At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty Second Street Library, for instance. So far as my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich with her gorgeous raiment, stately carriage, knees knocking together in a most aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic Zora emerges. I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.

I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries. My country, right or wrong.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.


But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall In company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first water diamond, an empty spool bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant.  In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held, so much like the jumble in the bags could they be emptied that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place, who knows?


"I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes."

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at de sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

"Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much."

"Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it."

"Nothing that God ever made is the same thing to more than one person. That is natural. There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food."

"I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death."
Zora Neale Hurston

I found this by Zola.  It feels a lot like my life.  I want it read at my funeral. 

Zora Neale Hurston –  I have lived in many ways

I’m not bloodthirsty and have no yearning for strife. If what they say is true that there must be this upset, why not make it cosmic? A lot of people would join in for the drama of it who would not be moved by guile.

I do not say that my conclusions about anything are true for the universe. But I have lived in many ways – sweet and bitter. And they feel right for me.

I have seen and heard.

I have sat in judgment upon the ways of others. In the voiceless quiet of the night, I’ve also called myself to judgment. I cannot have the joy of knowing that I always found a shining reflection of honor and wisdom in the mirror of my soul on those occasions.

I’ve given myself more harrowing pain than anyone else has ever been capable of giving me. No one else can inflict the hurt of faith unkempt. I’ve had the corroding inside at times of recognizing that I am a bundle of sham and tinsel, honest metal and sincerity, that cannot be untangled.

My dross has given my other parts great sorrow. But on the other hand, I’ve given myself the pleasure of sunrises blooming out of oceans and sunsets drenching, heaped up clouds.

  

 I have walked in storms with a crown of clouds above my head and then zigzag lightning playing through my fingers.

The gods of the upper air have uncovered their faces to my eyes. I’ve made friends with trees and veils.

I found out that my real home is in the water, that the Earth is only my stepmother. My old man, the sun, sired me out of the sea.

Like all mortals, I’ve been shaped by the chisel in the hand of chance, bulged out here by a sense of victory, shrunken there by a press of failure and the knowledge of unworthiness.

But it has given me – it has been given to me – to strive with life and to conquer the fear of death. I have been correlated to the worlds so that I know the indifference of the sun to human emotions.

I know that destruction and construction are but the faces of dame nature and that it is nothing to her if I choose to make personal tragedy out of her unbreakable laws.

So I ask of her few things. May I never do good consciously nor evil unconsciously. Let my evil be known to me in advance of my accent, my good when nature wills.

May I be granted a just mind and a timely death.

While I’m still far below the allotted span of time and notwithstanding, I feel that I have lived. I have the joy and the pain of strong friendships. I have served and been served.

 

 I made enemies of which I am not ashamed. I have been faithless. And then I have been faithful and steadfast until the blood ran down into my shoes. I have loved unselfishly with all the ardor of a strong heart. And I have hated with all the power of my soul.

What waits for me in the future? I do not know. I can not even imagine and I’m glad for that.

But already, I have touched the four corners of the horizon. For from heart searching, it seems to me that tears and laughter, love and hate make up the sum of life.  

James Tolbert the lawyer who pressed Hollywood on civil rights

My very good friend, Anita Tolbert, recently lost her father.   James Tolbert was the black man who pushed Hollywood and the Television industry to remember that black people are a full part of American life and should be included as such in the media.

Here is a reprint of his story from the Los Angeles Times, 5/12/2013
James Tolbert, attorney, visionary, civil rights leader.

In a Hollywood auditorium, James L. Tolbert tried to induce a room packed with broadcasting and advertising executives to essentially join the civil rights movement in 1963 by pointing out the obvious.

"We Negroes watch 'Bonanza' and buy Chevrolets. We watch 'Disney' on RCA sets," proclaimed Tolbert, an entertainment attorney who was speaking to the 125 invited guests in his role as president of the NAACP's Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch. "We buy all the advertised products, the same as you do."

Delivered weeks before the March on Washington, the speech pointed out the absence of African Americans on both sides of the camera. It marked the start of an NAACP campaign that pushed Hollywood and Madison Avenue for greater representation of black people on-screen and in craft unions.

The "March on Hollywood" would cause a gradual but meaningful transformation, according to historians, that resonates today.

"The work of James Tolbert was as pioneering as many other civil-rights advocates who are a well-known part of our history," Mary Ann Watson, author of the 1990 book "The Expanding Vista: American Television in the Kennedy Years," told The Times last week.

Tolbert, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease years ago, died April 22 at UCLA-Santa Monica Hospital, his family said. He was 86.

"What Tolbert and other activists intuited was that entertainment is just as important as any other aspect of civil rights. The storytellers transmit the culture. If you have black people invisible in the main storytelling, that means they are invisible," said Watson, a professor of electronic media and film studies at Eastern Michigan University.

By 1960 Tolbert was an entertainment attorney with his own firm and soon a co-founder of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

As part of the campaign to integrate Hollywood, Tolbert pressured craft unions to "hire one Negro on every movie and television show," according to a 1963 edition of the Crisis, an NAACP publication.

The sitcom "Hazel" was singled out as a test case. A threatened boycott of show sponsor Ford Motor Co. was averted in fall 1963 when an African American production assistant for Columbia Pictures became a production liaison on the program, integrating the "lily-white" technical crew, Tolbert had said in The Times.

That same fall Tolbert told a gathering of the nation's largest ad agencies that their own apathy and prejudiced actions had led to the organization's demands, according to the 2008 book "Madison Avenue and the Color Line."

"No segment in America has done so much to make Negro Americans the invisible men as the advertising industry," Tolbert said as the NAACP urged agencies to employ more African American models and actors.

While advertisers were slower to change, the campaign resulted in tangible gains in union hiring of technicians in the entertainment industry. The NAACP's own 1964 survey showed that African Americans had held more than 80 roles in the most recent 35 films produced. Over the previous year, they also had appeared on television in almost 140 parts, Jet magazine reported that July.

The change was so apparent Watson called it "the civil-rights season."

"Tolbert was a true visionary, and the nation owes him a debt of gratitude," said Michelle D. Bernard, who is writing a book called "Moving America Toward Justice, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 1963-2013."

He "will be remembered," she said, "as the man who brought the civil rights movement and the African American struggle for racial equality to Hollywood."

The middle of five children, James Lionel Tolbert was born Oct. 26, 1926, in New Orleans. His father, Albert Tolbert, was a chauffeur and his mother, the former Alice Young, hailed from a jazz family. Her brother, Lester Young, was a noted tenor saxophonist.

When he was 10, James was sent to Los Angeles with his older sister and brother to receive musical training from their grandfather, Willis Young, a jazz educator who schooled him on trumpet.

In 10th grade, Tolbert dropped out of high school because it was fashionable among his crowd, he later said. After serving in the Army from 1945 to 1947, he earned his high school equivalency degree.

He received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1955 from what is now Cal State Los Angeles and attended Loyola Law School before graduating in 1959 from the now-defunct Van Norman Law School.

The law firm he established eventually became known as Tolbert, Wooden & Malone and endured for nearly 40 years. His clients included actor Redd Foxx, singers Lou Rawls and Della Reese, and trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison.

From 1988 to 1990, Tolbert was president of the San Fernando Valley Arts Council. He also served on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and the board of the Southern California Rapid Transit District in the early 1990s.

While raising his family in the San Fernando Valley, the upbeat Tolbert hosted nightly "Jeopardy"-style quizzes at the dinner table and modeled a philosophy of giving.

His son, Tony, is a lawyer who credits the influence of both parents but especially his father for motivating him to move out of his Los Angeles home in 2011 and allow a series of struggling families to live there rent-free for a year.

"This is, in some way, an extension of his philosophy," Tony told The Times in December. "He was always willing to open up our home to someone in need."

Tolbert is survived by his wife of 57 years, Marie, and children Anita, Tony and Alicia, all of Los Angeles; sisters Martha Taylor of New Orleans and Esther Ford of Sacramento; and two grandchildren.

"Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 50th Anniversary excerpts

 Thanks to Congressman Alan Grayson (D) of Orlando Florida for sharing this.

Booking photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tomorrow, May 19th, 2013, marks the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." King was jailed for campaigning against racial segregation in Birmingham, in violation of an injunction against anyone "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing." His letter was written on the margins of a newspaper, scraps of paper that another prisoner gave to him, and then a legal pad that his attorney left behind. It has been an inspiration to millions of people; I am one of them. Here are some excerpts: MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:... . I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. 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.... We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff[ly] creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.... But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.... I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, and all over the nation, because the goal of America [is] freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -- and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.... One day the South will recognize its real heroes. There will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." There will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience's sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?... Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.