ABSTRACT
Since the post-bellum era, Black civil rights figures of all stripes have emerged from communities around the United States to draw awareness toward the myriad social issues facing Black Americans. While many of those most recognizable figures were cisgender, heterosexual men, many others who were fundamental in quilting political organizations, rallying community resources for mass action, and sustaining intra-racial morale and solidarity through ongoing racist traumas were not. In particular, gender nonconforming legal scholar and activist Pauli Murray, presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm, and gay and trans rights activist Marsha P. Johnson were integral in radically rethinking justice in the United States. However, they are rarely acknowledged as such. In this chapter, I ask: how does the erasure of unrespectable, queer, gender nonconforming, and trans women and non-men shape our notion of feminism, rights, and activism? Moreover, what does their erasure imply about the role of the archive? I argue that these important figures, like Murray, Chisholm, and Johnson, are frequently excluded from the archives of Black civil rights history primarily because their nontraditional, anti-establishment methods coupled with their gender, sexuality, and physical embodiment do not comport with the class-based and gender-based expectations of mainstream social justice and political leaders. The archive, thus, functions not only as an artifact of historical time; it is also a site of contestation. As evidence, I rely on first-hand narratives and biography, and Black Feminist and Queer Theory, as I meditate on Murray’s, Chisholm’s, and Johnson’s movements in, out, and through the annals of history.
