Critics of our community, even after decades of civil rights victories, still laugh at comparison of our struggle for civil rights with that of African Americans in the 1950s and ’60s. They see nothing similar to our struggle for justice as a minority group with that of our African American brothers and sisters.
The signal event of the civil rights movement for African Americans took place in Selma 50 years ago. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign in Selma was a long effort that resulted in “Bloody Sunday,” “Turnaround Tuesday,” and “Glory,” the title of the Golden Globe and Academy Award winning song from the film “Selma,” on the successful conclusion of the 50-mile five-day trek on March 25, 1965.
My late father, James G. Patterson, served with the Alabama National Guard at the final Selma march to Montgomery. It was a life changing experience for marchers, Guardsmen, reporters, and the world and free from physical violence if not hate speech. My father told me a white woman spit on his Guard uniform and called him a “white N-word.” Tragically, Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker and mother, was killed after the march.
Among the people my late father and thousands of other troops guarded were Dr. King, future Congressman John Lewis, future United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, out gay organizer Bayard Rustin, celebrated author James Baldwin, and activist Dick Gregory, many others.
Hate was in session in Selma when the famous march took place just like the hate that was in session at Stonewall Inn in 1969. The bar was raided by police one time too many and a riot ensued that sparked a movement that grows stronger every day in New York, in the country, and in the world.
For me, as a gay youth in the 1960s Alabama, I can argue down any critic or fool who denies the gay rights movement is just as important to the civil rights movement in our country as the historic events I saw unfold in the 1960s. The LGBT community does not have Selma envy; we have Selma pride.
To honor my late father, the Alabama Film Commission arranged for me to have a role as a reporter in the Oprah Winfrey production “Selma.” My scenes were filmed in Atlanta over Father’s Day weekend of 2014.
As I waited in my hotel for my costume fitting, makeup, 1960s era haircut, and eventual filming call, I became emotional and telephoned longtime friend Rev. Pat Bumgardner at the Metropolitan Community Church on West 36th Street in New York. I was grateful she took time from her schedule to pray with me over the phone.
One year later, I honored my late father again, this time in New York on Father’s Day weekend again, at the Metropolitan Community Church on West 36th Street. The occasion was the consecration of Rev. Pat Bumgardner to Bishop.
Jerrold Nadler, my former congressman before temporarily relocating to the West Coast, had two U.S. flags raised over the Capitol in Washington in honor of my late father on March 25, the 50th anniversary of the end of the successful Selma march.
Just like the small role I played in the film “Selma,” I played a small role in Bishop Pat’s consecration. I presented one of the Selma flags in honor of Bishop Pat’s personal and religious leadership for equality of LGBT people in New York and around the world through her global ministry.
I wanted Bishop Pat and the MCC congregation to know my father was in the struggle for LGBT civil rights in spirit just as he was in the struggle for civil and voting rights at Selma 50 years ago. I did this, in prayer and in memory of my late father, before I heard the term “Selma envy.”
Though I was not in New York during the Stonewall Inn riots and the birth of LGBT Pride, as soon as I graduated high school in the mid-1970s, I was Stonewall bound. I wanted to experience the sexual liberation I had read about and seen, mostly condemned, on TV where the movement was born.
New York in the 1970s was joyous and free for the time I was there. It was also about “smashing gay oppression” and being openly gay without fear. It was about being a part of a community struggling together for the promises the American flag made but were unfulfilled even until today.
I am convinced the pride I saw on the faces of African Americans in Alabama after Selma was alive in New York in the 1970s. I am in New York several times a month and LGBT pride is undiminished. In fact, we are close to having the freedom our flag has always promised.
The civil rights struggle of Stonewall and Selma are not just a part of my life. They are my life. My late father would be proud to know a United States flag honoring him rests among the LGBT congregation of MCC New York.
I hope to place the other “Selma Pride” U.S. flag in another historic LGBT location in New York by the end of this year. I promise to let readers know when and where that happens.
Human Rights Advocate Jim Patterson is a writer, speaker, and lifelong diplomat for dignity for all people. In a remarkable life spanning the civil rights movement to today’s human rights struggles, he stands as a voice for the voiceless. A prolific writer, he documents history’s wrongs and the struggle for dignity to provide a roadmap to a more humane future. Learn more at www.HumanRightsIssues.com
