CHICAGO – All week long at the James R. Thompson Center, the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) and the Chicago-based Legacy Project have hosted “The Legacy Wall,” a traveling interactive history exhibit honoring the contributions of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people to world history and culture. The display will close Friday.
Department of Human Rights' director Rocco Claps said the state agency is "honored" to promote "the inspiring history of LGBT people and their contributions to modern culture."
“The Legacy Wall reminds us of the progress the LGBT community has made and the continued struggle for full acceptance and equality throughout our society,” he said.
But not everyone is so thrilled with the contents of the project, which displays the LGBT community's interpretation of 125 historical figures which they claim as having led either lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender lifestyles.
Although anthropologist Margaret Mead was married three times, the LGBT community points to Mead's relationship with fellow anthropologist Ruth Benedict in her later years as proof that Mead was a lesbian.
The same type of assumption is made about George Washington Carver, who never married, and had an employee with which he worked closely that the gay community identifies as Carver's lover.
Such an assumption was distressing to Babette Holder, who leads the Frederick Douglass Foundation Illinois, a group of black Illinoisans that celebrate conservative heritage.
"During those times many intellectuals socialized with those that were quietly gay, it was not acceptable to be openly gay," Holder told Illinois Review. "There are a great number of historic Black people, make that people of all races and ethnicities that were some of the greatest contributors to American society that worked, studied, invented, and advocated with others that were gay, there is no real proof that Carver was gay."
The idea stemmed from one person’s biography, Holder said, in which the author implied there as a relationship between Carver and Austin W. Curtiss.
"Particularly a professor of history – Christina Vella, Ph.D. – who wrote in the book "George Washington Carver: A Life," that he had an “ambivalent sexuality,” the implication because he never married, had a friendship and “fondness” for Curtiss.
"Curtiss was someone that he employed, so in her view, that equated Carver to being gay. Sexuality and one’s sexual behaviors were not discussed in those days – at least not openly in society – but that still did not make one gay," Holder said.
"It’s as if to give a history that was never absent but to force a historic past for today’s LGBTQ to have some sort of credence that was never denied. But they feel it was purposely overlooked or ignored."
The Legacy Wall is an extremely moving tribute to an aspect of shared human history that most people aren’t aware exists, the Legacy Project Executive Director Victor Salvo says.
It's about opening the way for young LGBTQ persons to accept their own alternative sexual behavior.
“We hope it will lead to conversations about the importance of inclusiveness, especially for LGBTQ youth who are most often forced to grow up without ever learning anything positive about historically significant people like themselves.”
The Legacy Project, a non-profit organization known for displaying memorial plaques along North Halsted Street in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, is also collaborating with the Illinois Secretary of State, the Illinois Department of Tourism, the Illinois Municipal Relations Association, and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.
From the Legacy Project's website:
