My Hero

My Hero

As a sixteen year old gay African-American male, I didn’t have many people in the

media to look up to. Sure there was Ellen Degeneres, Pedro Zamora, and Elizabeth Burch.

Sadly, there were no African-American male role models for me to look up to. All of that

changed on April 30, 2000 while watching the Gay and Lesbian Millennium March on

Washington Rally on television. Sure it was great to see all the speakers from the community

who wanted equal rights, but none of them reached me. Then a thirty-four year old man stood at

the podium. There he stood proud, strong, and fearless. As he looked out at the crowd you can

see that he had heart. Heart for what he believed in and heart for what he wanted to accomplish.

As he spoke his first few words, my eyes were glued to the television. That is when Keith Boykin

became my hero.

In the days after the march, I watched Mr. Boykin on tape over again and listened to his

message. A message in which I knew that I was a part of. I represent only a small part of the

population that he spoke of in his poem to the people. Not only does he speak of equal rights for

gays and lesbians, but also for equality between the races and the genders. He speaks for

everyone. “I Speak Because it matters not which group is most oppressed, or which was first

oppressed, or rather they are identically oppressed, What matters is that no group or class of

people should be oppressed...” (“I Speak”). This part of his poem/speech to the world was one

of the two things that he said that stuck in my heart. Mr. Boykin gave me the strength that I

needed to realize that I should not let people put me down just for being who I am, but for being

who I know I am not.

Lately I have been reading a lot

about Mr. Boykin’s life and how he came out of the

closet. Surprisingly, his experience was almost the same as mine. Despite the fact that he came

out in his mid-twenties, the experiences were the same. His mother just wanted him to be

careful and not tell to many people for fear of what could happen to him. He thought differently.

He wanted everyone to know and like me he realized that if you told the right people, the world

would know. Sure enough he became the black gay man on campus almost overnight. Reading

all of this was like reading my very own life. It was amazing. One thing that sets us two apart is

his support of the African-American GLBT community. Not that it is a completely bad thing to

do, but it is the only community that he supports. Despite that, he is what I define as a hero to

me.

Keith Boykin has accomplished many great things in his life as an activist. He was an

assistant to President Clinton and was there even when the big debate about “gays in the

military” was in effect. Along with that, he signed on as the first executive director of the

National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum. He has also written many columns in

magazines and for websites and has written two books. His first book