Symposium: Race, Sexuality, and Urban Politics in the 1970s-90s Kwame Holmes, University of Colorado and Julio Capo, University of Massachusetts

October 17, 2013

Symposium: Race, Sexuality, and Urban Politics in the 1970s-90s

Kwame Holmes, University of Colorado

Declaring War on “Fascist Faggots:” Black Nationalisms and the Racial Geography of Gay Rights in Washington, D.C, 1974-1986

Julio Capó, University of Massachusetts

“If Blacks and Gays Would Unite, We’d Have the Strongest Political and Social Force in the Community”:  An Intersectional History of Miami’s Urban Crisis, 1978 – 1994

Historians are just beginning to explore the new forms of political coalitions and conflicts involving both racial and sexual minorities that emerged in the context of the urban crisis of the 1970s and 1980s.  These two talks suggest some of the directions this innovative work is taking.  Kwame Holmes examines the divergent careers of Rev. Douglas Moore and Marion Barry, black politicians whose tumultuous careers structured the terms of gay rights activism and progress in the District of Columbia. While both of them, at times, functioned as “homophobic” ciphers against which gay politics formed, Holmes explores how their stance on sexual rights shifted as they traversed the racial geography of power in the District.  Julio Capó, Jr. explores how gay activists in Miami engaged with local, national, and even international politics in their response to a violent race riot and the mass arrival of new Haitian and Cuban immigrants.   The activists framed these events as central to their movement, forging new coalitions in the face of deepening urban tensions.

Kwame Holmes is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. His current book project is entitled Chocolate to Rainbow City: Branding “Black” and “Gay” in the District of Columbia, 1953-1982.

Julio Capó, Jr. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently revising his manuscript on the history of queer Miami from 1940 to the present.