05/23/2026
Thirty-five years after three Black gay men built something in a field in Washington because no one else would, DC Black Pride convenes again, this time inside the most legislatively hostile moment for Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people in modern American history.
There is a version of this country that wants Black q***r people to be quiet right now. There are โalliesโ asking us to wait, or to read the room. The room for us, after all, has been rearranged.
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order erasing federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, directed agencies to enforce a binary definition of s*x, and rescinded more than a dozen Biden-era protections for LGBTQ+ workers, students, and families.
The DC District government has issued official proclamations recognizing DC Black Pride. Major corporations now sponsor it. The money, though, has never matched the need, and lately it has gotten worse.
The Center for Black Equity launched a Save the Black Pride campaign after Black Prides worldwide reported funding cuts between 40 and 60 percent
This is the moment DC Black Pride is meeting this Memorial Day weekend. What this gathering has always understood, since its founding on a field in Washington thirty-five years ago, is that the act of showing up together is not a retreat from the political. It is very political. And right now, it may be the most important thing we do.
Before there was a movement, there was a field.
Banneker Field, across the street from Howard University, where on May 25, 1991, a small group of Black q***r people gathered and, without fully knowing it, altered the course of American LGBTQ+ life.
They were not waiting for permission from anyone. They were not waiting on mainstream Pride, that predominantly white institution that had made clear, through its aesthetics and its politics and its silences, that Black q***r people were guests at bestโฆ๐๐๐๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐
๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐ซ๐ญ๐ข๐๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ญ ๐๐๐ฒ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ณ๐ข๐ง๐.๐๐จ๐ฆ! ๐๐๐ฉ ๐
