Three National LGBTQ Organizations Have Black Leaders

February is Black History Month and we are celebrating the LGBTQ community. But not exactly in the way you may first think. The election of Kamala Harris as the first female, Black, South Asian vice president was a joyous and noteworthy event. Indeed, the Biden administration has already shown itself to be the antithesis of the blatant racism of the previous four years. New leadership demands new ways of operating, new ways of governing, and new ways to confront systematic racism. Our own community that we’ve only recently begun to address bigotry within our ranks, and that includes Black executive leadership in the LGBTQ+ movement. For the first time in history, three of the national legacy LGBTQ equality organizations (National LGBTQ Task Force, Human Rights Campaign, and National Center for Lesbian Rights) will be led by Black executive directors. This has been a demand from LGBTQ activists of color for decades and is the result of a lot of hard work that included protests, marching, and intentional bench building within and across social justice movements in the country. With fixing racial inequity a major priority for the Biden/Harris administration and a continuing patchwork of civil rights laws across our country, their leadership of these organizations come at an opportune time. That was the focus of the first panel discussion at this week’s National LGBTQ Task Force “Creating Change” conference which featured several Black LGBTQ leaders, including Kierra Johnson of the National LGBTQ Task Force, Alphonso David of the Human Rights Campaign, and Imani Rupert-Gordon of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. The session was moderated by the National Black Justice Coalition's executive director, David J. Johns. What stuck out during some very honest and profound remarks was how our own attitudes have shaped our ideas about Black executives and leaders in the LGBTQ+ movement. The very thought that these individuals are “firsts” is at once alarming and embarrassing — why have we, as a generally open-minded community, been so lax in installing Black leadership? A gigantic new and first step in the LGBTQ community has been achieved.