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Make Your Pride Month Intersectional

Adina Mobin

Summary

  • Historically, the Black and LGBTQ+ communities have worked hand-in-hand toward collective liberation.
  • Prominent Black LGBTQ+ activists include historical trailblazers like Audre Lorde, contemporary changemakers like Indya Moore, and organizations like the Brave Space Alliance.
Make Your Pride Month Intersectional
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Historical Trailblazers

Marsha P. Johnson (she/her)

The "P" in Johnson's name stands for "pay it no mind," and throughout her lifetime it was a motto that she evidently stood by. Johnson was a drag performer in the 1960s and 1970s and is most well-known for her involvement in the Stonewall Riots. As a transgender woman, Johnson joined the front lines of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement after the Stonewall Riots, where she became an outspoken advocate for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Despite her being a central figure in LGBTQ+ liberation, Johnson's activism was not widely celebrated until years after her death. In 1992, Johnson was found dead at 46 in the Hudson River six days after being reported missing. Though her death did not attract mainstream media coverage at the time, Johnson's legacy has caught the attention of millions of people in recent years. The New York Times published a full obituary for Johnson in 2018, and the Marsha P. Institute was established in 2019. 

Audre Lorde (she/her)

Lorde was a Black feminist lesbian author a key role in fighting for racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ equality. She was the first black student at Hunter High School, a public school for gifted girls. Her writings were intersectional and dealt with racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, which offered a lasting impact in the fields of feminist theory and critical race studies. Lorde once said, "I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't." One of her most notable works was The Black Unicorn (1978), a collection of poems highlighting the power of protest. Lorde was the recipient of many awards and honors, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit.

Willi Ninja (he/him)

Ninja was an androgynous, self-described "butch queen," and is known as the Grandfather of Vogue. This dance form was popularized by the Black and Latino LGBTQ+ communities in the New York City club scene between the 1960s and 1980s. Voguing was significant to ballroom,or drag ball, culture, where drag performers would compete against each other for trophies and prizes at the balls. Ninja also founded the House of Ninja. He acted as the "mother" for a group of gay and transgender young people in New York City. Each house in the drag ball scene had their own niches, and Ninja's house was known for its dancers. Ninja helped bring voguing to the national stage as well. Ninja and the dance style were highlighted in the famous 1990 documentary "Paris is Burning." Another significant achievement of Ninja's was his contribution to HIV/AIDS visibility and prevention advocacy within the drag ball scene in the 1980s. His legacy proceeds itself today as voguing remains a widely used outlet for queer self-expression. 

James Baldwin (he/him)

Baldwin was a legendary civil rights activist and author in the mid to late 20th century. He is popularly recognized as an advocate for racial justice. He was one of the major contributors to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. His civil rights advocacy work extended beyond racial issues as well. During the Harlem Renaissance, Baldwin spoke and wrote about homosexuality and bisexuality. He featured LGBTQ+ characters in his fictional works, such as Giovanni's Room (1956) and Another Country (1962). Later in his life, Baldwin was outspoken about the intersections of race and sexual orientation. In 1987, James stated, "A man can fall in love with a man; a woman can fall in love with a woman. There's nothing anybody can do about it. It's not in the province of the law."

Bayard Rustin (he/him)

Rustin was one of the main organizers of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and he was an advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. However, of all the civil rights leaders at the time, Rustin was not widely recognized or celebrated because of his identities as a Communist and as a Black gay man. Rustin was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and he co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality. He was also deeply committed to the non-violent movement. He traveled to India for seven weeks to learn about Gandhian philosophy. Among Rustin's achievements, some of the most well-known were his advising for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Montgomery bus boycotts, and his leadership as president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. In the 1980s, Rustin became open about his sexuality and worked to bring the AIDS crisis onto the NAACP agenda. 

Contemporary Changemakers

Janet Mock (she/her) (Instagram: @janetmock)

Mock is the author of Redefining Realness and a New York Times bestseller. Redefining Realness is a compilation of Mock's autobiographical prose that touches on her life's experiences as a transgender woman and sex worker. Mock made history by becoming the first transgender woman of color to write and direct an episode of television. She produced the HBO documentary called The Trans List, which follows the stories of eleven transgender Americans. She is also the writer, director, and producer of the television series Pose, which premiered in June 2018. Since then, the show has been nominated countless times and won major awards like the Black Reel's Outstanding Drama Series. Pose illuminates the stories of Black and Latinx LGTBQ youth participating in ballroom culture. Mock’s other  remarkable accomplishments include TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People list," speaking at the 2017 Women's March, and joining the Arcus Foundation board. It is clear that Mock has affected tremendous change for the transgender community. Her art and advocacy work has increased the visibility of the transgender community and trans issues around the world. 

Indya Moore (they/them) (@indyamoore)

Moore is a transgender non-binary model, actress, and social activist. They are most well-known for their role in the hit television series created by Janet Mock, Pose, where they play a sex worker living in New York City in the late-1980s. Moore has been vocal about their experiences as a Black transgender non-binary American in popular publications like Elle, Vogue, and Time. In an interview with Vogue, Moore explains how being Black and trans means that they are subject to targeted violence and prejudice. Moore uses their social media platforms to amplify the Black community and transgender community's issues. 

Ericka Hart (she/they) (Instagram: @ihartericka)

Hart is a black queer femme activist, writer, highly-acclaimed speaker and award-winning sexuality educator. They were diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer in 2014 at the age of 28. Hart is most notable for her viral demonstration of going topless in public so people could see their double mastectomy scars at the AFROPUNK music festival. They said in an interview, "This is a music festival that's predominately black, young, and queer. I wanted to show other black, young, queer people that breast cancer also happens to us. Because most of the advocacy campaigns and infomercials around breast cancer don't center the black queer experience." Since then, Hart has been a powerful voice in sexuality education. Hart has also been vocal about racism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism in education. They advocate for a just, equitable education system that is inclusive of all marginalized identities. Hart hopes to dismantle cis-heteronormativity in sexuality education. "I want it to be universal, accessible, anti-racist, anti-systems of oppression. Period," they said

Andrea Jenkins (she/her) (Instagram: @shesgotgame1)

Jenkins’s election to the Minneapolis City Council in 2017 was monumental as she became the first openly trans woman to be elected into public office in the United States. She is also a passionate writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. After George Floyd was murdered in her city, Jenkins sang gospel at a national press conference in his honor. Jenkins is a committed advocate for racial justice and LGBTQ+ equality through systemic change in the United States. She believes that racism and police violence should be treated as a public health emergency. In an interview, Jenkins demanded, "We need to shift the paradigm on how we police our communities, putting more resources and responsibilities into the hands of our residents." 

Ashton Mota (he/him) (Instagram: @ashtonmota)

At the age of 16, Mota is a youth ambassador for the Human Rights Campaign, where he champions change for LGBTQ+ people of color. Mota was also a face of the "Yes On 3” Campaign located in Massachusetts. The campaign is a grassroots bipartisan effort to update the Massachusetts civil rights law to include nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in public places such as restaurants, hotels, and hospitals. Mota uses his own experiences to highlight the challenges faced by trans youth and students. "To those youth of color who do not have the ability right now to take that step to be visible whether because of safety or cultural reasons, I SEE YOU! You are not alone, and I will fight for your right to be seen and heard," he said.

Organizations to Support

The Black Trans Travel Fund

Mission statement: The Black Trans Travel Fund is a grassroots, Black Trans-led Collective, providing Black transgender women with financial and material resources needed to remove barriers to self-determining and accessing safer travel options.

Brave Space Alliance

Mission statement: Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ Center located on the South Side of Chicago, dedicated to creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ+ individuals on the South and West sides of the city. We strive to empower, embolden, and educate each other through mutual aid, knowledge-sharing, and the creation of community-sourced resources as we build toward the liberation of all oppressed peoples. 

The Marsha P. Johnson Institute

Mission statement: The Marsha P. Johnson Institute (MPJI) protects and defends the human rights of BLACK transgender people. We do this by organizing, advocating, creating an intentional community to heal, developing transformative leadership, and promoting our collective power. We intend to reclaim Marsha P. Johnson and our relationship as BLACK trans people to her life and legacy. It is in our reclaiming of Marsha that we give ourselves permission to reclaim autonomy to our minds, to our bodies, and to our futures. We were founded both as a response to the murders of BLACK trans women and women of color and how that is connected to our exclusion from social justice issues, namely racial, gender, and reproductive justice, as well as gun violence. 

The Okra Project

Mission statement: The Okra Project is a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home-cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans people wherever they can reach them.

The Audre Lorde Project

Mission statement: The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit, Trans and Gender Non Conforming People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area. Through mobilization, education, and capacity-building, we work for community wellness and progressive social and economic justice. Committed to struggling across differences, we seek to responsibly reflect, represent and serve our various communities.

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