The National Black Justice Coalition will host the 2nd Annual Wisdom Awards, which honor Black LGBTQ and same-gender-loving women and feminine elders and their contributions to America’s literary and communication arts traditions.
The awards, which will be held virtually at 1 p.m. on Monday, May 16, will be broadcast on NBJC’s YouTube channel, coincides with the celebration of National LGBTQ+ Elders Day.
Being honored this year are: Sheila Alexander-Reid, the former director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and the founder and former executive director of the Women in the Life Association, a social justice organization dedicated to advancing the rights of lesbians and queer women of color; Ann Allen Shockley, the author of Loving Her, published in 1974, which was the first novel with a Black lesbian protagonist, and a librarian at Fisk University who led initiatives to encourage other libraries to include collections of works from African-American writers; and Cheryl Clarke, an American lesbian poet, essayist, educator, community activist, and co-owner of Blenheim Hill Books.
Other honorees are: Anita Cornwell, one of the first lesbians to be published in The Ladder and The Negro Digest, who also authored the first collection of essays by and about Black lesbians; Jewelle Gomez, an African-American poet, author and playwright and one of the original staff of Say Brother (now Basic Black), WGBH Boston’s longest-running public affairs program produced by, for, and about African Americans, and one of the co-founders of GLAAD; and Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins, a poet, writer, performer, activist and the first Black trans woman elected to public office in the United States.
Other honorees are Rayceen Pendarvis, a host and emcee for various Black LGBTQ events and the former host of The Ask Rayceen Show; Barbara Smith, a feminist, author, and founding member of Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color press, which enabled women to write and publish books relevant to queer women of color; and Linda Villarosa, a journalist and novelist who was the first out LGBTQ executive editor of a significant Black magazine when she worked for Essence magazine, who has written about various important issues like the Black maternity health crisis, the impact of COVID-19 and environmental injustice on Black people, and an article on medical myths as part of the New York Times‘ 1619 Project.
The panic level of equality advocates has reached a fever pitch following the leak of a draft of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. The 1973 landmark case effectively established the right of a pregnant person to obtain an abortion regardless of prior state laws on the books that may have restricted access to abortion-related services.
The leaked draft of the opinion, published by Politico on Monday night, set off waves of demonstrations throughout the country, with most organized by supporters of abortion rights wishing to express their displeasure with the court's draft opinion. Penned by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the opinion would, if published in its current form, overturn Roe and return power to individual states to regulate or ban abortions as elected representatives see fit.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the current White House Deputy Press Secretary, will soon become the first out LGBTQ person, as well as the first Black person, to serve as White House Press Secretary after current Press Secretary Jen Psaki steps down on Friday, May 13.
Jean-Pierre, who has served as Psaki's top deputy since the start of the Biden administration, became the first Black woman in 30 years to address the White House press corps in May 2021, when she filled in for Psaki, which she has done on multiple occasions over the past year.
She previously served as chief public affairs officer for MoveOn.org and as an NBC and MSNBC political analyst, as well as in various communications-related posts in the Obama White House and Democratic presidential campaigns.
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