This Black History Month, Abi McIntosh digs into the archives to shine a light on the queer Black elders we should all know and asks why their stories aren’t common knowledge

WORDS BY ABI MCINTOSH
HEADER DESIGN BY JACK ROWE

This year marks the 76th anniversary of the arrival of the HMT Windrush which docked in Tilbury, Essex in 1948. These dates are a reminder of the steady integration of Caribbean culture is woven into the fabric of Black Britain which has, historically, been well documented. However, still, among the stories of Windrush, there are plenty of Black LGBTQIA+ names that many of us don’t know. Ivor Cummings is just one of those. 

Cummings, who has been described as the “gay father of the Windrush generation”, was of Sierra Leonean and British heritage and an openly gay Black government official born in Hartlepool in 1913, who welcomed the newcomers as they arrived in England. As a senior official in the welfare department of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Cummings was in charge of organising transport and helping to find temporary accommodation for those who needed it. Beyond his official capacity, Cummings also stayed in touch with the arrivals once they had settled in the UK, regularly sending letters and receiving updates.

I first learned about Cummings while being asked to lend my voice to an episode of On the Record at The National Archives podcast about the Windrush generation. I was overwhelmed when I heard about Cummings. I was shocked that a story I know so well, as a Jamaican with relatives who arrived on the Windrush, involved an openly queer Black man. I was angry that I’d never been taught his name and that his story was one that I discovered by coincidence.

The arrival of the Windrush generation is a well-known story and the omission of Cummings from it is an example of the ways Black queer people have been cut out of key moments of history. Cumminngs’ role in helping people settle into their new life in the UK should be known outside of LGBTQIA+ circles and it shouldn’t be something you learn 76 years after the fact. 

By misrepresenting Black queer British people in history, notable figures, movements and places are completely erased. Cummings’ voice was the first thing the new arrivals heard, and while the impact of the Windrush lives on, his name has been largely forgotten. 

"Among the stories of Windrush, there are plenty of Black LGBTQIA+ names that many of us don’t know"

UK Black History Month has been celebrated every October for nearly three decades, and while it’s done a necessary job of spotlighting buried history, it’s fallen short of recognising the achievements of the Black LGBTQIA+ community in the UK. Over the decades, we’ve continued to see a focus on North American – not UK – history and wider straight culture. 

Activist Marc Thompson argues that the LGBTQIA+ experience is regularly overlooked. “Black queer people are not seen in Black History Month, they are falling through the cracks,” Thompson, a co-director of the non-profit The Love Tank, explains. 

As Thompson notes, this lack of education is hugely damaging. When I was coming out, before hashtags and social media celesbians, I turned to the internet searching for an image of queerness that looked like me. My painfully limited options were either Ellen DeGeneres or Jenny Schecter from The L Word, so, of course, I convinced myself that I was the only Black lesbian in England. 

Years later, I stumbled upon articles about the Camden Black Lesbian Group, a centre that had existed near where I spent my weekends as a teenager. I soon realised that the community I was so desperately searching for had already been built for me, but I just didn’t know it. The requirement to seek out our own LGBTQIA+ history, and not be steered towards it, is disappointing. 

For me, this lack of spotlighting further proved a political point – the stories of Black queer people in Britain, from the trivial to the trailblazing, have been sidelined in discussions of Black British history. And by overlooking these stories, we are only presented with a one-dimensional version of the facts, and we fail to learn the full story.

"The stories of Black queer people in Britain, from the trivial to the trailblazing, have been sidelined"

Queering Black British history

Author and journalist Paula Akpan experienced a similar feeling of frustration when she discovered that the Black Lesbian and Gay Centre (which was active throughout the 1980s and 1990s), set up to tackle the issues facing LGBTQIA+ people of colour, a short distance from her house in Peckham – something she had previously been unaware of.

“Every day I was walking around these spaces, not knowing the significance in my personal history and also in the history of a community that I’m a part of, it feels like you’ve been robbed of so much,” Akpan says. 

Queer history is absent from the narrative of Black Britain for many reasons. But, as Akpan argues, one of the main culprits is the way that Black British queer people have been “marginalised” in the wider LGBTQIA+ movement and racial justice movements. For example, queer issues were often overlooked in Black activist spaces and the nuances of race weren’t paid attention to within LGBTQIA+ groups.

This was acknowledged by people of intersecting identities at the time, with Black and South Asian women describing the “invisibility of lesbians in the Black community” and “the lack of space” for racialised women in a 1984 article published in the Feminist Review.

Equally, there was also outright discrimination. One of the organisers of the UK’s first-ever Pride march, Black and gay activist Ted Brown, has even spoken about how he left the Gay London Police Monitoring Group (now Galop) following a confrontation with a white member of the group who used a racial slur.

And while Brown is among the most prominent names in the UK’s LGBTQIA+ rights movement, there will be countless other individuals who were sidelined in queer organisations due to the impact of racist attitudes like these – and whose stories haven’t been passed down. But even if they aren’t acknowledged in the history books today, that doesn’t mean the work Black queer people did in LGBTQIA+ activist groups wasn’t impactful.

Interestingly, Brown helped to set up Black Lesbians and Gays Against Media Homophobia (BLAGAMH), a group who launched a campaign lobbying Black British tabloid The Voice to apologise for its reports on Black gay footballer, Justin Fashanu.

Similarly, Akpan notes that Black queer women in the 1970s and 1980s also organised into more focused collectives, such as the Black Lesbian Group, where the nuances of their multifaceted identities could be appreciated and “they could stand by issues that dealt with Blackness and womanhood in a way that understood that they were overlapping and occurring simultaneously.”

"Queer issues were often overlooked in Black activist spaces and the nuances of race weren’t paid attention to within LGBTQIA+ groups"

Uncovering new narratives

But if we move away from traditional ways of documenting history, and instead look at oral history and ordinary people, Black queer stories can be found. For example, I recently discovered the incredible story of a safe haven for Black gay men in Brixton. Pearl Alcock was a bisexual Jamaican artist who ran an underground bar (or shebeen) in Brixton in the basement of her women’s clothing shop. 

The shebeen, which later became a cafe, was a queer safe spot for many Black gay men who travelled from across London to have a drink and a dance, free from racism and homophobia. Alcock’s story has been preserved by the people who knew her and although some might not deem Alcock’s shebeen and cafe as activism, it’s an important part of London’s Black history which is being kept alive by ordinary people.

Similarly, both Akpan and Thompson acknowledge individuals who impacted the Black queer community in the day-to-day. “There were everyday actors who poured into that community,” says Akpan. “We don’t necessarily know their names, but we have their insight and we can build upon that.” As Thompson puts it, “people that just go about living their daily lives,” are “a part of history.”

In order to document perspectives like these, Thompson and writer Jason Okundaye created Black and Gay, Back in the Day: a digital archive and a podcast which documents the lives of Black queer people in Britain through photos submitted by the community. The project is focussed on counteracting the ways in which Black, queer experiences have been erased from celebrations of LGBTQIA+ History Month in the UK

“During LGBTQIA+ History Month in this country, the narratives, experiences and contributions of the Black, queer community are sorely missing and completely absent, apart from a few really well-known people.” Thompson explains. “We set up [the account] because we believe that Black, queer people are not recognised and seen in Black History Month and we weren’t seeing them in LGBTQIA+ History Month either. We wanted to fill that gap.”

Projects like Black and Gay, Back in the Day, mark a tide change: one where the role Black, queer people have played in history is finally being acknowledged. “I think the younger generation who are coming up are curious about the past,” Thompson explains. “What runs alongside that is an older generation who are ready to tell our stories.” 

This intergenerational sharing of stories and experiences is how we can redress the absences, silences and gaps around the queer, Black community – people who have always been here, shaping history, but who have been overlooked for just as long. ‘‘We, as a community, are responsible for preserving our history,’ Thompson concludes. “To interpret, analyse, and share it.”’

Thompson’s right. Telling these stories is essential because they broaden the scope of the Black British history we think we know. Pearl Alcock’s life tells the story of Black queer nightlife, the work of Ivor Cummings goes behind the scenes of one of the most recognisable moments of Black British history and the legacy of Ted Brown’s activism shines a new light on the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights in the UK. 

Black British queer history is Black history, it’s my history. I’m owed it, and we should know it. 

The post It’s time to bring Black LGBTQ+ history back into focus appeared first on GAY TIMES.

When we think of Pride our minds often go to the big events but what’s the alternative grassroots option? Abi McIntosh explores how Pride can be celebrated in different ways. 

When we think of Pride, our minds often go to the big events but what are the alternative grassroots options? Abi McIntosh explores the different ways Pride can be celebrated. 

WORDS BY ABI MCINTOSH 

I love Pride. The rainbows, the glitter, the music, the dancing, all of it. I’ve seen myself grow from someone who only had the courage to watch Pride in London from afar 15 years ago on my own, to walking in the parade surrounded by other members of the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s easy to forget what Pride is really about amongst the rainbow haze. ‘The first Pride was a riot’ is a slogan which pops up every year referring to the now famous riot that broke out at a small New York bar called the Stonewall Inn, in June 1969. The riot has been labelled as the catalyst of the gay rights movement but the slogan doesn’t seem to resonate with the Prides of 2023. Pride marches have become Pride parades, with days centred around a day of partying and celebration leaving little room for protests. Pride was a protest first and foremost but, today, we’ve reached a space with celebration and advocating for political progress that can co-exist. 

In recent years, I’ve noticed a shift in the way I look at Pride. In particular, I feel that Pride in London has a long way to go to be the best fit for the community. It’s hard to dance along when you consider that hate crimes have risen by 168% since 2018, with London reporting the highest in the UK. Then, like clockwork, the biggest sponsors of Pride parades turn their social media handles to rainbow-coloured icons on the 1st of June and then back to their regular logos at midnight on the 1st of July like a corporate Cinderella. It’s true, actions speak louder than words and performative activism doesn’t get us very far. For me, over the last few years, Pride in London hasn’t been the right fit. So, where does that leave us? As the headliner Pride events get rolled out, it’s worth looking around and finding the event that works best for you and your community. After all, no one event is going to get it perfect. 

Rob Desroches is the co-founder of  Forest Gayte Pride, a grassroots project based in the East London borough of Newham. Forest Gayte Pride started as a coffee shop meet-up in 2017, but on the day 200-300 people arrived and the group had to relocate to a bigger venue. Now it has grown and attracts nearly 3000 people each year. When Desroches started attending Prides in the 1980s and 1990s, it was still very much a protest about the LGBTQ+ community fighting for the rights they did not yet have. Spaces like Forest Gayte Pride have become an alternative haven for those that don’t feel at home at the banner events. But, it doesn’t end there: there are plenty of local and regional Prides that can offer an alternative experience.

As LGBTQ+ acceptance has increased, Desroches believes our community-focused perspective during Pride has slipped away. “As acceptance has grown, we’ve let our guard down,” he explains. “It’s really easy to just show up for the party and have fun. But the political element, the activism element has been lost.” Instead, Desroches argues, a big portion of Pride has “gone from being a protest march to a parade.” The evolution of Pride, for some, has become more of an event, than a protest. However, things are changing. Take Manchester Pride which runs a Pride conference education on LGBTQ+ topics, to their Equals Charter which fights discrimination in the workplace. As musicians and corporations have increasingly become the face of Pride, it’s important to remember the necessary activism and on-the-ground work that needs to be spotlighted. 

Influencer, actor and presenter Scott McGlynn attends a lot of Pride events – both commercial and grassroots – and has established a soft spot for smaller, more inclusive Prides because of their personal touch (“You see everyone you know.”) McGlynn grew up in Barry, Wales and attends Prides all over his home country, including Pride Cymru and Cowbridge Pride which was started by H from Steps last year. What he likes about grassroots Prides is that he is able to learn more about the charities that work in the community he grew up in. “You shouldn’t have to go to London to experience Pride,” he explains. “You can experience Pride in the community you’re from.”

Like McGlynn, Desroches believes there is a stronger sense of community at grassroots Prides that bigger, commercially-backed Prides can’t always achieve. As events like Pride in London – which pulls in over 1.5 million visitors – it’s difficult to tick every single box for each attendee, particularly when sponsorship or big names are in play. McGlynn’s main issue with larger Prides is the lack of commitment some businesses involved have to the LGBTQ+ community.

Of course, it’s expensive to run a large-scale Pride and LGBTQ+ employees on corporate floats deserve to be recognised by their own companies too, but McGlynn argues that the organisers of Pride should be pickier about who their sponsors are. “Pride is a whole year thing, you can’t just pop in and then pop out,” he tells GAY TIMES. “There needs to be a better selection process to make sure that the businesses are making a bigger commitment to the community than one day a year.”

Andre Bogues, Communications Officer at UK Black Pride, believes that grassroots Prides are able to occupy a space in the community that larger events aren’t able to. “[We] have the community at the heart of them. Grassroot Prides are ‘for us, by us’, they rely on the support of volunteers and those who want to be a part of something bigger than themselves,” he tells GAY TIMES. “Grassroots Prides keep the politics and the rebellion against systems of oppression front and centre.”

From regional Pride events to the anticipated run-up to Brighton Pride, we’re now in a space where we have events that can be tailored to different communities and outcomes. As we’ve reached this growing ecosystem of Pride, I’ve found greater resilience and community during my time at events like UK Black Pride. Elsewhere, I couldn’t really see myself as a Black queer woman in the larger parade which doesn’t centre faces that look like mine. UK Black Pride was the first place I saw a Pride flag and a Jamaican flag flying roundly next to each other and the first Pride I felt seen. 

UK Black Pride has grown into a massive event since it began as a day trip to the seaside in 2005, now with an attendance of over 25,000 people. Yet, UK Black Pride has still managed to keep its community spirit. Bogues believes this is down to the people that run it being part of the Black LGBTQ+ community. “Speaking from experience, it’s all about the vibe and the energy you feel. The freedom, the queerness, the Blackness,”  he tells GAY TIMES. “As a volunteer-led organisation, we welcome people into the family and accept change. It also goes without saying that Lady Phyll is a force, and she really makes UKBP feel like a place to connect with chosen family.”

As the pool of Pride events widens, Desroches cautions how commercialisation can risk alienating everyday LGBTQ+ people and lose touch with their radical roots. The LGBTQ+ community is incredibly diverse, and the danger with too much of a corporate presence at Pride is that they often only push one aspect of the LGBTQ+ community; a glitzy pink profile with greater disposable income, rather than looking at the real struggles we are all facing. “My community feels disillusioned and disenfranchised from bigger Prides,” Desroches says. 

As grassroots Prides tend to be smaller, they inevitably feel like more of a community and can accommodate the diversity that exists within that community, allowing them to focus on being as inclusive as possible. Whether you’re planning to rock up to Pride in London, Tameside Pride or UK Black Pride, these events all unify us in wanting to spotlight the LGBTQ+ community. But, as we reach an uptick in numbers, we must remember the minorities as well as the majority. There will always be a necessity for workshops, sober spaces, LGBTQ+ talks and education. Local Pride and grassroots Pride inevitably have that closer, more intimate connection with their community. The work that smaller collectives showcase is a reminder of LGBTQ+ resilience and has been for decades. For now, I’ve found home at grassroots events like Margate Black Pride but, truthfully, as long as there is a community, there will always be Pride. 

The post How small Pride events are making a big impact appeared first on GAY TIMES.

WORDS BY ABI MCINTOSH
ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE MORTON

Barefoot believes that everyone deserves to be embraced and celebrated, no matter who they are or who they love. Our mission is to make the world a brighter place by celebrating our differences, after all, life would be pretty boring if we were all the same, and by bringing people together through wine. Barefoot is excited to work with GAY TIMES and Abi McIntosh this holiday season to bring their amazing holiday story to life. You can read more about Barefoot Wine’s history as an Ally of the LGBTQ+ community here.

Christmas time can be hard for everyone, but some LGBTQ+ people find it particularly difficult. Often having to spend it with family who aren’t accepting, or in places they hate which remind them of a time when they had to hide parts of themselves. But the festive season for me, is a time to reflect on how much I’ve grown more comfortable with my seuxality each year, and how doing so has allowed my friendships to blossom.

It’s my favourite time of the year, just slightly beaten by my birthday. Fairy lights, Barefoot Wine, mince pies, Christmas parties, open bars, an excuse to watch The Holiday every day for a month. I love the way despite the darker days and the cold, rainy nights, we all collectively agree to be in good spirits.

I have a group of friends that I’ve known since we were 11. When we wore school skirts, helped each other with maths homework, created dance routines to the latest funky house tunes and updated our Myspace Top 5’s. My friendship group means a lot to me and is a place I’ve learnt to understand what my identity means as a first-generation black British kid. Trying and failing at our parents’ recipes, blending English and Caribbean cultures to create our own traditions, and one of them I love the most is our annual Christmas dinner.

Every year, no matter how busy we all are, how little or how much we’ve seen of each other, we get together to catch up on the last 12 months. We each bring a dish, a very random Secret Santa and we play games that get a little too competitive, to a background of gospel Christmas songs blended with noughties R&B. Serving up a traditional English roast with a side of rice and peas and mac and cheese, sharing gossip and drinking wine, often the Barefoot brand. As someone who finds the expectations of Christmas day difficult to navigate, this dinner is something I look forward to every year because it has all my favourite bits of the festive period, alcohol and food, without the awkward family dynamics.

The word lesbian was still a word that terrified me. A word that challenged everything I thought I knew about who I was going to be, what my life would look like.

We started this tradition during my first year of university, the year that I’d finally come out to myself and arrived at my student accommodation determined never to spend another day in the closet.

My first three months at university were a whirlwind. I finally said I was a lesbian out loud, I snogged a lot of girls in inappropriate places, I got into my first of many love triangles and I really tested the boundaries of what ‘your first year doesn’t count’ actually means.

But while I was falling in love with my new queer life, I hadn’t really kept in contact with any of my friends while I was away. I was so wrapped up in all the new LGBTQ+ friends I’d made, how different life was, and all the fun I was having. I finally felt like I could truly be myself, miles away from home and free from carrying the weight of my sexuality, that I forgot to keep in touch.

My fear went beyond the fact that I was not good at replying to messages. Even though everyone knew I was gay, I had never officially come out to them, although they did come out on my behalf once.

When I was 15 at a sleepover with my friends, I came back from the toilet and opened the door to find the living room, normally filled with laughter, deathly silent. I immediately had the feeling I was being talked about. Before anyone said anything, I knew what was about to be asked. I felt my heartbeat quicken as I tried to take my place on the sofa, a spotlight following me across the room, it felt like I’d walked into a coming out intervention. They started talking and I looked around, not really following along with the conversation until I heard the words: “Abi, we think you are a lesbiain.”

It hadn’t come out of nowhere. Even though as the daughter of religious parents, I used to pride myself on being able to hide things, some things you can’t keep secret. Paired with my lack of interest in boys at an all-girls school, where all girls talk about is boys and ask whether you have a tampon, there were rumours going around about me and another girl at school. It really didn’t take much at all for gossip to spread around school, but there was some truth to this rumour.

The word lesbian was still a word that terrified me. A word that challenged everything I thought I knew about who I was going to be, what my life would look like. It was still a word thrown around by girls in my class as a slur and whatever it meant, I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to be.

Every year I have shown up to Christmas dinner bringing slightly more of myself, and every year I am amazed at how comfortable I am

Even though my friends reassured me they were fine with it, and told me to think about it, we never mentioned it again. I didn’t bring it up when I started kissing girls, going to Candy bar every Friday and Saturday. And no one questioned me when I and made jokes about ‘only being gay at the weekend’.

So when I shipped myself off to the other side of the country for university, I didn’t necessarily feel the need to open up to anyone about my sexuality. It was very much a case of out of sight, out of mind.

But then the semester began to come to an end, I realised that I would have to go home and face my friends and I genuinely started to panic. Would I have to keep this new life a secret? Would they ask me questions about my dating life? Would I have to lie about what I was really getting up to? These thoughts plagued my mind while I finished my last few lectures and said goodbye to my new friends.

So when I packed up my belongings and headed home for Christmas that first semester, I was full of apprehension. The thought of having to fill everyone in on my very eventful first three months at university and my newly found lesbianism filled me with dread on the long journey home.

I was 19 and finally comfortable with saying the word lesbian out loud. I didn’t want to put myself in any situations that might shake my new self-love. To this day, there are still so many people I no longer have in my life because I couldn’t work up the courage to tell them I was a lesbian, so I just stopped talking to them instead. Naively I thought that coming out was a one-time thing, you come out once and that’s it. I thought that because I’d decided to accept myself and I was no longer hiding it, the job was done. No conversations, no answering questions, I just wanted to be me.

I think back to that first Christmas. When I returned to London and realised so quickly that I had worked myself up over nothing at all. When I was a few drinks in, and slipped up on a pronoun when relaying one of many embarrassing dating stories, no one batted an eyelid. I went home that night and sighed with relief, and I’ve been letting out breaths ever since then.

Every year I have shown up to Christmas dinner bringing slightly more of myself, and every year I am amazed at how comfortable I am relaying the latest in my dating life. How I don’t sensor myself when I fill them in on the latest lesbian drama. When I held back tears one year after being dumped by the first girl I ever loved, and laughed the next about an ex-girlfriend who definitely was not right for me.

I’m more comfortable than I’ve ever been with my sexuality and as I spend Christmas with my girlfriend and her family for the first time

So now the festive season makes me think about a lot of things. It makes me think about the little baby gay who had knots in her stomach on the train back to London after that first semester. It makes me think of the year the queer community finally got to me and all my friends smiled along as I took my undercooked nut roast out of the oven while they all tucked into their roast chicken. It makes me think about shared conversations over Barefoot Wines and my favourite food.

So many things have changed in my life since that first Christmas dinner, things 19-year-old me wouldn’t believe. And the festive season serves as a perfect reminder to take stock of these changes where I’m at now. It reminds me that there are so many people in my life that I love, it reminds me that there are so many milestones in my life I haven’t yet hit. It makes me think about what my life will look like in 5, 10, 15 years. I think about how easy it is to open up now compared to back then and whether I will ever try and be vegetarian again, and if I will be able to make a good enough vegetarian Christmas dinner.

And so our annual Christmas dinner continues this year, as I’m more comfortable than I’ve ever been with my sexuality and as I spend Christmas with my girlfriend and her family for the first time, enjoying Barefoot. 19-year-old me wouldn’t believe it.

The post Christmas reminds me of how far I’ve come since coming out appeared first on GAY TIMES.