In its halcyon days, New Bedford had the moneyed class from whaling who, as Quakers and former Quakers, spent large sums on charity and, again because of their being Quakers and, so, lovers of education for all races and sexes, spent money on intellectual pursuits.
One such intellectual pursuit was the formation of the New Bedford Lyceum in 1828 for the purpose of public discourse, disagreement, and discussion in the pursuit of “useful knowledge and the advancement of popular education” which brought the likes of Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, and Herman Melville to speak to anyone from the city who wished to hear them.
Part of the intellectual advancement involved, at times, some rather raucous discussions during the Q and A portion of the program.
A common misconception is that the Abolition Movement began among the Brahmans of Boston when it was actually the Quakers of New Bedford.
Just look up Prince Boston.
It was at the Lyceum that Frederick Douglass first made his appearance on the speaker’s platform to speak on abolition and the conditions of the enslaved in real, experiential terms. The Lyceum at Liberty Hall is where this man stood, this self emancipated, articulate, and demonstrably intelligent man presenting in words and by his presence and demeanor other facts about what the audience thought they knew but had never seen and the conditions and treatment also unknown.
We forget now that as self emancipated people began to arrive up North, they showed up according to how their past conditions formed them with certain common, observable traits, therefore, that were more the result of nurture than nature that the people meeting them had to learn were not necessarily the natural condition of a people but the result of what they were allowed to learn or not learn and how they were treated.
People needed to see that as inarticulate and low class a person may seem as a result of their previous life, with the proper conditions, the real person could be born. Poor social skills, illiteracy, and not dressing and behaving as society expected were not natural and could be dispelled and the person raised if they were exposed to the opposite, education and social involvement.
And there he stood in the Lyceum presenting in reality what people may have accepted in theory. Given the opportunity, Black people could rightfully stand shoulder to shoulder with White people in all respects.
Sadly, as with many aging things and changing cities and times, by 1905 those who had been running the Lyceum admitted it was time to let it go and handed the remaining funds over to the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, what is commonly known as the Whaling Museum, which would now like to bring it back after the long absence especially in these days of memes, cable news sound bites, and repeated postings of repeated stories regardless of their veracity or lack thereof.
There have been important speakers addressing large audiences in the city which were called the Lyceum, but these were sporadic events, few and far between. Reviving the Lyceum would make such events regularly scheduled in an on-going series.
To this end and because it is not only Pride Month but we are in a time of ridiculous book banning activity, the first speaker chosen to reignite the Lyceum was George M. Johnson, an award-winning Black Non-Binary writer, activist, and author of the second most banned book presently in America, “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, a memoir and manifesto about their adolescence growing up as a young Black Queer boy in New Jersey.
Happily, as an elder activist who had done what could be done to make the world more easy to navigate for succeeding generations of students, one of which they were, I was able to inform them before their presentation that they joined a long line of famous people speaking at the Lyceum, one of whom was Frederick Douglass who, just like they were about to be, was a person people needed to meet in order to learn the truth about people like himself, just as Mr. Johnson was about to do at the mic. They would be for this audience, perhaps, their first known encounter with someone who identifies as Nonbinary as opposed to only hearing what others had to say just as Douglass stood and presented a self-emancipated man who had the opportunity to meet his potential and shredded mis- and preconceptions about himself and his people.
They were putting on some big shoes.
They needed to know that their non-binary self fit into the line of distinguished people who have educated this city.
Their major concern growing up had been that while knowing they were different from their peers in many ways, they had no words to describe or talk about it and there were no resources where they might seek answers. They, like most non-Heterosexuals, lived in a world where Heterosexuals had knowledge readily available with constant societal references and presentations of examples, but non-Hets did not and had to find sources of information on their own, and these were not always positive or healthy.
It is why previous generations had worked to have been the last to have to hunt for information that was there, but denied us.
When they mentioned their age in passing and I saw they had most likely graduated from high school in 2008 or 2009, I realized they could have been a student during those years when there was advocacy for Gay students to be included in school policies and for there to be information readily available without the school districts computer filter rejecting any web search for information about non-Heterosexuals as being “sexual content”.
I had their peers in my classes as I was fighting for their inclusion completely in all policies and related practices and procedures. Had they been in my class at the school at which I was teaching, I would have been fighting for them directly.
While they were searching for the words in one part of the country, I was in another part of the country endeavoring to make those words available.
Because of the activism done by elders in Mr. Johnson’s youth, those words are now available until the book banners win if they do, and, so, they had made it a mission to get those words out to those who need them.
I got to see someone now involved in the next step in the process knowing I had had a part in it, although very ancillary.
On my cross country, nostalgia trip, I mentioned connections in my social media postings and follow-up blogs.
In the early 1980s, the state of Oklahoma joined the bandwagon and passed a bill making it illegal for Gays to be teachers.
A man by the name of Bill Rogers took the state on. The justification for the bill was that being Gay made one an unconvicted felon and felons could not be teachers. Just being Gay was considered a crime but unlike all other crimes no action was necessary for the commission of the crime. Just being was enough. The law made a person a felony not an act. The three words, “I am Gay”, was tantamount to a confession to a crime. The law was found unconstitutional as it convicted people of crimes who had done nothing with this non-adjudicated felony conviction controlling a person’s future.
In the state of Oklahoma, because of that win, being Gay has not precluded anyone from being a teacher but, just as if a Heterosexual acted out their orientation to the extreme and in front of students they could lose their jobs, the same with Gay teachers.
Neither should have sex in school in front of students, and a person should not be barred from teaching because of their sexual orientation.
It was this win that gave me cover when advocating for the Gay students in the district as I could advocate and not be fired merely for being Gay, and 24 years after Bill Rogers’s court win, it came full circle when on December 14, 2009, the Oklahoma City Public Schools added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to its student policies.
The safety net for the advocacy was that court ruling that was invoked on more than one occasion. The advocacy did not happen in a segmented vacuum.
During this advocacy Mr. Johnson was in school looking for the right words, something that was about to become a possibility in at least one school district where students would no longer need to discover themselves largely through the hit or miss approach of the past while searching for the words that would help them meet and greet themselves.
This was happening in other places as well, so, they unknowingly benefited indirectly from the work of someone in 1985, brought to fruition during their school days, that they can now freely exercise in educating the young Gaybies.
And who was the first speaker to kick off the rebirth of the Lyceum?
A non-binary author of the second most banned book in America today.
I did not want to miss an opportunity that I would later regret not having taken, so I also handed the speaker a small card with a written explanation that I felt compelled to pass on to him about the early 2000s when Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern went after “King and King” and “Heather Has Two Mommies” in her book banning attempt, so their book, like their speaking at the Lyceum, places them in yet another historical position, that of being the banned Queer book of this generation.
So, here you had Frederick Douglass speaking at the Lyceum basically for the same reason Mr. Johnson was, presenting facts and being the embodiment of the truth about that of which they spoke, and Mr. Johnson restarting the Lyceum speaking about the realities of his life experiences and the lack of words in their youth that were on the way because, unknowingly, of Bill Roger’s work almost 40 years ago that, while they were going through school, bolstered the position of those in an older generation attempting to make the words available, and now they have as their mission getting the words to those who need them, and saying this at the Lyceum.
You can imagine the thrill at seeing not only what the next step is but listening to a person speaking about that next step and letting you know without knowing they were doing so that it was worth it. It had played a role. It had paid off.
I saw two understated historical moments the other night.
A young, Nonbinary, Black person stood as Douglass had when he clarified the misconceptions about Blacks and the enslaved, doing the same when it came to non-heterosexual people in a heterosexual world.
You could not miss the parallels.
This young man has embarked on a mission based on what we had been telling the Oklahoma Public Schools district for 12 years before they woke up and accepted that the proper information and the correct words must be made as available to the non-Heterosexual students as it was so freely supplied to the Heterosexual ones.
It was life affirming and life saving to do so.
And the process continues on the work of those who came before.
Two people left the Lyceum the other night different from when they arrived.
One found they were part of a long history of speakers one of whom was Frederick Douglass, I would assume something of a thrill for a modern day Black Man doing what Douglass had done in his day in the same city and at the same gathering for the same reason but about a different aspect of humanity, the other saw that the advocacy had paid off and, wherever it was done and by whom, it made the words and information accessible to those coming up.
Kudos goes to the Whaling Museum who may have chosen a speaker because of the current controversy over their book, a PR Coup in a way, or because this situation presented a topic about which the people of the city should become informed. Either way, the New Bedford Whaling Museum chose a Nonbinary individual to kick off the Lyceum series and a Black man at that who now stands alongside another noted Black man who spoke at the Lyceum about his humanity, Frederick Douglass.
I got to be there.
Talk about cyclic things.
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