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Subject: Remarks by NBGLLF Exec. Dir. (long)

"WAITING TO EXHALE"
Remarks Prepared for Delivery
at the National Black Lesbian & Gay Conference
February 17, 1996 (Dallas, Texas)
By Keith Boykin

 Good Evening.  Thank you very much for joining us here tonight.  I would
like to begin by acknowledging some of the hard-working souls who have
labored so long to make this conference a success.  I want to tell you the
truth about this conference.  Two months ago, we weren't even sure we were
having this conference.  We had no hotel, no schedule, no presenters, no
speakers, no vendors, nothing.  Because the Leadership Forum is undergoing a
major restructuring, we weren't even sure we could afford to have this
conference.  An eight-year tradition was about to come to an end.  But thanks
to the hard work and dedication of many people, we are gathered here today in
Texas at the Ninth Annual National Black Lesbian and Gay Conference.  
 I don't want anybody to mislead you.  Putting on a conference is always hard
work.  It requires nearly a year of advance planning and thought, and even
then last minute developments, unexpected snow storms, and other crises can
throw things off schedule.  But if you think that's hard, putting on a
conference in two months is an amazing challenge.  So I want to begin tonight
by saluting those individuals who have labored so diligently to make this
event happen.  I want to thank the Conference Co-Chairs Vallerie Wagner,
Gregory May, and Steve Walker.  I want to thank the Dallas Co-Chairs Nadine
Rawls and Ronald Jefferson.  I want to thank the AIDS Prevention Team staff
in Los Angeles.  And I want to thank all those volunteers, including members
of the board of directors of the Leadership Forum, who staffed the tables,
monitored the workshops, planned the schedules, secured the rooms, arranged
the entertainment, located the volunteers, and led committees to plan this
weekend.  Thanks to all of you.
 This is only my third conference of the Black Gay & Lesbian Leadership
Forum, but already I feel like a veteran.  I hate to sound nostalgic, but my
first conference only two years ago in Secaucus, New Jersey seems like
ancient history.  That was back in the day when the Democrats controlled
Congress.  Back in the day when white people still loved O. J. Simpson.  Back
in the day when no one brought a cell phone to the awards banquet.  And back
in the day when Michael Jackson was still single.  Well, I guess some things
haven't changed much.  
 I've been asking everybody to do mental exercise routines this weekend, and
I want to continue that tradition right now.  I call this next exercise
"Waiting to Exhale."  So put down your glasses, forks and knives, papers and
pens, and business cards for a moment.  Grab the hands of the people sitting
next to you, and on my count, take a deep, deep, deep breath.  I want
everybody to join in and inhale.  Ready, inhale, 1-2-3-4, and now slowly
exhale, 1-2-3-4.  Keep you hands together for one more time, and I want you
to concentrate.  I want you to feel the tension leaving your body.  Absorb
the positive energy of your neighbor.  Experience the collective warmth and
the power of this room.  Ready, inhale the strength, the hope, the optimism.
 And now slowly exhale the anxiety, the frustration, the doubt, the fear.
 You can let go now.
  This exercise is important because I want to talk to you tonight about
waiting to exhale. . . Not the Terry Macmillan book or the hit movie, but I
want to talk about the thought. Waiting to Exhale.  And I want to start by
recalling a moment from Scripture.  I'm not concerned about what faith you
are, if you are Jew, Gentile, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Spiritualist or
Agnostic.  It matters not if you attend First, Second or Third Baptist
Church, Mosque #19, 20 or 21.  I want to talk to you about faith.  Not only
the religious type of faith, but the faith we have in our brothers and
sisters, the faith we have in our families and friends, the faith we have in
our communities, the faith we have in our hearts and our souls, and most
importantly, the faith we have in ourselves.
 Recall in the book of Luke, chapter 24, when a group of women came to the
tomb of Jesus, and they found the stone rolled away from the grave.  And they
entered in, and found not the body of Jesus.  And it came to pass, as they
were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining
garments.  And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth,
the two men said unto them, why seek ye the living among the dead? . . . Why
seek ye the living among the dead?  
 I want to talk about that tonight in the context of "Waiting to Exhale"
because when I read the book and when I saw the movie, I saw strong,
beautiful African Americans sitting around, standing around waiting for
someone, not just anyone, but someone to come galloping down the streets of
downtown Phoenix on a horse and sweep them off their feet.  And many of us
know that feeling.  We know what it's like to go out week after week, to club
after club, bar after bar, play after play, even city after city, desperately
seeking Mr. or Ms. Right, or both.  We're tired of holding our breath.  We're
tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop in our relationships.  Or
sometimes, as civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer said, you're just sick
and tired of being sick and tired.  So we have a desire to settle down.  We
just want find that special someone, who's gonna make us feel allright, who's
gonna make us feel special.  You know, sometimes you just want somebody to
treat you like you deserve to be treated. 
 Believe me, I understand that feeling.  But when it comes to our community,
our people, we cannot just sit around and wait to exhale.  We can't wait for
Prince or Princess Charming to come riding in and save us.  We have to save
ourselves.  As it says in the Bible, "the harvest is past, the summer is
ended, and yet, we are not saved."  You see, we can't wait for the NAACP, the
SCLC, GMHC, the CDC, CBC or HRC, we have to see for ourselves.  Because
nobody, nobody can free us but ourselves.  And nobody can free us from
ourselves but ourselves.  We've gotta pull ourselves together.  We've gotta
stop waiting for a savior to appear.  We can't wait for another Martin Luther
King, Jr..  We can't wait for another Harriet Tubman.  We can't wait for
another Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey.  
 Dr. King himself said, "I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the
stinging darts of segregation to say 'wait.'"  but we cannot afford that
luxury today.  Not when Pat Buchanan wants to put us in jail and Pat
Robertson wants to put us in hell.  Not when Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms
and Strom Thurmond and Bob Dornan are making the laws of this land.  Not when
Clarence Thomas is supposed to represent the opinions of black America.  Not
when Bob Dole wants to abandon affirmative action.  Not when 435 mostly white
men in an ivory-towered dome want to micromanage women's bodies when they
can't even manage the body of Congress.  Not when the state of Texas wants to
police the bedrooms of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men.  Not when Congress is
poised to eliminate or reduce every major initiative of the Great Society and
the New Deal.  No, mam or sir, we cannot wait.  It's time to tell Newt and
the boys to get your petty, little money-grubbing, budget-slashing,
race-baiting, gay-bashing hands off of Medicaid, off of Medicare, off of Head
Start, off of Pell Grants, and off of Ryan White.
 That's why we can't wait.  The National Black Gay & Lesbian Leadership Forum
is not your savior.  The NAACP is not your savior.  The National Gay &
Lesbian Task Force is not your savior.  They are well-intentioned
organizations, but they cannot function if you don't help them.  
 This week, the NAACP will be swearing in Congressman Kweisi Mfume as its new
Executive Director.  But let me tell you something, Kweisi Mfume is not
Moses.  Barney Frank is not Moses.  And you already know, that I'm nowhere
near being Moses.  I did not accept this job expecting to lead black gay and
lesbian people out of the desert and into the promised land.  Leadership is
not just about running an organization, running up bills, or running our
mouths.  Leadership is about getting your act together and then helping other
people do the same.  Leadership is about service.  
 Jesus said to his disciples, "She that is greatest among you shall be your
servant."  In one of his last sermons, Dr. King explained what Jesus meant.
 Jesus was saying that anybody can be great because anybody can serve.  The
great leaders of human history were not immaculately conceived; they were
born of human parents.  They had faults.  They were not perfect.  But when
they saw a worthy challenge, they seized it.  They accepted the
responsibility.  They knew, in the immortal words of Dr. Calvin Rolark, "If
it is to be; it's up to me."  If it is to be; it's up to me.
 Where would South Africa be today if an ordinary citizen, a little-known
boxer, named Nelson Mandela had decided to wait for a savior before he took
arms against injustice?  Where would the lesbian and gay community be if a
group of black and Latino drag queens in Greenwich Village decided to wait
for a savior instead of fighting back against the police during a routine
raid at a small gay bar called Stonewall in 1969?  Where would the black
community be if an obscure seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama named Rosa Parks
had decided on a cold December evening in 1955 to wait for a savior instead
of refusing to give up her seat on the bus when the driver asked her to move
for a white man?  Where would this nation be if ordinary people throughout
its history sat around waiting to exhale instead of taking a deep breath,
exhaling their fears, and then charging forward to challenge the racist,
sexist, misogynist, classist, homophobic, sexphobic, AIDS-phobic,
transgenderphobic status quo?  Where would we be?
 I submit to you, that we would be in the same graveyard where Mary Magdalene
stumbled across Jesus while looking for the living among the dead.  We spend
too much time wallowing in our own misery, lamenting the absence of the
leaders of yesterday but all the while betraying their spirits by failing to
carry forward the torches they passed onto us.  Audre Lorde did not expect
that her message would disappear when the messenger was gone.  James Baldwin
did not expect that his words would evaporate into thin air without provoking
future generations to carry forth the struggle.  And surely, Barbara Jordan
did not wish that the meaning of her life would be forgotten by those
well-intentioned admirers who would deify her in death without carrying on
her legacy in the work of their lives.
   What would the late Rev. James Cleveland have said if he knew that a day
would come when he did not have to live his life in the closet?  Imagine the
expression on the face of Benjamin Banneker, a black gay man, if he could
have seen a gathering like this one when he was laying out the plans for
Washington, DC 200 years ago.  Bessie Smith, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale
Hurston and Langston Hughes would be amazed if they could see that black
homosexuality and bisexuality were not merely something to hide in a Harlem
speakeasy but something to celebrate in a Dallas hotel room.  
 All these individuals would want you to tell the stories of our people
throughout herstory.  They would want you to remember how far you have come.
 Before we were African American, or black, or negroes, or even colored, when
we were just plain "niggers."  Before we were the transgender, lesbian,
bisexual, gay and questioning community, when we were just homosexuals, or
when we were Uranists or when we had a little sugar in our tanks, or when
were simply fags and dykes.  You don't have to go back to Socrates,
Aristophanes, Euripides or Sophocles to find the history of lesbians and
gays.  You can find it in the black community as well.
 But what is the point of knowing history if you don't learn from it?  What
is the point of remembering the struggles of the past if you do not continue
the struggle into the future?
 The black lesbians and gay men from the past would look at us today and see
reflections of themselves in us.  They would see their spirits alive and
immortal in the group of people here tonight.  And they would say, why seek
ye the living among the dead?  You won't find Audre Lorde or Bayard Rustin
buried underneath the ground in a cemetery.  Their presence is greater than
any human form can contain.  Bayard and Audre and Essex and Dannitra are
living inside of all of us.
 If they could be here tonight, they would all look at this gathering  and
say, my, how far you have come.  When you think back about the people who
were in Los Angeles at the very first conference and reflect on those who
were there who have passed away, you must realize how proud they would be of
what you have done.  Who would have thought that a small, ragtag group of
black lesbians and gay men in Los Angeles could create a national black
lesbian and gay organization?  Who would have thought that we would have an
Internet Web Site?  Who would have thought that we would ever march down
Pennsylvania Avenue into a sea of one million black men, while chanting and
carrying signs that said "black by birth/gay by God/proud by choice"?  Who
would have thought that that small L.A.-based organization could create a
national board of directors and hire an executive director?  Who would have
thought that a conference would grow into an organization with an Aids
Prevention Team?  Who would have thought that the organization would grow
into a movement, that the conference would grow into a tradition?  Who would
have imagined these wild and crazy ideas at the first conference in Los
Angeles?
 I know how far we've come because I know how far I've come from the time the
Forum started in 1988.  I remember my senior year in college when a woman at
a fraternity party asked me to dance, and I did.  And I remember the horror
and shock I felt when after our dance, she penetrated right through me and
asked me if I was gay.  And I said "no."  I remember when I did finally come
out in school, and I thought I was the only black gay man on earth.  Never in
my dreams could I have imagined that a day would come when I would be
standing in a room, as I am tonight, with my sister, my mom and her husband,
and hundreds of beautiful black gay men and lesbians.  When I think back to
the beginning, I know and appreciate the work of this organization.
 Look how far we've come from last year.  Look how far we've come from 1988.
 We've come this far, by faith.  But we have farther to go, by faith.
 This weekend is not just an opportunity to catch a special holiday sale.
 This is a weekend to reconnect, to charge our batteries as we go back to our
communities.  The road ahead is long and bumpy.  But your response to that
news must not be to surrender to negativity.  We have to end the petty
backstabbing and rumor mongering.  We have to stop destroying each other, and
start building each other.  We cannot give in to the temptation of defeatism.
 We must fight against it.  And we don't fight against it by merely pointing
our fingers without lifting a finger to do something constructive.  We are
co-conspirators in our destruction if we blame other people and don't claim
responsibility ourselves.
 We have too much work to do to be fighting one other.  We have too much work
to do not to be supporting one another.  We need to build alliances with the
NAACP, SCLC, Children's Defense Fund, National Black Women's Political Caucus
and others.  We need to create a public policy arm that allows us to be
involved in the important debates of the day.  We need to increase the
visibility of black lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people in
the media.  We need to register thousands of our people to vote in the 1996
elections.  We need to launch an anti-racism campaign to confront racial bias
in the gay white community.  We need to arrange a national black church
conference on homosexuality so that we can stop the conspiracy of silence and
lies in the black church.  We need to fully fund the Call to Resist campaign
so we can stop the radical right from intruding into the black church.  We
need to create an information network of every black lesbian or gay
organization, business, publication or nightclub throughout the country.  We
need to establish a national job bank so we can connect employers with
employees in a nationwide database.  We need to establish a permanent
leadership training school to continue the work of this conference
year-round.  We need to be involved and supporting the lesbian and gay
students at historically black colleges and universities.  We need to stop
complaining about the absence of people of color in the mainstream gay
movement and start using our resources to locate and identify available black
lesbians and gay men in every state of the union who can be plugged into
their campaigns.  I appreciate the work of HRC, NGLTF, Lambda, the Victory
Fund and GLAAD, but I don't want to give them or anybody else any more
reasons why they can't find more people of color to be in their  work and in
their media campaigns and on their staffs.
 We can't do any of these things without your support.  We can't do them
without your energy and skills and contacts.  And we absolutely can't do them
without your money.  Yes, I said your money.  We need to talk about this
money thing.  Because you can't eat Filet Mignon on a Burger King budget.
 You can't tackle all the problems I've mentioned tonight on the budget we
have now.  When other organizations tried to do too many things at once, they
failed.  Their eyes were bigger than their checking accounts.  So many great
ideas have been lost and so much time wasted because we did not support our
own.  The Third World Conference of Lesbians & Gay Men from the 1970s and the
National Coalition of Black Lesbians & Gay Men from the 1980s no longer
exist.  They went out of business.  We cannot allow the National Black Gay &
Lesbian Leadership Forum to do the same in the 1990s.
 Scripture says, "where there is no vision, the people perish."  So the
vision I call for is a revolution.  Not a revolution of guns and knives, but
a revolution in our thinking.  A revolution that teaches us to stop waiting
for the next great black hope and start creating greatness and hope among our
black lesbian and gay people.
 Take a deep breath.  Exhale your fears, and remember the words: If it is to
be; it's up to me.  If it is to be; it's up to me.