A Mother’s Love: Honoring the Fierceness of Dorothy Beam on Mother’s Day

For Mother’s Day, Johnnie Ray Kornegay III pays tribute to Dorothy Beam, the mother of celebrated Black gay anthologist Joseph Beam, whose devotion to her son's legacy transformed personal grief into a powerful act of advocacy. After Joseph's death from AIDS-related complications in 1988, Dorothy refused to let his unfinished work disappear; instead, she collaborated with poet Essex Hemphill to complete Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (1991), a landmark text in Black LGBTQ+ literary history.