“I was angry at the National Gay Task Force,” Mr. Jones said, “And at the time I was young enough, and naïve enough, to believe that one could just pick up a pen, write a letter and ask for a meeting and that’s what I did. I wrote a few letters, made a few calls, and finally got an invitation to meet with White House officials. My guess is that our presence and leadership at the March on Washington and the Third World Conference gave us some credibility; it certainly gave us media coverage, that we otherwise did not have.”

Mr. Jones says NCBG was careful not to repeat the mistake of the Task Force and actively sought to include other Gays of color in the meeting. “NCBG was the only non-White national organization at the time, but we had done an extensive and successful outreach to other organizations, communities and persons of color. So it was not hard to expand our network.”

To Mr. Jones that meeting twenty-five years ago stands out as a particularly proud moment.

“I wore a white suit to go to the White House and meet with the White folks! Perhaps this doesn’t sound like much now, but to the founders, all of whom were in that room, it was a high point of our activism.”

The following year, in October of 1980 NCBG met in Philadelphia to formally incorporate a national organization out of a growing but still “loose affiliation” of groups in seven cities.

“The coming about of NCBG was to establish a national presence of Black Lesbian/Gay leadership and to assure that Black voices were heard when Lesbian /Gay civil rights issues were addressed,” Mr. Jones said.

Official chapters were in Philadelphia; New York City; Norfolk, VA; Minneapolis; New Orleans; Atlanta; Chicago; Portland; ST. Louis;San Francisco; and Boston. In 1984 NCBG changed its name to the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays (NCBLG). But behind the scenes there were problems. Despite the enthusiasm of the early years the organizers were discovering that managing a national organization, maintaining membership and recruiting new leadership was no easy task. And Gil Gerald’s early concerns about organizational skills would become reality.

“We had great visions for solving some of the problems of the world. Ending every form of oppression you can think of and networking with local groups all over the nation,” Mr. Jones said. “But for the most part, we lacked the know-how and skills to generate the resources needed to sustain the organization. And while mainstream White Gay and Lesbian organizations wanted our involvement, few offered support in what we needed most: Fund development and organizational development.”

Mr. Jones also faults the group’s failed efforts to find new leadership as a key factor in the stalling of NCBLG – a situation he says had more to do with the times than NCBLG’s ability to groom new leadership.

“In the era in which NCBG/NCBLG operated, it was difficult to find any person who would be willing to head up a Black Gay/Lesbian civil rights organization,” Mr. Jones said. “This was a period when it was still risky in terms of one’s employment, family relationships and community presence to be “out” and “vocal” about Gay rights.”

As a result Mr. Jones says NCBLG had to rely on the same small pool of people who were worked to the point of burnout with little or no remuneration.

“NCBLG never had a strong funding base. We burned out our leaders by poorly paying, and sometimes not paying them at all. We expected them to do the impossible with little or nothing. Gil Gerald did the best job of bringing money in from foundations, grants and contracts but our attempts to sustain ourselves through chapter and individual membership fees were failures.”

The organization limped along and by the time NCBLG reached its 10th year, on its face it looked to be a strong organization. The board of directors included a number of high profile, experienced activists including, Audre Lorde, Carl Bean, Barbara Smith and Joseph Beam. It listed a string of chapters that stretched coast-to-coast and said organizing efforts were under way in fourteen new cities. But behind the façade was an organization in disarray. Gil Gerald left the organization in 1986. Then, on the heels of the tenth anniversary celebration, executive director Renee McCoy announced she was resigning her position and returning to her native Detroit. According to Mr. Jones the remaining board members were in deep denial about the continued viability of the organization
.
“When Renee McCoy left NCBLG as executive director and returned to Detroit we should have closed the organization then,” he said. “Some board members just refused to acknowledge that it was time to say good-bye. Instead the board stayed in place, with no executive director, and tried to continue to function with Angela Bowen of Boston as board chair.”

The organization hobbled along in that state for a short while till, in stark contrast to the excitement and explosive energy that accompanied its founding and early development. . . NCBLG just ceased to exist.

“There was never an announcement that informed folks that NCBLG had officially closed its doors,” Mr. Jones says. “We just faded away. Some board members refused to acknowledge that it was time to say good-bye but folks just burned out and faded away.”

Presently there are no national Black Lesbian and Gay groups in the manner of NCBLG. The Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum (BGLLF), which emerged on the national scene in 1987, shut its doors last year. Occasionally one hears talk of some group or other, on one coast or the other, talking about starting “a new national organization,” as if easily done as said. But national organizations require a tremendous amount of effort and money to start, run and maintain and so far it’s come to nothing more than wishful thinking.

But, funding aside, Jones feels the Black GLBT organizations of the future won’t have to face one major impediment that plagued NCBLG, a lack of suitable candidates for leadership roles.
“Because there have been organizations like NCBLG and BGLLF, because of the expanded agendas of local Black Lesbian and Gay organizations, because of the presence of more Blacks in mainstream GLBT organizations, because there are more support systems for Lesbian and Gay youth as well as adults, identifying Black Lesbian and Gay leadership is much easier than it was in 1978.”

He had one final piece of advice for all the leaders to come: Take time to learn from the mistakes of those who did it all before you.
“I would hope, at some point, the new leadership convene a meeting with the founders of NCBLG for a ‘lessons learned’ retreat,” he said. “I think they could learn something from their now grey headed elders.”

End