In honor of LGBTQ+ History Month in October, Bronx Community College Archives and Special Collections and Bronx Community College LGBTQI+ Resource Room, in partnership with the Bronx County Historical Society, opened Have a Heart: Friendship & Activism of Jesús Lebrón, an exhibit that celebrates Bronx-born, Puerto Rican activist, Jesús Lebrón, and his central role in struggles for LGBTQ+ rights, including marriage equality.

 

Have a Heart opened at Bronx Community College on National Coming Out Day, Oct. 11, and consists of a selection from the Jesús Lebrón papers, recently donated to the Bronx County Archives at the Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. The papers document the important ways in which Lebron, and his upbringing in the South Bronx, inspired his spirit of activism and leadership within the marriage equality movement.

 

“Nothing can be more rewarding than having your community activism acknowledged and celebrated,” said Lebrón. “Steven Payne and The Bronx County Historical Society have made this possible with their generosity of spirit, sensitivity and welcome in preserving my collection. The Bronx may have once been burning, but our determination to tell our stories in their rich and varied complexities are alive and well.”

 

The exhibit culminates on Friday, Nov. 11, with an exhibit celebration and community discussion at Bronx Community College. On eight panels, on display on the 2nd floor of the college’s North Hall Library, the exhibit traces the life of Lebrón from his South Bronx childhood to his coming out experience, his living with HIV/AIDS, and his years of friendship and activism with Irish human rights advocate and filmmaker, Brendan Fay.

 

In 2003, Jesús, together with Fay, co-founded The Civil Marriage Trail Project, bringing same-sex couples across borders for legal marriage. Among the couples were Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer who married in Toronto on May 22, 2007. The Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor (2013) led to the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which authorized individual states to reject the legal status of same-sex marriages conducted elsewhere.

 

Lebrón continued, “Generations of LGBTQ+ and Boricua youth may find pride and comfort in knowing that, despite the hurdles brought on by poverty and discrimination, we can fight not only for ourselves, but for our fellow brothers and sisters. I welcome this exhibit at Bronx Community College with gratitude for family, and for Brendan, who helped shape and share my life.”

 

Bronx County Historical Society director, Dr. Steven Payne, said of the exhibit, “With the Jesús Lebrón papers, which this exhibit highlights, the Bronx County Historical Society has acquired an archival treasure trove of tremendous relevance to scholars, activists, and community members interested in LGBTQ+ movements, marriage equality, Bronx activism, and much more.” He added, “We look forward to collaborating further with the local community in highlighting Bronx LGBTQ+ history.”

 

For his part, Fay, who, as reported, earlier this year was welcomed back to The Bronx to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Throggs Neck, having been arrested for attempting to march in that parade 23 years earlier, said of Lebrón’s exhibit, “The exhibit title, Have a Heart, gets it right by highlighting Jesús’s friendship and activism.”

 

He added, “With Jesús Lebrón, I found a friendship that became a transformative tenderness, sustaining our activism through the years. During the AIDS crisis and anti-LGBT violence and prejudice, our friendship was an emotional bonding of solidarity in shared resisting and rising from our silences and our second-class status. Ours was a journey in recovering dignity denied to us, and finding for ourselves and our LGBTQ community a liberation from shame and a freedom to live and to love.”

 

The exhibit is curated by Pastor Crespo, Jr., Brendan Fay, Emalinda L. McSpadden, Steven Payne, and Cynthia Tobar, associate professor and head of archives, Bronx Community College.

 

“This exhibit is not just a moving story of a Bronx Puerto Rican gay activist. It holds particular resonance today, when a multitude of hard-won human rights, including marriage equality, are threatened or outright discarded in the U.S.,” Payne added.

 

“I hope that the Have a Heart exhibit, in telling Jesús Lebrón’s story of survival, activism, resistance, and hope, inspires a new generation of LGBTQ+ youth in The Bronx and across the city, to live their lives out loud and become passionate and engaged makers of history” said Fay

 

The exhibit celebration and community discussion will take place on Friday, Nov. 11, at 6:30 p.m. at Bronx Community College, North Hall Library. Attendees can register here: https://tinyurl.com/28ytdtat.

 

For more information, contact Cynthia Tobar, head of archives at Bronx Community College, at Cynthia.Tobar@bcc.cuny.edu or Dr. Steven Payne, director of The Bronx County Historical Society, at spayne@bronxhistoricalsociety.org.