Black Excellence
THE QUEER PIONEERS WHO BUILT BLACK CULTURE.
Throughout history, black artists and cultural figures have laid the foundations that people of all races have built their success on. The Rolling Stone’s named their band after a song by blues singer Muddy Waters. Elvis’ entire career was based on the stylings of Buddy Holly and Little Richard. Even today, artists cite the likes of Prince and Beyoncé as musical influences. Outside of the arts, Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s teachings have been appropriated and misappropriated by almost every school of progressive political thought in the western world since he first uttered the words, “I have a dream.”
Peel back the layers of musical and political history and you reach something even more interesting – the queer black people who influenced the influencers. Where did Dr King learn nonviolence? How did Prince develop that iconic voice? And who designed the blueprint on which modern black female entertainers have built their careers? Far from hiding away in closets, throughout history black queer people have been living openly and enriching black culture with their unique point of view for well over a century. The queerness of black history cannot be denied.
There would be no Prince without Sylvester James. Sylvester James left an indelible mark on queer culture with his unmistakable, prodigious command of falsetto and infectious disco back-catalogue. No song encapsulates everything that is right with queer culture as perfectly as You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real). From its incessant driving beat to Sylvester’s soaring vocals, You Make Me Feel oozes the sort of unadulterated ecstasy that disco music is famed for. Somewhat ironically, Sylvester trained the vocals – which would later become the soundtrack to gay culture’s most hedonistic excesses – in a small-town gospel church, which he was forced to leave after coming out. However, you can take the boy out of church, but you can’t take church out of the boy – and the gospel influences he grew up on followed him into clubs across the world as his musical career flourished.
It’s no secret that Prince’s aesthetic was heavily influenced by queer culture; the androgyny and flamboyance that set the late musician apart from his mainstream contemporaries has been commonplace among America’s marginalised black queer communities since the era of the Harlem Renaissance in the 20s and 30s. But the debt Prince owes to them goes further than matters of the wardrobe. Prince’s trademark vocal style, filled with masterful falsetto, can be traced to one black queer man in particular – Sylvester James. It’s yet another strange irony: Prince, who was at times quite poor on matters of LGBT+ equality, was influenced by an out and proud, 70s avant-garde queer man. Go and listen to Prince’s My Love Is Forever, and then Sylvester’s incredible Tipsong to hear the influence clearly.
Despite the apparent conflict between Prince’s beliefs and the people who influenced him both musically and stylistically, Prince seemed to publicly acknowledge the role that this particular queer man played in his career when he added Sylvester’s’ Disco Heat to his tour setlist in 2010.
There would be no Dr Martin Luther King Jr without Bayard Rustin. Martin Luther King’s most famous speech, “I have a dream...” was delivered during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Today, that march and that speech are considered defining moments in the civil rights movement. Bayard Rustin, one of the key organisers behind that march, had been condemned as a “communist, draft-dodger, and homosexual,” by a white senator just weeks before it took place.
Born in 1912, Bayard was a talented musician who got swept up in the communist movement of 1940s America. He joined the pacifist movement during this time, and worked as an organiser for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). It was during his time with this group that his homosexuality became public knowledge, after he was arrested for engaging in lewd acts in public in
1953 – a conviction that the FOR thought deserving of expulsion.
Any queer person would be forgiven for taking a back seat in the fight for racial equality after this.
But undeterred, in 1956, he came across a young minster named Martin Luther
King Jr, who he taught the non-violent principles of Ghandism to in the lead up to the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott – the boycott in which Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. Rustin himself said, “Dr King’s view of non-violent tactics was almost non-existent when the boycott began.”
King’s views on homosexuality were progressive for the time, but fell short of anything we would view as acceptable today. In 1958, he advised a boy to seek out a psychiatrist to cure his “culturally acquired” condition, but showed none of the anger that so often accompanied homophobia in those days – and still does today.
But despite his relatively tolerant perspective, Bayard’s sexuality – or to be more accurate, society’s perception of his sexuality – threatened to destroy their working relationship. In 1960, fellow black civil rights activist Adam Clayton Powell Jr blackmailed Dr. King in an attempt to stop his and Bayard’s march outside of the Democratic National Convention, which took place in LA that year. Powell threatened to tell the press that the two organisers were lovers. The threat worked, and the march was called off.
It was yet another homophobic set back, but
“Bayard would stand up for people – even if they had mistreated
him – if it was a matter of principle.”
Bayard persevered with the cause. Two years later, he was recruited to organise what would become one of the most significant political moments in the civil rights movement. King pushed for Bayard to be publicly acknowledge for his vital organising work in the 1963 March on Washington For Jobs And Freedom, but the then leader of the NAACP pushed back. That same year, he appeared on the cover of Life magazine as one of the “leaders” of the march.
Bayard continued to fight for justice for black people, as well as for Jewish rights. And in 1986 Bayard testified in support of the New York State’s Gay Rights Bill, which would go on to outlaw discrimination in housing and employment. It was during his testimony that he said, “The new ‘n****rs’ are gays.” The declaration may have been short-sighted, but it articulated the struggles that LGBT+ people were going through at the time in regards to harassment and exclusion from institutions; just four years previous to this speech, Bayard was forced to adopt his partner Walter Naegle to receive some of the rights straight married couples enjoyed.
Bayard’s legacy was dimmed in part by society’s homophobia. But in 2013, former President Obama posthumously bestowed him with the highest award in America – the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As Bayard’s partner of 10 years Walter Neagle put it in 2013, “Bayard was willing to stand up for people – even though they had mistreated him – if it was a matter of principle.”
There would be no Beyoncé or Rihanna without Ma Rainey. In reality, you could replace either of those names with any black, female entertainer and it would make sense. As one of the first blues singers to make records, Ma Rainey blazed a trail that allowed for blues, RNB, disco and hip-hop – and every artist in those genres – to evolve.
Born Gertrude Pridgett in 1882, Ma began performing as a child. Her earlier years were spent in black minstrel shows. She first heard the blues at the turn of the 20th century and, by 1910, her and her husband Willie Rainey were a successful double act, known as “the assassinators of the blues”. And in 1923 she cut her first record, just three years after Mamie Smith became the first black woman ever to record.
Ma Rainey was as openly bisexual as you could be in the early 20th century and enjoyed a sex life that even the most liberated LGBT+ person today would be proud of; in 1925 she was arrested for engaging in a lesbian orgy and had to be bailed out by fellow music pioneer and bisexual Bessie Smith. It wasn’t the only time her relationships with women got her into trouble with the law.
Ma’s music painted a liberated picture of queer womanhood. She sang about aggressive, passionate sex (“Hey, hey, hey, daddy, let me shave ‘em dry”), openly fancying women (“Folks say I’m crooked, I didn’t know where she took it, I want the whole world to know”) and breaking gender roles (“Goin’ downtown to spread the news, State Street women wearin’ brogan shoes”).
Towards the end of the 1920s, the blues’ popularity began to wane, and Ma’s career waned too. But by the time she died in 1939, she had cemented her place as one of the pioneers of popular music and black female entertainment. She had laid the blueprint for the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé to centre female sexuality in their work, over 70 years before either were even born.