“Thirty years ago, Rodney Wilson walked into his classroom at Mehlville High School, prepared to teach his students about the atrocities of the Holocaust.
He then did something he wasn’t expecting to do that day. He came out to his students.
“I simply mentioned there was a pink triangle,” Wilson said of the shape sewn into the uniforms of gay people held in Nazi Germany concentration camps that has since been reclaimed as a symbol of LGBTQ+ liberation.
During the lesson, Wilson said the pink triangle could have been used to mark him as a gay person: “I might have fallen underneath that umbrella of persecution.”
At that time, Wilson was already out to family and friends. Coming out to his students and coworkers was the last step in his coming out journey. Three decades later, he recalls what the world felt like back in 1994…”
[Read the full article at pbs.org]