“This Is Political!”

Negotiating the Legacies of the First School-Based Gay Youth Group

Abstract

*Youth and School Transformation | Reports from the Field

In 1972, a group of students of color at New York City’s George Washington High School’s founded the first school-based gay group on record in the United States, using their school as a site of activism by participating in both their school’s student government opportunities and in an emergent social movement. The group formed by these Bronx students can be interpreted as the very first example of what is known today as a gay-straight alliance (GSA) even though the conventional history of the GSA begins in the late 1980s with a group of suburban private school students. This exclusion from the history of student participation in activism for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights suggests a significant alternate reading of the racism, classism, and geographic biases of the greater LGBT movement, its organization, direction, priorities, and narratives for/about LGBTQ youth, especially urban youth of color. Considering alternate readings of youth participation might better enable us to envision a political strategy that accentuates shared values of social justice, the civil and human rights to an equitable education, and the significance of building coalitions in order to ensure safer schools for all.