Morehouse College students Kendrick Long and Clay Allen say participating last
month in the Human Rights Campaign’s first conference for students from
historically black schools gave them ‘push and support’ to make change
at their campus. (Photo by R.O. Youngblood)
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By STEPHEN SINGERMAN
Friday, March 12, 2004
THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE of the first conference for gay students from historically
black colleges and universities was not lost on those who attended, says an official
from the Human Rights Campaign, which hosted the event.
“The students says over and over again that it was so amazing that finally
there was a conference specifically aimed at them as GBLT students at HBCUs,” says
Brandon Braud, HRC constituency outreach coordinator. “A lot of them
really expressed how they had felt so alone, felt so isolated on their campuses.”
The conference, held Feb. 27-28 at HRC’s headquarters in Washington,
D.C., drew 13 students from five colleges and universities. It also marked
the release of HRC’s “Resource Guide to Coming Out for African
Americans,” the first HRC publication to specifically address issues
of coming out unique to blacks.
Clay Allen, a junior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, attended the conference
with fellow Morehouse junior Kendrick Long.
“What the HRC helped us to do was to really create a very clear-cut
vision to help us hone down on some specific objectives and ways to make those
objectives take place,” Allen says.
ISSUES OF HOMOPHOBIA came to the forefront at the all-male, historically black
Morehouse campus in November 2002 when then-sophomore Aaron Price allegedly
beat fellow student Gregory Love with a baseball bat over a perceived sexual
advance. In June, Price was convicted of aggravated assault and aggravated
battery, but acquitted on hate crime charges.
Braud says the assault was of particular concern to the students at the conference,
who were “all very aware of what had happened at Morehouse.”
“They all strongly feel that we can’t let it get to that point
anymore,” he says. “If we start having these conversations now,
we can diffuse issues so that that type of violence doesn’t happen.”
Long says Love’s beating, which drew national media attention, was not “the
first time something like that had happened” at the school.
“We’ve had other incidents like that on campus, but they’ve
always been sort of brushed under the rug,” he says. “This was
the first time the administration really had to deal with it.”
Morehouse President Walter E. Massey publicly decried the assault and announced
plans later that month to form an internal Task Force on Diversity & Tolerance
and a blue-ribbon panel dedicated to fostering diversity and eliminating homophobia
on campus.
In April 2003, the Task Force issued a questionnaire to alumni seeking attitudes
on homosexuality. The survey drew sharp criticism for what Braud called the “deplorable” wording
of such questions as “To what degree do you think homosexuality is immoral?”
The findings of the survey, originally scheduled to be released in June, have
never been made public. Morehouse administrators could not be reached for comment
by press time.
Long says the climate on campus has not improved since the beating, and “the
same type of thing could happen again.”
Allen, who is spearheading efforts with Long to promote the school’s
fledgling Safe Space Program and create a gay student lounge, says the school’s
administration made strides in addressing the issues surrounding the beating
but that “more needs to be done.”
“I won’t say that they did nothing,” he says. “But
I don’t think the administration has been diligent enough with addressing
the issue, and what Kendrick and I are taking up the task to do is to make
sure that happens.”
LONG AND ALLEN returned to Morehouse from the HRC conference with “a
lot of empowerment, a lot of support,” Long says.
“One of the greatest things we took away was a lot of enthusiasm and
the idea that we can do this,” he says.
Braud, who says HRC plans to make the conference an annual event, says increasing
openness among students to issues of homosexuality is creating an “interesting
dynamic” on the campuses of historically black schools.
“Each year there’s more and more freshmen coming to these schools
that are already out, who are coming from high schools that had straight-gay
alliances,” he says. “You have students on these campuses that
are feeling empowered, that are saying they belong there and have every, every
right to be there and get their education and feel safe.”
Allen says complex issues of black masculinity make coming out especially
difficult among black men.
“Black gay people are becoming more vocal in their religious institutions,
in their educational institutions,” he says. “Even though gay people
have always been there, now these institutions are having to address it and
come to terms with it.”
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