Gerald Garth’s calendar is bursting with meeting invitations ranging from monthly check-ins to festive outings. He is a man-about-town wearing several hats, lending his advocacy along his travels. This afternoon, he’s taking it easy—a Zoom call here and there, a coworker dropping off items, and a hard stop at 2 p.m. He’s wrapping up his to-do list before attending a string of holiday parties and year-end celebrations.

Garth had a good 2021, personally and professionally. He describes prioritizing joy, setting boundaries, and tweaking his work-life balance. Sounds like sage advice, considering he’s stepping into multiple new roles in 2022. For one, he will be Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with the Los Angeles LGBT Center. He was elected to two positions: vice president of community initiatives and programs with LA Pride and the head of media and communications for Global Black Pride.

“I start [at The Center] at the top of the year, building strategies,” Garth said. “We are taking a robust view, looking at the hiring practices, programs, protocols, staffing structures, opportunities, next steps, and so forth.”

The 800-employee-strong Los Angeles LGBT Center sprawls over nine locations. Close to 50,000 Angelenos receive services ranging from primary care, HIV specialty care, and legal assistance to gender-affirming services through the agency.

Before meeting her wife, Paulette Martin worried about aging alone.

She was 40, single, and recently out to her children. What she knew was that she didn’t want to become a burden in her golden years. She was worried about who would take on the responsibility of caring for her.

Fast forward some years, Paulette moved from Hawaii to New York in 2014. She desired connections with other Black LGBTQ elders and heard of SAGE, a national organization committed to advocacy and services for LGBTQ elders. They were having a party and needed volunteers for setup. It was also where she met Pat, her wife of four years.

“I was helping to put together swag bags for the party which Pat was hosting,” Paulette told The Reckoning. “As we were putting things together, I noticed that people were talking over Pat.”

Somewhat frustrated, she spoke up.

“I told them you all should submit to Pat. She knows what she is doing. I didn’t even know her.”

Cycling is quickly becoming the newest phenomenon of transportation in Atlanta. However, almost explicitly missing from the conversation is the presence of Black queer voices and how popular cycling is to this group, whether native or transplant.

Octavia “Tay” Roberts, better known as Big Oreo, and Lauren Fareira, known best as Senorita Awesome, are two Black queer cyclists leading the way for more to join the experience.

Eight or so years ago, Big Oreo became interested in cycling. But it wasn’t until 2015 before she purchased her first bike. And as soon as she did, she got busy immersing herself in the culture.

“I got the bike and then went and got a job at [the popular sandwich shop] Jimmy John’s—because I wanted to,” the Atlanta native told The Reckoning. “The type of cycling Jimmy John’s cyclists do is unorthodox. It’s not like how you would see a group of cyclists or even racers.”

Co-founder of the cycling group Rolling Peach Bandits, Big Oreo considers herself an urban street cyclist. When on her own, or with a group of her buddies, she can be seen dipping and dodging traffic on her fixed-gear bike. It’s an exhilarating thrill for her.

Then just a fresh-faced youth, Atlanta lesbian Charlotte Hubbard spent her early 20s attending the city’s legendary Black gay pride celebration — one of the few places where she felt she could truly exhale.

“I loved just being in a place where I’m not seeking acceptance,” Hubbard says. “Just being able to be free felt really good.”

Then something shifted. Fist fights seemed to rise. The carefree vibe seemed to diminish. Eventually, for Hubbard, it stopped feeling like home.

“The turning point was when I was at Piedmont Park and every other corner I turned, there was a fight,” says Hubbard, who at 37, hasn’t attended Black Pride in a decade. “I said, ‘I can’t do this’.”

Each year on October 11, the LGBTQ+ community celebrates National Coming Out Day. Although today’s political and cultural environment is vastly different from it was in 1988 when Robert Eichberg and Jean O’Leary created the inaugural observance-coming out, or rather, inviting others in, still matters. While individuals arrive at this deeply personal decision in their own time, the benefits of living an authentic life far outweigh the alternative of a life rooted in fear and shame. For this National Coming Out Day, CNP’s staff is opening up about the moment the personal became public by sharing their individual coming out stories.

Tucked away in several boxes inside a Midtown Atlanta condo are photographs filled with stories of Black queer Atlanta in the early 2000s. It’s a makeshift time capsule of a vibrant, organized, and politically engaged community from an era that continues to hold significance for those who experienced it, but runs the risk of being forgotten by future generations. Long time Atlanta LGBTQ+ activist and recording artist Anthony Antoine is partnering with CNP to ensure the events and images that helped shape the Black LGBTQ+ equality movement in Atlanta are never erased—specifically, Antoine’s 2001 inaugural Stand Up & Represent March, which saw hundreds of Black LGBTQ+ people and their allies march through historically Black neighborhoods in Southwest Atlanta for three years consecutively.

The March, which initially began at the State Capitol and ended at The King Center—and eventually transitioned to Atlanta’s West End—is a move that Antoine says was intentional.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Atlanta Black Pride, one of the largest Black Pride celebrations in the United States. And unlike previous years, In The Life Atlanta (ITLA), the non-profit organization responsible for Black Pride programming is no longer at the helm. Instead, Atlanta Black Pride, a separate entity led by former ITLA representatives, Terence Stewart (President, Atlanta Black Pride) and Amber Moore (Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Atlanta Black Pride), are now leading organizational efforts for all official Atlanta Black Pride events. It’s an important distinction, among others, that Stewart and Moore are being more vocal about in the days leading up to this year’s Black Pride celebration and since departing ITLA.

“For the longest, you would hear that nobody was in control of Atlanta Black Pride, especially from people that are new to Atlanta,” says Stewart. “Who is in charge? There is no cohesion,” he recalls hearing from members of the community. “But when you look at Atlanta Pride, you know who's in charge.”

For over 20 years, Tracee McDaniel has been a permanent fixture in trans activism in Atlanta. With a historic appointment by former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to the Atlanta Citizens Review Board—making her the first trans person to occupy a seat on the Board—McDaniels is now serving her second term on the LGBTQ Advisory Board under Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms while maintaining her role as Founder and Executive Director of Juxtaposed Center for Transformation, Incorporated—an advocacy, consulting, and social services referral organization, specifically designed to empower the trans and gender non-conforming community.

During that visit, Nolan invited me to meet him at James’ house for a few libations before his flight back to St. Louis. James was the consummate host, and he welcomed me into his home as if we were old friends. We were a group of Black gay men sharing a bit of what we all hoped that the New Year would bring our way. None of us could have predicted the confluence of crises that would play out in 2020, and James certainly had no way of knowing that this New Year’s celebration would be his last. This time, Nolan was coming to Atlanta, not to visit James, but to attend his funeral. James, a healthy man in his mid-40s, was one of the more than 350,000 Americans to die of COVID-19.

Rev. Duncan Teague’s visit to Atlanta in 1984 was supposed to be a short-lived two-week vacation to celebrate his college graduation. Now nearly 40 years later, Teague is among thousands, if not millions of Black gay men who have migrated to Atlanta in search of liberation, freedom, community, and themselves. It’s a common thread that connects those who have taken the bus ride of faith from their relatively small southern or midwestern towns, often with no concrete plan and very little money, but with an overwhelming desire to become fully realized human beings in a city that is often both romanticized and demonized, yet affords Black gay men space to simply be.

Bisexuality is real. Black Bisexual men exist. Andrew Gillum happens to be one of those men. The Reckoning is providing a platform to three openly bisexual Black men to amplify their truth and to take control of a narrative that has historically been steeped in misinformation and bias, and told by everyone but the men who live it.

Overlooking a sparkling spring view of the Atlantic Ocean from a Fort Lauderdale hotel conference room, I sat among a group of activists and community service workers talking about art as activism and what makes that igniting mix possible when it strikes.

Just as it took a process of time, reading, living, and loving to come to a state of radically loving my Blackness and my gay identity, so is it to accept this body and all that comes with it. It has been a process assisted by the words of folks like Gay and Renee, Black feminists who know something about what it means for the world to tell you that you’re undesirable. I desperately needed their help, having not always been a size 46 in the waist. It has taken more than a decade to relax into this identity of “bear” and have it become a comfy fit (and, yes, I’ve heard the concerned Black gay nationalist arguments of adopting yet more white gay cultural language by using terms like “bear,” but I can’t really embrace the term “boy” at a smooth and grown 43-years-old in any context, even one intended to be culturally affirming).

I lacked the bravery and carefreeness displayed by hundreds of cubs, bears, chubs, superchubs, otters, and chaser brethren who confidently splashed, played, and luxuriated in the Orlando heat over the four official days of the Eighth Annual Big Boy Pride at the Parliament House pool. The privilege of standing bare-chested in the sun, in the sparkling chlorine water, or just outside in a public space before the caressing or judging eyes of others is something Black men of size seldom can take for granted, particularly not gay men of size, trained to be particularly attuned to the harsh judgement of the male gaze.