The "Letter From Huey"
by Rawley Grau
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| Huey P. Newton (bottom right) at a press conference. |
| photo courtesy of AFP |
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In the months following the Stonewall riots of June 1969, the fledgling
gay liberation movement sought to form alliances with other progressive
movements. But New Left groups were usually no less homophobic than the
rest of the country.
A breakthrough came, however, in the summer of 1970, when Black Panther
Party leader Huey P. Newton announced support for gay and lesbian equality.
His statement was the first pro-gay pronouncement to come from the black
civil rights movement.
"A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the
Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements," published August 21,
1970, in the party's newspaper, was as much a reprimand to fellow Panthers
for their homophobia and sexism as it was a call for coalition.
"As we all know," Newton wrote, "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're afraid we might be homosexual; and we
want to hit the woman or shut her up because we're afraid that she might
castrate us." The remedy, he said, is to "gain security in ourselves and
therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people."
Admitting that the party had failed to consider gay issues, Newton observed:
"Homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society.
Maybe they might be the most oppressed people in the society."
Newton also addressed what had become a particularly sore point for gay
activists: "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."
The relationship between gay activists and the Black Panthers, who advocated
violent revolution as the only way to win justice for African Americans, had
been a stormy one. The Gay Liberation Front's support of the Panthers had
already caused a split among gay activists, but even the GLF was vocal in its
criticism of the Panthers' homophobia. A few months before Newton's
statement, at a rally to demand the release of the incarcerated Panther
leader Bobby Seale, the GLF's Jim Fouratt called on radical leftists to
stop using the word "faggot" to describe their enemies and to confront their
own bias against gays.
Another speaker at the rally was the gay French writer Jean Genet, who
had come to the United States to win support for the Panthers among American
intellectuals. Like Fouratt, he objected to their use of the word "faggot."
According to his biographer Edmund White, Genet's comments are what prompted
Newton's statement on gay liberation.
The promise of Newton's statement was not immediately borne out. Both male
and female GLF-ers later attended the Panther-sponsored Revolutionary
People's Constitutional Convention. Although the gay men were generally
positive about the event, the lesbians found the experience
disheartening and felt that women's issues were not being taken seriously.
Significantly, Newton made no mention in his plenary address of either gay
or women's liberation.
Still, the historic nature of the "Letter from Huey" should not be
discounted. As lesbian writer Jewelle Gomez has noted, "The importance
of Newton's statement lay not in the groundswell of support that it failed
to promote, but in its simple recognition that alliances must be formed if
social justice is to be attained."
More than a dozen years would pass before a black civil rights leader would
again consider forming a coalition with gay rights groups.
Rawley Grau has won four Vice Versa Awards for his writing on gay and
lesbian culture. He can be reached at GayNestor@aol.com.
Suggested Reading:
Deitcher, David, ed., 1995. The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay
Politics in America Since Stonewall. New York: Scribner.
Jones, Charles E., ed., 1998. The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered).
Baltimore: Black Classic Press.
Teal, Donn, 1971. The Gay Militants: How Gay Liberation Began in America,
1969-1971. New York: Stein and Day (republished, New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1995).
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