Rainbow in the Clouds: Oral Histories of Black Homosexual Male Graduates’ Experience of Schooling in Augusta, Georgia

• In Event: Pushing Methodological Boundaries and Performing Dissertation Writing

Abstract

Stacey Mabray explores the oral histories of four black homosexual male graduates’ experience of schooling in the Butler High School in Augusta, Georgia. Adrian Harris, Marlon Pugh, Horace Lovett, and Michael Robinson, four participants in her dissertation inquiry, narrate their successful stories of completing high school while experiencing the intersectionality of their identities: black homosexual, and male in the U.S. South. Drawing upon the Critical Race Theory of Derrick Bell (1992), Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic (2001), Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence, Richard Delgado, Kimberle Crenshaw (1995), Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate (1995), Stacey Mabray examines the challenges and obstacles that her participants face as they navigate their ways through high school while living the complex and contested identities as a black gay male in the South. Methodologically, Stacey Mabray draws upon the oral history work of Cynthia Stokes Brown (1988), Patricia Leavy (2011), and Donald Ritchie (2003) to capture and archive the authentic voices of her participants in order to construct meaning from their experiences.

Stacey Mabray begins and ends her dissertation with two letters. The first letter (prologue) is an attempt to put into words her grave personal and professional sorrow for her misunderstanding toward a student’s open expression of his homosexual desires toward a heterosexual male student when she was a novice teacher in the midst of taboo and stigma of black male homosexuality in southern schools. Stacey Mabray tells the “misunderstood” and “mistreated” Black male homosexual male student: “I cannot rewrite the past but I can script the future. Before meeting you, I lived an existence unaware. You woke me from a 30 year slumber under the southern magnolias to begin my journey of discovery. You brought me into consciousness. Please accept my work as an apology. Thank you for being a rainbow in my cloud, wherever you are.” The second letter (epilogue) is the cathartic resolution found through the investigation of the narratives of four young men who were also ignored “others.” Stacey Mabray uses the words from her participants to create a letter to rainbow brothers in order to “break the silence and stop the death.” Weaving rainbow metaphors throughout the dissertation, the narratives and insights of these young men are dubbed “rainbows in the clouds” which shine light through the gloomy contexts of southern schooling and black male homosexuality where southern heritage, perceptions of black masculinity, the influences of religious dogma, and the rituals of southern schooling impede the success of black homosexual males.

By illuminating and amplifying the voices of these four black homosexual males, Stacey Mabray provides educators and policy makers with different perspectives to consider in the formation of education policy in southern schools.

Author

• Stacey Nicole Mabray, Georgia Southern University