Three Years After His Passing, Activist Jimmie Scott Reminds Us That Our History Must Be Preserved
Last week a friend texted me to say that he’d just learned that Jimmie Scott passed away three years ago. Because this friend and I are collaborating on two community memory projects, news of Jimmie’s passing forged both an urgency and clarity around the significance of the work we are doing together, the work of Black queer remembrance.
Jimmie Scott, later Jimmie Scott-Robinson, while he was in Atlanta, was a community organizer and activist. He was involved with Georgia Equality Project, Human Rights Campaign, In the Life Atlanta (ITLA), and other civic and community organizations.
I can’t remember the first time I met Jimmie. He was a prominent fixture of the Atlanta Black Queer aughts movement scene. He had a big voice, literally, and figuratively. Bald. Charismatic. Driven. Polarizing, at least back then. Through the sheer force of his personality, he found himself intertwined with many of the critical institutions and organizations that defined activism for that generation.
“White LGBTQ+ folks were moving into historically Black neighborhoods, and elderly Black people being displaced. Jimmie, one of the few if not the only Black voice on the LGBTQ+ side, drew a line in the sand, and gave the people moving into East Atlanta political if not moral cover. The Mayor of East Atlanta, he called himself, an identity forged in those wars.”
There have been so many deaths. Sometimes my memories feel like a graveyard, and yet his, if I’m honest, took my breath away. I believe this was in part because the last time I spoke to him, less than a year before he died, he wanted me to help him tell his story. I did not know that this request was connected to his mortality.
How could I not know that he had passed away three years ago? Three whole years ago. I don’t know if any of us knew, we who share a particular time and place, alumni and veterans from those heady and inspiring years of the Atlanta Black Queer aughts.
When did we meet? I feel like I knew of him, knew his name before we spoke. He was a bit of a fixture in the pages of the gay rags, in the East Atlanta gentrification battles. White LGBTQ+ folks were moving into historically Black neighborhoods, and elderly Black people being displaced. Jimmie, one of the few if not the only Black voice on the LGBTQ+ side, drew a line in the sand, and gave the people moving into East Atlanta political if not moral cover. The Mayor of East Atlanta, he called himself, an identity forged in those wars.
A Complex Public Figure
My first clear memory of being in the same space with Jimmie was at Georgia State University in the fall of 2000. He was a non-traditional student and had entered GSU to finish his degree. I think he was in the Policy School. I had just transferred from Morehouse College. And through some bizarre and cosmic convergence, the two of us landed in a course together, then called “African-American Lesbian and Gay Activism,” taught by Dr. Layli Maparyan (then Dr. Layli Phillips). Because so many of us in the class had significant activist and political experiences, we were able to manifest a sacred praxis of personal narrative and theoretical knowledge throughout the class. Maybe this shared experience humanized him for me.
My affinity for Beamesque Black gay cultural politics left me to assume, without question, that he and I would have nothing in common besides race and sexual identity. He was a bit more at the time inclined toward having, how shall I say, stronger and far more intense, even militantly so, alliances with the broader white LGBTQ community, than myself. But somehow we ended up getting to know each other, and he took an interest in me as a then young activist finding my way. I appreciated him seeing me. He was older, by I think a decade or so, and I was barely 20. Still a kid. But I remember we started talking in class, then after class, and at some point, we became cool, though our politics were different. We even talked outside of class. I think he was trying to be a mentor. It's funny how the Black gay men most interested in mentoring me were the ones I seemed to have such little in common with, or so I thought at the time, but that's another story for another day.
Jimmie also wrote a novel. He invited me over to his house to read it. It was this “The Talented Mr. Ripley” sort of story and wanted me to be his editor. I remember reading it and giving him all of this feedback. I’m not sure where things landed with the novel. Soon after I think our paths again diverged.
“If there is one thing I have taken from learning of Jimmie’s passing, it is the importance and the urgency of us as Black LGBTQ+ people preserving our stories and institutionalizing our memories.”
The next time I remember being connected to him was through the “Stand Up and Represent March” a Black LGBTQ march that was a part of the movement landscape of the Atlanta Black Queer Aughts. Additionally, I seem to remember him going on one of the retreats organized at AID Atlanta. I used to coordinate the Many Men, Many Voices (3MV) intervention and we used to organize these retreats. I think either he participated in one of the retreats I organized, or maybe after I left, but I seem to remember him being connected to that program. This is significant because, in his earlier activist life, there was some pain and injury he caused. To this day, some people still feel hurt by some of his actions. I will neither excuse nor indict Jimmie's past actions. However, I wonder if he was attempting to repair some of those injuries in his last years. Maybe one day if someone writes the history of Black LGBTQ+ Atlanta they will have more space to explore this.
When he reached out to me the year before he died to help him tell his story, he had considerable ambitions about the scope and how it should be told. I tried to connect him to some friends that worked in the Public Humanities, but I do not believe anything came of that. He was looking more for someone to not only be a memory administrator, but a witness, guardian, and keeper.
I do believe that much can be gained as we examine Jimmie’s life. I’m not very familiar with his final years in Detroit, but it sounds like he made some significant changes that could provide blueprints and lessons for us all. If there is one thing I have taken from learning of Jimmie’s passing, it is the importance and the urgency of us as Black LGBTQ+ people preserving our stories and institutionalizing our memories.
