Through his popular Making Gay History podcast, journalist and author Eric Marcus is bringing gay history into the classroom. The episodes have attracted over seven million downloads from listeners worldwide since 2016, when Marcus and executive producer Sara Burningham launched the podcast to share his archival interviews with early LGBTQ+ civil rights activists.
Middle- and high-school teachers are using lesson plans based on the podcasts to teach students about courageous LGBTQ+ Americans who’ve spoken out in the face of discrimination, prejudice, and political persecution to make change. “It’s a way of unearthing aspects of American history which have not been taught – and placing them in their rightful place in the classroom,” Marcus said.
The 14 lessons – with more in the works – feature Black civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, the architect of the 1963 March on Washington; PFLAG founder Jeanne Mansford; trans icon Sylvia Rivera; screenwriter and activist Lorraine Hansbury; and Leonard Matlovich, a U.S. Air Force sergeant who outed himself as gay in 1975 to challenge the military’s ban on homosexuals.
To get LGBTQ+ civil rights history into schools, Making Gay History partnered two years ago with the nation’s largest teacher’s union, the National Education Association (NEA). It funded fellowships for teachers to craft the lessons being used in history, social studies, English, and even psychology curricula, with support from the podcast’s education lead Mary Hendra.
“The response has been incredible,” Marcus said. “The teachers are so eager and interested in the material – and not just the LGBTQ+ ones. They’re interested in teaching full, unvarnished American history.”
Unsung Civil Rights Hero
The most popular lesson, and one of Marcus’s favorites, is about Rustin, which teachers are using in their civil rights curriculums for fifth graders and up. Rustin mentored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and organized the landmark March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which pushed President Lyndon Baines Johnson to sign the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law.
“Almost no one knows who he is,” Marcus said. “He was gay and open about it, which had everything to do with why he remained in the background.” Rustin faced homophobic bigotry both inside and outside the movement, including smear campaigns from the FBI and Sen. Strom Thurmond.
The lesson uses a rare 1986 interview from the Rustin podcast, where he discussed how being openly gay affected his relationship with King and the Civil Rights Movement. By confronting racial discrimination, he tells a Washington Blade reporter, “I also was preparing myself with putting up with what I had to do as a gay person.”
President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal for Freedom in 2013, which his longtime partner, Walter Naegle, accepted. “For decades, this great leader, often at Dr. King’s side, was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay,” Obama said. “Today, we honor Bayard Rustin’s memory by taking our place in his march towards true equality, no matter who we are or who we love.”
PFLAG
Another popular lesson about Jeanne Manford, who founded PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), teaches high school students about “upstanders” – people who take action when they see a problem. Manford’s 21-year-old son, Morty, was brutally beaten up at a gay rights protest in 1972 by the head of the NYC firefighter’s union. The soft-spoken Queens elementary school teacher was so furious that she dashed off an outraged letter to the New York Post (a liberal newspaper then) that concluded: “I have a homosexual son and I love him.”
After her letter’s publication, Jeanne, her husband Jules, and Morty appeared on talk shows in New York City and nationally. “We were the only people who were willing to go public. We felt that it was a way of educating the public,” she told Marcus in a 1989 interview with Morty. Marcus said many of the early LGBTQ+ rights activists he interviewed, like the Manfords, were inspired by the Black Civil Rights Movement. “This was simply bringing into the discussion a new civil rights perspective,” Morty told Marcus in the interview.
Soon after, Jeanne marched with Morty in the 1972 NYC Pride March, carrying a sign that read: “Parents of Gays: United in Support for Our Children.” Her phone started ringing nonstop from parents wanting to talk, leading her to start PFLAG to support the gay liberation struggle. Through her willingness to stand up for her son and gay rights, Jeanne Manford changed lives. With over 550,000 members, PFLAG is helping to create a world where every LGBTQ+ person is “Safe, Celebrated, Empowered, Loved.”
The Nazi Era
Standing up and taking action is a timely message right now, Marcus said. The current season of Making Gay History confronts a dark era in history for LGBTQ+ people – the Nazi Era from 1933 through the end of World War II. Over 12 episodes, Marcus narrates “how the walls closed in on LGBTQ people after Hitler came to power through the recorded and written memories” of queer witnesses and victims.
It was not a “concerted genocide,” as for Jews, Marcus said, so the Nazi persecution of LGBTQ+ people hasn’t received the same attention. What’s more, many LGBTQ+ survivors of Nazi prisons and concentration camps never divulged what happened, or they waited until the end of their lives, both because of the stigma and the trauma from torture and humiliation.
Marcus knew it would be a daunting undertaking. Over more than three years, he and his 10-person team located survivor interviews in European and American archives, interviewed additional survivors, and produced the difficult oral histories. “Some of the material resonated so profoundly. It sounded so current – and people stood up, even though they were risking their lives,” he said.
The series has attracted enormous interest from community and corporate groups, museums, and universities alike. Just recently, Marcus presented at the Stonewall National Museum Archives & Library in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.
“My goal is to speak in as many places as possible about raising the alarm about what happens when authoritarian regimes come to power,” Marcus says. “This series’ key lesson is: To do nothing is not an option, because we know what can happen when the guardrails are demolished.”
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