Happy 99th Birthday Bayard Rustin!

Today is not only St Patrick's Day, but the 99th birthday of civil rights icon Bayard Rustin, who was born in West Chester, PA on this date in 1912.

Rustin was one of our trailblazing leaders who was an advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr on the principles of non violence, helped Dr. King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, a behind the scenes leader in the Civil Rights Movement, a trustee on University of Notre Dame's Board of Regents in the early 70's, a founder of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and a human rights and election monitor for Freedom House.

He not only was a civil rights movement hero, Rustin was also a trailblazing leader in the gay rights movement.   He testified on behalf of New York's Gay Rights Bill and said this in his 1986 speech the 'New Niggers Are Gays':

 Today, blacks are no longer the litmus paper or the barometer of social change. Blacks are in every segment of society and there are laws that help to protect them from racial discrimination. The new "niggers" are gays. . . . It is in this sense that gay people are the new barometer for social change. . . . The question of social change should be framed with the most vulnerable group in mind: gay people

He died on August 24, 1987 due to a perforated appendix.

According to the New York Times, Rustin once wrote that 'The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.

Feel you on all of that Brother Rustin.    Hope we are throwing a serious party for your Centennial birthday next year or the planning for it is in the works.. 

And for you haters, especially in the African-American community who ignorantly assert that gay peeps have 'done nothing for our people', the life of Bayard Rustin is a powerful rebuke to that bull feces.

Happy birthday, Bayard Rustin.

Barbara Jordan's 75th Birthday

It would stand to reason that a trailblazing political figure like Barbara Charline Jordan would be born on George Washington's birthday.    One of the things I have lamented about Texas' slide into conservafool madness is that we haven't produced national political leaders with her stature ever since.


As you longtime readers know, I have much love for Barbara Jordan and a lot of my attitudes toward government were formed by watching her actions and listening to her eloquent words as she represented me as a Texas state Senator and later in Congress .

If you ever hear me mention the letters WWBD, she's who I'm referring to when I say it. 

Every time I hear somebody say there's no such thing as an honest politician, Barbara Jordan's memory comes to my mind when I tell that person that's bull feces.  Barbara Jordan was so ethically rock solid that when Ann Richards became the governor in 1990, she appointed her as the head of her Ethics office that she established in the wake of the scandal ridden Clements administration 

Yesterday would have been her 75th birthday, and I'm pausing for a moment to think about her remarkable life.   She was the first African American woman and first elected to the Texas State Senate since Reconstruction.   The first Southern Black woman ever elected to Congress.   She served on the Judiciary Committee during the Watergate Hearings.   The memorable 1992 DNC keynote speech.  She was considered by Jimmy Carter as a vice presidential running mate in 1975 and by President Clinton for a seat on the US Supreme Court.





Even in death she was a trailblazer when in 1996 she became the first African American to be interred in the Texas State Cemetery.

There are some of us who still refer to the 18th Congressional District, the one currently held by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and once held by Mickey Leland, the man who succeeded her as 'Barbara's Seat'.

Texas, and the nation could stand to have more leaders like her. 

Colonel Sanders 120th Birthday

It escaped most people's attention and I'm surprised the nekulturny media pimps at PETA didn't release another one of their anti-KFC screeds, but today was the 120th anniversary of the birth of one of my fellow Kentucky Colonels, Harlan David Sanders.

'The Colonel' at age 65 took a $105 Social Security check, a sixth grade education and a chicken recipe and parlayed it into a global food empire. Until his 1980 death at age 90, he traveled 250,000 miles a year visiting KFC restaurants worldwide.

For years, he carried the secret Original Recipe in his head and the spice mixture in his car as he drove coast to coast visiting franchisees.

By 1976, he was ranked as the world’s second most recognizable celebrity behind only heavyweight champion (and fellow Kentuckian) Muhammad Ali. I lived down the street from the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville where he is buried.

I'll have to make a pilgrimage to my local KFC in his honor.

Happy Birthday Sylvia!

Today is the birthday of the mother of the trans rights movement as we call her, Sylvia Rae Rivera.

She was born in New York City on this date in 1951 to parents of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan extraction, and was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance.

She also founded with her friend Marsha P. Johnson STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group focused on helping homeless young street transwomen.

She was a Stonewall Veteran in addition to being a loud and persistent voice railing against the attempts by the gay community to erase and exclude transpeople, people of color and low income people from the nascent TBLG movement and civil rights legislation.

I had the pleasure of meeting her in May 2000 and having a long conversation with her about some of those events.

We also agreed to disagree about Lyndon B. Johnson.

Sylvia lost her battle with cancer in February 2002, but her memory will live on through the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the MCC's Sylvia Rivera Food Pantry named in her honor.

In 2005, the corner of Christopher and Hudson streets in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood where she organized much of her activism was renamed "Rivera Way" in her honor.

MAGNET also had some commentary about the Mother of the Trans Rights Movement as well.