September 16: We Didn't Wait for Acceptance — We Built Community
🏳️🌈 THIS DAY IN LGBTQ+ HISTORY
LGBTQ+ history isn't only found in major protests, Supreme Court decisions or Pride celebrations. Some of the most important chapters were written in the spaces LGBTQ+ people created for themselves, the political offices they entered when few believed they belonged there, the relationships they built before governments recognized them and the movements they created when existing movements failed to fully represent them.
September 16 brings several of those histories together, including an important chapter involving one of America's most influential Black gay civil-rights leaders, Bayard Rustin.
One of the stories connected to September 16 belongs to Steve Ostrow, born September 16, 1932, in Brooklyn, New York. Ostrow became a businessman, activist and important figure in gay New York culture. He is particularly remembered as the founder of the Continental Baths, a New York City bathhouse that became a famous gathering and entertainment space during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Looking at a bathhouse only through today's lens can make it easy to miss its historical significance. LGBTQ+ people at the time had far fewer places where they could openly meet, socialize and develop community. Gay establishments were frequently subjected to police scrutiny, discrimination and social stigma, making spaces created for LGBTQ+ people particularly important.
The Continental Baths eventually became much more than a place where gay men gathered. Entertainment became part of its identity, and performers appeared before audiences that mixed LGBTQ+ nightlife with New York's evolving entertainment culture. A young Bette Midler famously performed there, accompanied during part of that period by Barry Manilow. Behind those famous names, however, were thousands of ordinary LGBTQ+ people looking for somewhere they could exist around other people like themselves. Before social media, dating apps and large Pride festivals, bars, clubs, bathhouses, private parties and community organizations often served as the networks through which LGBTQ+ people found one another.
But when we talk about LGBTQ+ community spaces and movements, we also have to acknowledge that Black LGBTQ+ people were frequently navigating two struggles at the same time. Finding acceptance within predominantly Black spaces did not necessarily mean finding acceptance as an LGBTQ+ person, while entering predominantly white LGBTQ+ spaces did not mean racism suddenly disappeared. Black LGBTQ+ people therefore played an important role in challenging both racial discrimination and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.
That brings us to Bayard Rustin, one of the most important Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers in American history. Rustin was a brilliant strategist of the American civil-rights movement and the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He worked alongside major civil-rights leaders and spent decades organizing around nonviolence, labor rights, racial equality and human rights. Yet his homosexuality also affected how publicly he could operate within the movement. Rustin's sexuality was used against him politically, and at times he was pushed away from the public spotlight even while his organizing skills remained essential.
September 16 has a specific connection to Rustin's later LGBTQ+ advocacy. The September 16, 1986 issue of The Advocate featured a discussion of Black and White Men Together, an interracial gay organization working to confront racism and racial separation within gay communities. Rustin was presented as an important voice in the conversation, advocating coalition politics and arguing that meaningful progress required people to work across racial and social divisions. His presence in that conversation demonstrated something that Black LGBTQ+ activists had been saying for years: gay liberation couldn't seriously talk about equality while ignoring racism.
Rustin's story deserves special attention because Black LGBTQ+ history has too often been separated from Black history as though the two existed independently. They don't. Black LGBTQ+ people marched in civil-rights movements, created music, wrote literature, organized communities, fought during Stonewall-era activism, cared for people during the AIDS epidemic and helped build the modern LGBTQ+ movement. Rustin is one of the clearest examples of how these histories overlap.
And he was far from alone.
Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers including Audre Lorde, Stormé DeLarverie, Marsha P. Johnson, Barbara Smith, Sylvester and Essex Hemphill challenged the boundaries placed around race, gender and sexuality in very different ways. Lorde used poetry and essays to examine what it meant to exist simultaneously as Black, lesbian, woman and mother. Barbara Smith helped develop Black lesbian feminist organizing and co-founded the Combahee River Collective. Sylvester transformed popular music while living openly as a gender-nonconforming gay Black man. Essex Hemphill wrote unapologetically about Black gay life, racism, sexuality, masculinity and AIDS. Their contributions demonstrate that Black LGBTQ+ history has never been one story or one type of activism.
Stormé DeLarverie represents another important piece of that history. A biracial lesbian performer, drag king and community protector, DeLarverie became closely associated with the history of the Stonewall uprising. Accounts differ over precisely who initiated particular moments of resistance that night, which is why Stonewall shouldn't be reduced to a single person throwing a first punch or brick. What is clear is that DeLarverie became an enduring symbol of queer resistance and spent years protecting members of New York's lesbian community.
Marsha P. Johnson similarly became one of the most recognizable Black figures associated with the post-Stonewall gay-liberation movement. Johnson participated in the Stonewall resistance after arriving while it was underway and later co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR, with Sylvia Rivera. STAR worked to support homeless transgender and gender-nonconforming young people who were frequently rejected by their families and overlooked even within the broader gay-rights movement.
The stories of Rustin, Lorde, DeLarverie, Johnson, Smith, Sylvester and Hemphill remind us that Black LGBTQ+ people weren't standing on the sidelines watching history happen.
They were helping create it.
September 16 also carries the legacy of Richard A. Heyman, who died on September 16, 1994. Heyman became an important figure in LGBTQ+ political history when he served as mayor of Key West, Florida, during the 1980s. He was among the earliest openly gay mayors in the United States, serving during a period when the AIDS epidemic was devastating gay communities, misinformation surrounding HIV was widespread and openly LGBTQ+ political representation remained extremely limited.
Having an openly gay mayor during that period carried significance beyond one city. LGBTQ+ people were often portrayed as outsiders who existed beyond respectable public life. Heyman's political career presented a different picture: an openly gay man could participate in government, win elections and lead a community. His public life also unfolded during the AIDS crisis, when LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations were fighting both a deadly disease and the discrimination directed toward people living with HIV/AIDS. Heyman ultimately died from AIDS-related pneumonia on September 16, 1994.
September 16 also became important in the history of marriage equality in Canada. On September 16, 2004, a Manitoba court ruled that preventing same-sex couples from marrying violated equality protections under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The decision opened civil marriage to same-sex couples in Manitoba before nationwide marriage equality followed in Canada in 2005.
Among those connected to Manitoba's long struggle for recognition were Chris Vogel and Richard North, who had participated in a marriage ceremony at Winnipeg's First Unitarian Universalist Church in 1974. Their attempt to have that marriage officially registered was rejected. Thirty years separated that ceremony from Manitoba's 2004 marriage-equality decision. Their experience reminds us that LGBTQ+ couples didn't suddenly begin building committed relationships when governments legalized same-sex marriage. LGBTQ+ people had already been falling in love, creating homes, sharing finances, raising families and growing old together. The legal fight was about whether governments would recognize those relationships equally.
Taken together, September 16 tells a much larger story about community, race, leadership, visibility and equality. Steve Ostrow's story demonstrates why LGBTQ+ gathering spaces mattered. Richard Heyman's life shows the significance of openly LGBTQ+ political leadership. Manitoba's marriage decision represents the fight for legal recognition of LGBTQ+ families. And Bayard Rustin's September 16 connection forces us to remember something especially important: an LGBTQ+ movement that ignores Black LGBTQ+ history is telling an incomplete version of its own story.
Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers were there during the civil-rights movement.
They were there during the Harlem Renaissance.
They were there at Stonewall.
They were there during gay liberation.
They were there during the AIDS epidemic.
They were building organizations, writing books, creating music, organizing protests, protecting communities and demanding recognition.
Black LGBTQ+ history is not a side chapter of LGBTQ+ history. It is LGBTQ+ history.
Before society fully accepted us, WE BUILT COMMUNITY.
Before history books consistently acknowledged Black LGBTQ+ people, WE WERE ALREADY MAKING HISTORY.
Before openly LGBTQ+ politicians became common, WE STEPPED INTO LEADERSHIP.
Before marriage equality became law, WE BUILT FAMILIES ANYWAY.
And before Pride became a worldwide celebration, WE FOUND EACH OTHER.
The people who came before us didn't wait for acceptance before beginning their lives. They organized anyway. They created anyway. They loved anyway. They led anyway. And Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers did all of that while confronting the additional reality that neither the racial-justice movement nor the LGBTQ+ movement always made enough room for every part of who they were.
Their history deserves to be remembered in full.
🏳️🌈 Know the history. Honor the Black LGBTQ+ trailblazers. Remember the struggle. Protect the progress. Keep building the future.
I AM ME INC.
This Day in LGBTQ+ History is presented by I Am Me Inc. as part of our commitment to informing, empowering, connecting and celebrating LGBTQ+ people and our Allies.
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Our History. Our Voices. Our Legacy.
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