Other Countries celebrated its 10th Anniversary on Tuesday, June 18, 1996, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Together with G. Winston James, B.Michael (aka Bert) co-emceed the program, which included the performance whose script appears below. He joins Christopher-Dana Rose, Allen Wright, Len Richardson, and Guy-Mark Foster (aka Marc [sic]).
If you were there, what do you recall? If you weren’t present, what do you imagine it was like?
Tell B.Michael about a performance or cultural production that he missed that really made an impression on you!
Category: Documents
B.Michael Hunter, New York City Voter
B.Michael attended law school and he taught the U.S. Constitution to high school students who came from marginalized backgrounds. The right to vote was a tantamount issue for him, particularly as a Black man. Every election is important — and he would be organizing folks with even more passion toward Election Day on 03 November 2020.
It is unclear at what point in B.Michael’s life he jotted the page below. It does seem to include the makings of a poem:
I ain’t you property
I am not your property
I will lift my voice and vote
Freedom
Membership, Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center
B.Michael felt it was important to support our LGBTQ community institutions. He was often at “The Center” for workshops, performances and other events, as well as regular meetings of organizations of which he was a member, including Other Countries: Black Gay Expression, Gay Men of African Descent, and the Lesbian & Gay People of Color Steering Committee.
octogenarians — for bert
A 1995 Chriskwanzaka gift from partner John!
- “widows overnight” refers to three people who lost husbands that year: John and Bert’s friend René Astudillo (Daniel Scott Strano), Olympic figure skater Ekaterina Gordeeva (Sergei Grinkov), and actress Candice Bergen (Louis Malle), who played the title character on Murphy Brown, a favorite television series of Bert and John.
- The “30-something-brother” is artist Ronald Harris, for whom Bert wrote Dew Locks.
- “Donald” refers to one of Bert’s closest friend, writer and poet Donald Walter Woods.
Ron Harris — City of Brotherly Love
B.Michael kept Ron close to his heart and made sure to get to Philadelphia for visits. The photos below, taken by Ron’s friend Nicklas, may have been taken on the occasion of Ron obtaining his Master of Fine Arts.
Read B.Michael’s poem written for Ron in 1989.
Adodi
When B.Michael tested HIV-positive in November 1992, he began shifting his perspective from one of managing an illness to focusing on wellness. He opted not to take the potent HIV medications prescribed by his physician; instead, he actively explored complementary therapies and avenues for attending to his emotional, psychological and spiritual health.
On at least one occasion, B.Michael went on retreat with other Black gay men through Adodi, a “spiritually uplifting [movement] of same gender loving men of African descent …” He is pictured above in the lower right-hand corner, wearing glasses, sideburns, and a beanie, at an Adodi gathering during the summer of 1995. Included below is the note accompanying the photo from one of the retreat participants, who also refers to B.Michael reading his essay, “I Have Come Here to Die.”
Trip to Italy/Italia
B.Michael visited with partner John, who had lived in Italy during college and maintained close friendships, together with dear friends John and Haftan. (Scroll to photos entitled “Italy, 1995” here.)
Their ten-day sojourn, roughly outlined above, included landing in Venice/Venezia, passing through Bologna (the city where John had studied) on their way to Florence/Firenze and Pisa in the region of Tuscany/Toscana. Then to Rome/Roma, back to Bologna, with a hop to the Adriatic coast, before departing from Milan/Milano.
Celebrating v37.0!
In the fall of 1992, John moved into Bert’s rental apartment on East 11th Street. Between Avenues A and B, it was a stone’s throw from the Life Café, pop-culturalized through the musical Rent, which opened on Broadway in February 1996. They would end up seeing the show because of and together with their niblings, Aimy and Tihani, who they happily hosted during the summer of 1996. Incredulous to Bert, John developed into a ‘Rentaholic’ and would end up seeing Rent live 13 times.
Though they lived just around the corner for almost three years, they rarely ate at the Life Café. Then, less than two weeks after moving across town, they returned to their old neighborhood to toast Bert’s 37th trip around the sun.
Bridges to the Future
In his role as an “out” gay teacher, B.Michael participated on a panel called, “Illusions of Inclusion: Toward an Understanding of Lesbians and Gays in the Educational Community.” (See page 3.)
Aurelio Font + The Flirtations
Bert had a special connection with Aurelio, whom he most likely met through Queer People of Color organizing in New York City in the late 1980s. Aurelio was a member of Hispanos Unidos Gays y Lesbianas (or HUGL, roughly referred to as “HUH-gull” in English) and would often rep HUGL at coalition meetings.
Aurelio also had a beautiful singing voice to accompany his activist heart, both of which he brought to The Flirtations. Here in this clip, Aurelio anchors an impromptu performance of “My Boyfriend’s Back” at a political demonstration, sometime between 1987 and 1993.
On Apple Music, Will Grega writes: “The Flirtations gained national prominence in the late ’80s as the only openly gay, positive a cappella group. It helped that they had tremendous voices and chose outstanding material. In a few short years, these media darlings became everybody’s group of choice as ambassadors of homosexuality for the world. Little could they have known that within five short years of their first Greenwich Village street performance in 1988, they would have appeared on The Phil Donahue Show, Good Morning America, Nightwatch, MTV News, and National Public Radio; gathered rave reviews across the country; and that they would actually be making a living doing what they love most: being gay and singing about it.” They also performed “Mr. Sandman” for the soundtrack of the Academy Award-winning film Philadelphia.
Bert saved these clips from the February 1991 issue of Angles, a queer publication out of Vancouver, Canada.
^^^ Though hard to see, the caption in purple reads: “One of us had the same lover for eight hears. One of us was in the closet until he was 37. One of us was entrapped, arrested, handcuffed and beaten by police. One of us was an M.P. [Military Police] in the U.S. Army. One of us had been fag-bashed with a two-by-four. One of us has AIDS.”
Aurelio sent this postcard, dated March 18, 1995, which Bert received just three months prior to Aurelio’s death from HIV. The book he thanks Bert for is Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS, which Bert served as Managing Editor.