Kenneth J. Mitchell receives SAGE Award for work with LGBTQ community
19th February 2024 · 0 Comments
By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer
A local pioneer is among a group of activists honored at the 2024 Creating Change conference held in New Orleans from January 16-24.
The confab – led by the National LGBTQ Task Force – is the largest annual gathering of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer political activists in the country. During the conference, Kenneth J. Mitchell was bestowed with the Carmen Vázquez SAGE Award for Excellence in Leadership on Aging “after five decades of fighting for the rights of Louisiana’s LGBTQ and Black communities,” according to a statement announcing the award.
Fifty years ago, a deadly arson attack at a French Quarter bar ignited an already smoldering movement in New Orleans, and across the country, for equal rights. Thirty-two people were burned or trampled to death in late June of 1973 at one of the city’s few racially integrated gay bars – the UpStairs Lounge.
Among the patrons known or believed to have died were two Black men – Reginald Adams and Reginald Tubbs. Adams, a local who was originally from Dallas, and whose public relationship with a white man at the time was barrier-busting even among the mixed crowd at the second-story nitery, was burned beyond recognition. Tubbs, a visitor from Atlanta, is believed to be among the three persons whose bodies were never claimed after the fire by family members seeking to avoid the notoriety heaped upon their loved-ones.
Several local churches and mortuaries openly refused to host funerals for the lounge victims in the wake of the fire with then-archbishop, Philip Hannan, forbidding the use of St. Louis Cathedral as the site for a planned public memorial service while adamantly denying Catholic funeral rites to any of the deceased patrons.
Such was the milieu surrounding homosexuality in the 1970s that aroused Mitchell’s political consciousness.
“I got involved in activism,” said Mitchell, “after coming out when I was a junior in college. I had help from two or three instructors at Dillard University where I was studying psychology. I told them about my sexuality – that I was a same-gender loving man – and they were very supportive. So, I wanted to share the joy that I experienced after coming to terms with my own sexuality and to let others know that they did not need to be ashamed.”
Shame was the underlying factor in the city’s reaction to the UpStairs fire, which yielded no arrests from state and local investigators nor condolences from public officials.
Mitchell, in the years after the fire, helped create the Louisiana Lesbian and Gay Political Action Committee that for a time turned the city’s LGBTQ residents into a powerful voting bloc in precincts in and around the Marigny, Bywater and French Quarter. “But,” he said, “there was a lack of diversity” in the group and efforts to recruit Black participants were not very successful. “So, we created an offshoot called the Langston/Jones Society.” The group took its name from Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, long believed to be a same-gender loving man himself, and Mary Jones, a Black woman who, at the time, was engaged in a civil suit against her employer for alleged discrimination on the basis of her sexuality.
Mitchell made use of his training as a psychologist in the early 1980s when he founded Men of Color New Orleans, which created a discussion group called ManTalk for same-gender loving men, a term often initialized as SGL and preferred by some Black men to other possible descriptions of their sexuality such as gay, homosexual or bisexual, which are associated with the values and norms of their white gay peers.
“We started ManTalk as a way to provide a space for men to talk about the HIV/AIDS crisis that was happening among Black men,” Mitchell said. “People did not always have a place to go where they could be heard and get advice.”
The group has functioned for more than two decades and recently welcomed, not without some controversy, non-Black participants. “I have been going to ManTalk for about five years now,” said John Jones. “It has been a great support and source of socialization for me. People are much more alike than they are different – what divides us is little more than the melanin count in our skin.”
Mitchell is now focused on providing services to LGBTQ seniors. He is a former founding board member of New Orleans Advocates for LGBTQ Elders and a member of one of the oldest organizations for Black same-gender loving men in the United States – Adodi National. The group, which takes its name from a Yoruba word describing love between men, is planning to create a housing development in New Orleans to address the shortage of affordable housing in the region, including issues of significance to LGBTQ seniors.
“Seniors are re-closeting,” Mitchell said, describing the process of older LGBTQ residents “going back in the closet in their golden years due to a lack of affirming care at daycare programs, senior centers or assisted living centers.” The New Orleans Council on Aging issued a resource guide for LGBTQ seniors in 2022 to help them and their loved-ones navigate the city’s network of senior services and find affirming care.
“The number one issue facing LGBTQ seniors is housing,” said Hector Vargas, acting chief national initiatives officer for Advocacy and Services for LGBTQ Elders, the largest organization of its kind in the United States. “A lifetime of discrimination can cause economic insecurity for LGBTQ seniors upon retirement causing them to have to rely on friends and family, which are networks that may not always be available or could be less reliable. In addition, a lack of culturally competent services, particularly in health care, also have an impact on quality of life for LGBTQ seniors. I describe these three issues as a triple threat.”
Vargas, whose organization sponsored the award on aging, called Mitchell a leader in the LGBTQ movement for civil rights.
“He has made a lasting impact in the political arena when he helped found the lesbian and gay political action committee, as a social worker providing volunteer counseling early on during the AIDS crisis, and now on behalf of LGBTQ older adults through his work with advocates in New Orleans,” said Vargas. “His spirit, dedication and passion make him exceptionally deserving of the Carmen Vázquez SAGE Award.”
This article originally published in the February 19, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
