Isaac Jackson, Fred Carl, and Tony Crusor are members of the Blackheart Collective. The collective was formed “to publish black gay writers and graphic artists,” said Jackson, “and then people who are writing not necessarily literature but essays as well.”
Jackson, 28, grew up in New York and is the product of what he described as “a mixed marriage—Southern black and West Indian.” He works for a New York media arts organization and hosts a live radio show called “Messages” on WBAI-FM (every Thursday from 3 to 5 a.m.)
Fred Carl, also 28, is a native of New Haven, Connecticut and is co-manager of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore in Greenwich Village.
And Tony Crusor, 25, was born and raised in Chicago and is studying to be an architect.
The interview, which took place in a restaurant on Christopher Street, covered a wide range of topics of concern to the black gay male community as well as a discussion of the origin and goals of the Blackheart Collective.
Charles Michael Smith: How did the Blackheart Collective get started?
Isaac Jackson: It started in the summer of 1980 when a group of us decided that we wanted to publish something. We were tired of going to the bookstore and not reading many titles, if any at all, by black gay men. I knew a lot of people who are writers and stuff and I called people together and said “Do you want to start a collective?” Everyone did. So that’s how it got started basically. We were inspired a lot by black lesbians and black feminist writers. This Bridge Called My Back[Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, editors; Watertown, Mass.: Persephone Press, 1981] really moved us a lot.
There’s been precedents like Mojo, a black gay newspaper, that Calvin Lowery produced for a year or so.
CMS: What are the goals of Blackheart?
Fred Carl: To encourage black gay men to produce something in some kind of tangible way, to leave some kind of artifact behind. In the past few years, there’s more and more things available by third world lesbians and or [those] who identify themselves as third world lesbians. There just isn’t that much for third world gay men and that includes black gay men. We’re black gay men and we figure that we would best be able to do something that came from black gay males from our experiences as a black gay man.
Tony Crusor: And it’s the thing also of making a statement using literature in particular. We really think that the kinds of things that we have to say can create a kind of broader coalition involving different groups of people. Just to make the kind of statements and try to make them consistently for our own identity and try to develop the same kind of consistent manner and inspire others. In that sense that’s a pretty broad goal, yet it’s aiming towards beginning to fill in those gaps and really deal with making a statement that can be read and viewed by a broad group of people, not only black gay men.
FC: It’s really important also because black gay men have so few things out there. In a sense, it’s black gay men. It’s most people, whoever might think that black gay men is this or is that or is this or is that. Black gay men are as many different things as there are black gay men. Just in terms of sensibility. We have a lot of different voices, we all have different voices. There’s something that joins us. There’s some experiences that’s common to us because we’re black gay men. Inside of that common thing, we have our own particular kind of identity and it’s important that people begin to express those kinds of things to really understand what black gay men are, who black gay men are as a group. Right now, there’s nothing existing to even express that difference.
IJ: We’re either totally invisible or we’re some stereotype.
TC: And there’s also very specific issues that have been stereotypically related to black men in a very negative way. For example, the issue of violence. We could at least begin to address it and open up thought concerning that issue that generally are stereotyped to us and have some kind of discussion on it. In terms of dialogue, in terms of literature, for example, the sexual stud has to be addressed in a way where we can bring our opinion to that and to alleviate some of those stereotypes and really bring a new aspect to what’s out there.
IJ: A lot of black gay men feel completely alienated from gay culture as it is due to these stereotypes that basically [are created by] white gay men. One of the things that we’re trying to do by putting our own image out [is] get our own people to understand that there are [socially] conscious black men around.
CMS: What does the name Blackheart mean?
IJ: It’s a term that’s borrowed from the West Indies. A blackheart man is a wise person, someone who is a little bit tuned into things that most people aren’t. It [the name] wasn’t used before we used it. It also, in terms of the black gay context, takes on a whole new meaning, that we’re black gay men and we’re about recognizing that we don’t have to be competitive and hating each other and things like that.
CMS: Do you believe the black community is becoming more accepting of its gays and lesbians? I detect a great deal of homophobia.
FC: I don’t know if the black community is any more or less homophobic than the general community but it certainly is.
IJ: I think it’s hard to look at the community as a monolithic whole. Things are changing rapidly. A lot of people who might now normally, once they come out, leave the black community are now saying “No, I’ll stay and deal with it [homophobia].” So whether or not people are more or less homophobic in the black community, there are more visible lesbians and gay men, that’s for sure.
TC: More lesbian and gay men in the black community who are willing to confront the black community in general with the fact of their gayness.
IJ: It’s very interesting how these things dovetail because the Stonewall thing happened because of the black [civil rights] movement. A lot of gay people forgot that and forgot that in the beginning of the [gay] movement there were a lot of ordinary black gay men and lesbians out there on the front lines.
In those days, the gay community was a lot smaller and a lot more open. If you were willing to say you were gay and walk into a bar and be friendly with people, you were accepted. In those days, people were clinging to each other for protection and survival.
CMS: What problems have you had in putting out the Blackheart journal?
IJ: Money, of course, is the bottom line. [For] the first issue, we sent out a general call. We were really deluged with writing from all over the country. The main problem was editing and selecting the best and finding the money to print it. But in this issue [the prison issue], we’ve had almost the opposite [result] where we really have not had that many submissions. We now have to do a lot of active solicitation and [do] the writing ourselves of the material. It’s a whole different set of problems.
TC: The organizational structure is very important, too. A lot of this we’re just learning ourselves and in doing that, we’re finding out that the list of things that have to be done in terms of correspondence, establishing a mailbox, bank accounts—to really institutionalize it. At this point, we’re learning it’s something that takes the kind of experience that we’re having now to acquire.
CMS: In your prison issue, what issues are you planning to address?
FC: First, to give voice to black gay men in prison, to proclaim their existence.
IJ: We want to connect people on the outside with people on the inside.
FC: Let’s give them a chance to voice some of their concerns. What it’s like for them to be black and gay and in jail. I’m not in jail but I live with this fear of going to jail all the time. There’s a link.
TC: There’s all kinds of documentation regarding the whole economics of prison. Most specially that so many people in prison are there because of economic reasons which go right to the whole race question in terms of who’s economically deprived. Those whole interlinkages are so crucial to why.
FC: Most of the letters that we’ve gotten from guys who are in prison have been “I’m here, somebody write [to] me, please. I’ll write back to anybody.”
TC: If you’re out and even if you are not in jail, if it becomes obvious that you’re gay, you become alienated and isolated. You’re not valid [in the eyes of] society.
CMS: What are your thoughts on the white images that are projected by the gay media?
IJ: There is a danger that white gay males, like white people in general, when they talk about themselves, they make it seem as if there’s no one else.
TC: Exactly. But those are the people who happen to own the presses, who happen to have that control at this particular time. It’s linked directly with their emphasis of projecting themselves.
FC: It’s about a certain kind of image. It’s about young white men. It’s certainly not [an image that mirrors] the [whole] world.
Everything you see is that. Every time you pick up GQ—you want to look at nice clothes, you got see that. If you want to look at naked bodies, you got to see that. [If you look at the black stud magazines put out by Sierra Domino] and you’re black and you don’t have a 12-foot dick, then you’re not part of that shit either.
IJ: The saga never ends.
FC: We’re trying to put out something that tells a little more about what the world is for us.
CMS: What are your thoughts on the women’s movement?
TC: If you look at black lesbians, they have a strong institution of writing, of putting out literature whereas black gay men have a much stronger tradition of partying, of going to the [Paradise] Garage [a now-defunct club in Greenwich Village].
FC: Women’s oppression operates every single day of their lives. They have to see it. They have to deal with it constantly.They go home, they don’t get a break. The women talk about developing women’s problems [which] means that you take something like that and you make it mean something. Every little action that happens, that’s a resistance against that oppression. It’s totally personal. It’s totally political. The women’s movement has that history because of the kind of thing it is.The women’s movement has a history for talking about personal things and expressing personal things in a certain way. We [black gay men] don’t have that history. Black people, black men could talk about racism, could talk about that struggle but black men [felt] that certain aspects of [their] personal life weren’t affected [by oppression].
Lesbians have always been involved in the women’s movement. Gay men haven’t been talking about these kinds of things and writing about them with the same level of seriousness and in the same numbers as women have.
CMS: How open are you about your gayness?
TC: It’s a tactical thing. It’s about choosing battles. [I’ve worn an earring] for years and years, even before it was cool for straight people to have it. But I choose even now to wear it which might be identified as being gay although several years ago, it was readily identified as being gay. At the school I go to, there might be a conversation where people are dumping on gay people. I have to decide at that time if it’s worth my energy to even jump into the conversation and say “Have some respect for me because I’m gay and don’t be putting that stuff in front of my face” or to kind of let that go and say “Well, I have other priorities right now. I need to do this and I need to do that and I don’t need to put my energy there.”
FC: Everywhere you go you don’t scream out “I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay.” It’s clear you might get killed.
This article was originally published in the New York Native in 1983
