Mel Boozer Said What Pete Buttigieg Can’t
Mel Boozer grew up in a series of homes without electricity. Graduating second in the 1963 class of Dunbar High, the school of choice for Washington, D.C.’s most high-achieving black students, he won a scholarship to Dartmouth, where he was one of only three African Americans in the freshman class. His roommate, rather than share a room with a person of color, moved out. After completing fieldwork in Brazil and earning a Ph.D. in sociology at Yale, Boozer moved back to his hometown, where he became active in politics as president of the Gay Activists Alliance, Washington director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and founder of the Langston Hughes–Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club for gay and lesbian blacks.
Boozer’s prominence in.
