Great Expectations, Unexpected ImpactKeith St. John ’81 Becomes the Country’s First Openly Gay Black Elected Official
Great Expectations, Unexpected ImpactKeith St. John ’81 Becomes the Country’s First Openly Gay Black Elected Official
Keith St. John ’81 readily volunteers that “a lot of me is the product” of the upbringing he and his twin sister got from their formidable mother, Cornelia. As an immigrant from British Guiana (now Guyana), estranged from her husband and raising her children on her own in White Plains, New York, “Connie” had very definite plans for them: her son would be a doctor; her daughter would be a dentist.
Like many a young person before him, St. John chose a different path from the one that had been charted for him. In the process, he made history, becoming the first openly gay black elected official in the United States.
That was not his plan, either, when he arrived at Vassar in 1979 to complete the college education he had started at Yale. St. John had been offered admission to all eight schools to which he had applied, including Harvard, which he turned down much to his mother’s
It was a decision he has never regretted. “Vassar is the best thing that could have happened to me,” he says. “I was finally able to have a close working relationship with professors, and that really worked for me. I loved how different and fun the people were, and the relaxed personality of the school and student body.”
As it turned out, St. John, a self-described “Type A, very driven, who liked to represent the interests of people,” did not himself relax at Vassar. Instead, he became politically
“Vassar is the best thing that could have happened to me. I was finally able to have a close working relationship with professors, and that really worked for me.”
That was to cause a deep rift with his mother a couple of years later. After graduating from Vassar, he landed an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellowship to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and on to the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs at Duke. With a growing interest in governance and the relationship of policy to law, he had decided to go to law school—“but not to practice law.” He was at Cornell Law in January 1983
After graduating from law school, St. John got a job with the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York—having only looked for legal aid services work—and in fall 1985, he began working in New York’s capital city (“I didn’t know Albany at all”), helping clients of few means with cases involving landlord-tenant disputes, Social Security disability, and family court. As he notes, the local joke is “You’re not an Albanian unless you’re there for decades,” but mindful of his mother’s dictum, “There’s nothing you cannot do,” after only three years in the city, he put himself forward as one of three candidates for two slots on the Albany County Democratic Committee. To everyone’s surprise, he bested one of the incumbents and got elected to the party seat.
Still, when he saw an ad the following year inviting “anyone interested in working on a campaign” to a meeting, he went thinking he would be volunteering for someone else. Instead, he was urged to run for the Albany Common Council, then dominated by the county’s Democratic machine. With a reform candidate already in line for the nomination in his ward, he moved to Albany’s 2nd Ward, in the South End, a poorer neighborhood. Though he was vulnerable to charges of being a newcomer, many in the area knew him from his work at Legal Aid, and he was an adept campaigner.
The night before his primary election against the incumbent, however, he recalls, “Flyers appeared on car windshields throughout the ward, saying, basically, ‘If Keith is elected, he’ll turn the city gay.’ It was a ridiculous caricature of a gay man, and I was mortified. But my campaign manager saw an opportunity for it to boomerang, and called the press.”
On
Nevertheless, he was an instant celebrity. “I was amazed how far the news spread,” he says. “I heard from people all over the country. I was in parades in Columbus and in San Francisco, and spoke at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with RuPaul on the same stage. I mean, who gets to do that?”
Back home in Albany, he says, “I was viewed as an insurgent, but that’s not what I’m about. I don’t do well asking for permission, but I also don’t consider myself an activist”—a surprising comment, perhaps, from a Vassar graduate. “I didn’t want to be subjected to my colleagues’ mistrust and distrust. I spent a lot of time learning the
Cycles in politics, however, have a way of constantly changing, and four years later, he was defeated for a third term by “a woman who had grown up in
Given the state’s checkered political history, he is well used to cynicism about his current mission. “On the contrary,” he says, “if we hear about the misdeeds of a handful of people, we must remember there are thousands of our folks who understand the value of public
“If I were to reduce the work I
His life’s journey continues to take unexpected turns. Raised Anglican, he describes himself as currently “on the path to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.” He knows there will be challenges; when he and his now-husband decided to get married in 2008, “The bishop made perfectly clear there was no intention of sanctioning marriage equality in the Albany diocese.” They had a legal ceremony in nearby Massachusetts, then one of the few states with marriage equality, but, he says, “Having been raised in the church, I wanted to get married in
St. John adds that his unexpected place in history continues to surprise him: “Nine months ago, I got a call from a high school girl from California who was doing a research project. We did a Skype interview with her and several of her classmates. People are still talking about this rather remarkable event. The importance hasn’t been lost on me—how important it is for others, who they are, what they are, how they are going to survive.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better life,” he concludes. “I really have been blessed. The odd irony is my mother’s worst fears never got realized. What she feared most has helped me the most—the fact of being black and gay. Through the grace of God, I have been able to use those very attributes to be able to make me do what I want to do. You cannot be letting personal prejudice in this world stop you. You just run right over the obstacles.”