Through his popular Making Gay History podcast, journalist and author Eric Marcus is bringing LGBTQ+ history into the classroom. The episodes have attracted over seven million downloads from listeners worldwide since 2016, when Marcus and founding producer Sara Burningham launched the podcast to share his archival interviews with early LGBTQ+ civil rights activists.
Now, middle and high-school teachers are using lesson plans based on the podcasts to teach students about courageous LGBTQ+ Americans who’ve spoken out to make change in the face of discrimination, prejudice, and political persecution. “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; playwright 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. It funded fellowships for teachers to craft lessons for 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, who 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 Civil Rights Movement, including smear campaigns from the FBI and U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond.
Teachers are using the Rustin lesson in civil rights curricula for fifth graders and up. It centers around a rare 1986 interview, where he discussed how being openly gay affected his relationship with King and the movement. By confronting racial discrimination, Rustin 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 on Jeanne Manford, who founded PFLAG (originally known as 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 (then a liberal newspaper), which 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 joint interview with Morty.
Jeanne subsequently marched with Morty in the 1972 NYC Pride March, carrying a sign that read: “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children.” Her phone started ringing nonstop from parents wanting to talk, leading her to start an organization to support parents of LGBTQ+ children in their struggle for recognition and civil rights.
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 pointed out in their interview.
Through her willingness to stand up for her son and LGBTQ+ 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 both queer witnesses and victims.
Since it was not a “concerted genocide,” as for Jews, Marcus said, 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 to them, or they waited until the end of their lives — both because of the stigma and the trauma they experienced from torture and humiliation.
Marcus knew the series would be a daunting undertaking. Over more than three years, he and his small team located recorded survivor interviews and diaries in European and American archives, then produced the episodes featuring 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 Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, 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 said. “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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