Within the ’90s I used to be a founding member of the Black Historical past Membership in highschool, took Black historical past programs in school and labored within the minority affairs workplace in grad college, and but I didn’t know who Bayard Rustin was till seeing the 2003 documentary “Brother Outsider.”
That miseducation was not accidentally.
Rustin — the person who launched the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the ideas of nonviolence, the person who organized the March on Washington — was homosexual. Due to his sexual orientation, his contributions to the Civil Rights Motion weren’t typically retold. Because the documentary’s launch 20 years in the past, there was a concerted effort to vary that, most just lately culminating within the 2023 movie “Rustin” and the efficiency of awards season darling Colman Domingo within the title function.
A decade in the past, Domingo introduced Ralph Abernathy to life in Ava DuVernay’s “Selma,” which additionally included Rustin. In the present day he’s the primary Afro-Latino to be nominated for a lead actor Oscar. He’s the second out homosexual man to be nominated for portraying an out homosexual man.
This intersection has quietly performed a big half in Domingo’s profession: He appeared in 2020’s Oscar winner “Ma Rainey’s Black Backside,” concerning the lifetime of a queer Black lady, and in 2018’s Oscar winner “If Beale Road Might Speak,” primarily based on a ebook by James Baldwin, a homosexual Black man. For his work final 12 months, along with being Oscar-nominated for “Rustin,” Domingo is a part of the SAG-nominated forged of “The Shade Purple,” written by out Black creator Alice Walker.
Not too long ago it appears Domingo has been the individual to name when Hollywood acknowledges that illustration issues. Not as a result of it may well seize consideration and awards, however as a result of illustration displays the historical past and the connective tissue between the Black and LGBTQ+ communities.
For a few years, what little queer content material there was in mainstream America didn’t embody individuals of coloration. However we’ve lengthy been right here, standing on the intersection.
Walker’s “Purple” formed the Nineteen Eighties; Baldwin’s “Beale Road” was born within the Nineteen Seventies; Rustin got here to prominence within the Nineteen Sixties, however his work in civil rights dates again to the Forties; and Ma Rainey, the Mom of the Blues, was a queer Black lady born in 1886. That was the 12 months of the Carroll County Courthouse Bloodbath in Mississippi. Greater than 50 armed white males stormed a courtroom and opened fireplace on all of the Black individuals in attendance, killing greater than 20. The crime? A Black lawyer bringing fees towards a white individual. That was the world Rainey was born into. And in that world she brazenly had relationships with girls. I marvel eager about the bravery. Viola Davis was nominated for quite a few awards for bringing Rainey’s full life to audiences.
It’s vital to inform these tales on the intersection. Individuals have to know this historical past that’s been saved from all of us due to yesteryear’s attitudes. It’s vital that Hollywood develops the identical fascination with these hidden figures because it does with the lives of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and different white cultural icons whose biographies have been reexamined time and time once more. Now that queer storytelling has expanded past Stonewall and the HIV/AIDS disaster, my hope is that extra of the Rustins of historical past can be explored. The leisure worth is vital, the historical past much more so.
Maintaining warriors like Rustin out of historical past and out of storytelling was intentional. The push to appropriate that mistaken needs to be deliberate as nicely. It’s great that Domingo is in all places for his portrayal of Rustin. And it will be much more so if Rustin, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, have been in all places for Black Historical past Month.
His function in historical past isn’t but celebrated accurately. Possibly it by no means can be. That’s what occurs when contributions are minimized. Tales change into misplaced. Super acts of braveness are forgotten. Too many lives we must always honor go unknown.
This awards season, a light-weight has been shined on somebody we must always always remember. Maybe as a substitute of counting on sequels and reboots, Hollywood ought to flip to the tales nestled in our historical past that we must always know. The historical past that prejudice tried to maintain within the shadows ought to take middle stage.
