Singer and “artivist" Mykal Kilgore says, in many ways, he feels like he is starting over. Having achieved success on Broadway (Motown The Musical, The Book of Mormon, HAIR!) and television (The Wiz Live!, Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert), Kilgore made history in 2021 when he became the first openly queer singer to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional R&B Performance. Now, Kilgore is laser-focused on his budding recording career and “The Man In The Barbershop Tour,” which kicks off in Atlanta on February 3 at Vinyl.

It feels appropriate that he would begin his 13-city east coast tour in Atlanta now that he’s a new resident. Kilgore’s sit down with The Reckoning was his first matter of business and official welcome to the South after getting settled into his new Atlanta address. Without hesitation, he made it clear why he chose to make Atlanta home.

Doug Shipman is settling into his new role as Atlanta City Council president. Since his swearing-in earlier this month, he’s appointed committee chairs, presided over a couple of council meetings, and met with state officials.

He’s also poring over hundreds of pages detailing city finances and funding distribution processes, all packed into three thick binders. It’s here where he says he can find ways to fix the city’s long-beleaguered HIV housing program.

“It’s really a tactical thing,” he says of finding a solution. “And often the devil is in the details.”

Despite an active childhood that included playing football and running track since fifth grade, Gerald Thomas was a bit spooked when he read his class schedule at the start of his freshman year at Elbert County Comprehensive High School in northeast Georgia.

“When I saw it said ‘weightlifting’ I went to my school counselor and asked her to change it because for some reason I was intimidated,” Thomas recalls. “She told me that for all athletes, weightlifting was our P.E.”

Thomas’s aversion to bench presses and squats soon dissipated as he became a stronger defensive end, a faster 400-meter runner, and experienced other benefits of regularly being in the gym.

“It helped me improve my performance, and it also made me look better,” says Thomas, who more than 30 years later remains an avid weightlifter, and whose 50-year-old physique resembles that of a college athlete. He briefly stopped working out after ending his collegiate track career, but within a month, Thomas noticed the activity he once dreaded had become an essential part of his being.

When I started my journey as a social entrepreneur almost 10 years ago, I didn’t have any mentors. And much of the advice I did receive, though well-meaning, did not resonate with how I wanted to approach my work. So I wanted to share with you some of the lessons I learned along the way and initial strategies you may want to consider implementing in the first few months if you want to become a nonprofit founder.

On a recent Sunday, on an unassuming corner in West Atlanta, an industrial-style gym transformed into a modern-day ashram. There, with the gritty rhymes of rap artists like Yella Beezy blaring in the background, dozens of Black and Brown people contorted their bodies into positions like high dragon, mermaid, and tree pose—reclaiming the ancient eastern art of yoga to find health and a little peace.

Countless people of color start their year with a handful of classic rituals—often a soul food meal, a vision board, and a lofty plan to get a snatched waist. The latter usually leads to a mad dash to the nearest gym—but across Atlanta, fitness professionals are encouraging people of color to add yoga to their list of ways to get summertime fine.

They’re offering “trap yoga”, Christian-themed classes, and even LGBTQ+ friendly practices as they try to woo a community that’s long viewed yoga as unwelcoming to all but the white health elite.

Like clockwork, the start of a new year is filled with resolutions, many of which are completely abandoned before the calendar enters the month of February. Without an internal assessment, a clear plan, and the necessary support to bring those plans to fruition, even the most hopeful among us often fail to meet personal goals set at the beginning of the year. But what if all you needed to thrive in 2022 was inside of you waiting to be unlocked? It’s not unimaginable that the keys might be hidden underneath two years of devastating loss, deteriorating mental health, and socio-economic challenges driven by the global pandemic. For many, January 1 marks the beginning of a clean slate—a do-over—another chance to get it right. But according to Fonda Clayton, an Atlanta-based holistic life coach, a clean slate is available for us to choose from every day.

As this year draws to a close, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on the stories that helped make The Reckoning a must-visit site for unique and thoughtful stories about Black gay men and Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ+ community in 2021. We’d also like to thank you for supporting the work we do with over 200,000 page views, countless shares and retweets on social media, award recognition, and, for some, your willingness to share your personal life experiences in the stories we tell. At CNP and The Reckoning, we believe great storytelling can shift the narrative about how society views us as Black LGBTQ+ people and how we view ourselves.

In 2021, our top ten stories more than lived up to our promise of publishing well-written content that reflects the authenticity and diversity of Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ+ community and beyond. Because of you, these stories soared. Let’s look back on the top ten stories on The Reckoning for 2021.

For many, Christmas represents the promise of peace and goodwill, but behind the decorations and family traditions is a dark underpinning triggered by the holiday season. This sadness, often referred to as holiday depression, can be incredibly challenging for LGBTQ+ people who experience rejection from their given family based upon their sexual orientation or gender identity. So while most Americans are preparing to execute their holiday traditions, others are preparing to wage an internal war under the societal expectation of holiday cheer.

For Chancey Daniel, 31, a Marietta, GA native and doctoral student now residing in Montgomery, AL, the month of December is a painful reminder of the loss of his mother to multiple myeloma and his diagnosis of stage four throat and lung cancer the following year after her passing.

“It [depression] comes around November because Thanksgiving and Christmas are never the same,” Daniel says, referring to the season his mother fell gravely ill after battling cancer three times before ultimately succumbing to the disease in February 2017.

When he was 16 years old, Jahnesta Watson found himself in the middle of a familial drama that unexpectedly shifted the trajectory of his life.

Prior to this moment, Watson, now 28, had been the golden child. Beloved by most within the family, he was incapable of doing any wrong in their eyes. But he admits he made a terrible mistake by confiding in a family member.

“I had this uncle, the cool uncle; the kind of uncle who would slip you a beer on the side when no one was looking,” Watson told The Reckoning. “We were close; really close.”

So close that Watson decided this uncle would be the sole person he would confide in about his sexuality.

“Big mistake,” he said.

After an ugly altercation with the family matriarch, Watson’s grandmother, the uncle, shared Watson’s secret.

In the land of rainbow flags and endless grand openings, the ribbon-cutting of an LGBTQ+ lounge in Atlanta is a painfully mundane event. But venture down the road to Middle Georgia, however, and the climate shifts. Commercial opportunities there are fewer and attitudes towards gays and lesbians, not always as friendly. Both can make creating an LGBTQ+ social spot an uphill battle.

For Atlantan turned Macon resident Daaijee Sultan, it’s unacceptable. The serial entrepreneur has embarked on a personal revolution, recently opening the doors to LGBTQ+ friendly Flavorz Coffee and Hookah in downtown Macon.

Between December 2019 and May 2020, Joshua Henry Jenkins, co-creator of “Black, Gay, stuck at home,” lost two of his closest Black queer friends—Dr. Louis F. Graham, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy at The University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Marcus R. White, an Assistant Professor of Dance at Arizona State University. The sudden loss was incomprehensible and rippled throughout the marginalized and artistic communities in which their work was rooted, specifically, but not limited to the cities of Chapel Hill and Greensboro, where Jenkins first encountered the former romantic partners as undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill during the early stages of creating KuchuQwanzaa—a 7-day celebration and expression of Black LGBTQ+ cultural principles, values, and ideals that expands on the more widely known Kwanzaa celebration from December 26, to January 1.

“The idea of interrogating or flipping Kwanzaa on its head to be Black and queer meant that Louis [Graham] and Marcus [White] wanted to also interject those ideologies into the name,” Jenkins says.

Depending on whom you ask, Atlanta can be a place of refuge for Black gay men or the embodiment of all that’s wrong with Black gay culture. In a city overflowing with eligible gay bachelors, the prospect of finding love can often look bleak, with many growing tired of the dating scene altogether, instead choosing to find joy in the freedom of being single while working to advance professionally. But both can exist simultaneously. Black gay men in Atlanta and beyond can find loving relationships with each other while maintaining successful careers. It’s happening every day.

In observance of WORLD AIDS DAY, CNP joins in the global recognition of the lives lost to HIV/AIDS, the breakthrough scientific advancements, and the millions of people around the world who are living and thriving with HIV. At CNP, we believe great storytelling can change hearts and minds, which is why we incorporate HIV narratives into our work throughout the year. Today, we invite you to revisit these deeply personal stories of individuals and organizations working to end the HIV epidemic in America and beyond.

“That woman left her son.” I was haunted, and pleasantly surprised by those words from my mother. I’d emerged from a week of work doing technical production on a virtual presentation of the play “Before It Hits Home". CNP partnered with Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theater and Georgia Equality to produce this virtual screening in honor of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2021. I seemed to be working non-stop in my home office, and decided that, on show day, I’d load the broadcast downstairs for my mother to watch. Unsure if she would, I gave her the offer, and to my surprise she did watch.

More than that though, I was struck by how this play resonated with her.

With 2022 upon us, we could not be more excited to continue to engage the #CNPTribe around our programs, events, and stories to shift narratives, elevate the voices of our community, and build power. We also wanted to offer you a preview of just a few programs and projects we have in store. Your support means so much to us, and we look forward to continuing to be in community with you all.

As we approach the beginning of the holiday season and the last weeks before the start of a new year, it’s imperative that we begin to give thanks, not just on the official holiday but every day throughout the year. If you’re reading this, congratulations, you’re still surviving a pandemic that has taken over 5 million lives globally nearly two years after its emergence. That alone is a reason to give thanks. But let’s be clear, Black gay men were navigating an epidemic and a host of other challenges before COVID-19 arrived, which can often make it difficult to exist in a continuous space of gratitude. But it is not impossible. It is an intentional act to choose joy and gratitude, especially in the midst of life’s challenges. “If you can change your mind, you can change your life,” wrote philosopher William James.

After months of debates, campaign ads, meet and greets, and canvassing, Atlanta is close to naming a new mayor and potentially welcoming some new and familiar faces to the City Council and Board of Education.

Unfortunately, some of those faces will not include the dozen or so Black LGBTQ identified candidates who launched campaigns for the council, school board, and the mayor’s office.

Of the slate of Black LGBTQ candidates, Keisha Waites is the only candidate with a chance of possibly winning their campaign. A native of Atlanta and a former state legislator, Waites is in a runoff against Jacqueline “Jacki” Labat for the Council’s Post 3 At-Large seat. Labat’s husband, Patrick Labat, is Fulton County Sheriff.

Waites’ platform is centered on four issues: public safety, restoring public trust, regional transportation, and affordable housing.

Throughout his life, Dr. N.J. Akbar has become something of an expert in overcoming personal challenges.

Labeled “dumb” by an elementary school teacher, the 37-year-old eventually earned a doctorate, a high-ranking administrative position at one of the largest universities in Ohio, and a seat as the president of Akron Public Schools’ Board of Education.

But it was in a very private area of his life where this very public figure faced one of his most unique challenges and earned one of his most fulfilling rewards.

Just before the pandemic, Akbar, who is fully mobile, met and fell in love with his partner Alex Mayweather, 30, who uses a wheelchair.

Before the digital explosion of Black gay blogs and social media in the mid-2000s, “CLIK,” a glossy full-color monthly magazine created specifically for the Black gay community dominated as the publication of choice for a decade. Co-founded by Lewis Nicholson, who served as the first editor-in-chief, and Dwight Powell, initially a publisher and graphic designer who assumed the role as editor-in-chief after Nicholson’s departure; ultimately becoming the magazine’s longest-running editor and the personality most widely associated with the magazine, which quickly became a Black LGBTQ+ staple.

It was 30 years ago, on November 7, that basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. announced he’d acquired HIV. No other HIV disclosure has had such a reverberating impact before or since. From the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, where he achieved era-defining success with the LA Lakers, the cherub-faced icon held a press conference where he revealed he was living with HIV and would immediately retire from basketball. The magnitude of this event was due not only to his popularity as a sports hero; he was a 32-year-old heterosexual Black man who appeared to be perfectly healthy and still in his athletic prime.

Unlike other celebrities with HIV whose disclosure and/or death made mainstream (Rock Hudson, Liberace) and LGBTQ (Sylvester) headlines, Magic was not gay, nor did he use intravenous drugs. He was heterosexual, which meant he was "just like anybody else" and not like those dispensable others. Those others made up a besieged minority who did not need to be convinced that AIDS was real. Among them were Black gay men.