Abandoning the Past

Abstract

This chapter pierces the existing scholarly silence around Hoyt Fuller’s sexuality by exploring how sexual politics shaped both the life and afterlife of the editor. It maps the ways that silences around Fuller’s sexuality have been (de)constructed across time and space. It identifies exactly who helped manufacture these silences, speculates about factors that led to their production, gestures to the contexts out of which they emerged, and illuminates rare moments when some of these silences were punctured. By mapping the production (and shattering) of silences, the chapter offers insight into the ways movement activists responded to Fuller’s sexuality. His intimate life--as a man who had sex with other men (and women)--troubles conventional wisdom about the movement and Black nationalism, more broadly. The chapter argues that instead of being simplistic, dogmatic, or uniform in their thinking, movement participants thought about sexuality in complex, varied, and inconstant ways.