All Posts By

Nikita Shepard

The Gay Men Who Challenged Jim Crow: Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko, and the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation

Posted on February 28, 2020

A photo of the Journey of Reconciliation.

This February, Black History Month offers us an opportunity to remember and to learn about the civil rights movement, as well as focus on the courageous Black, queer, and trans individuals who paved the way. More and more histories are acknowledging the critical role that queer Black activists played in the movement to end segregation and pursue racial justice, from Mississippi politician Aaron Henry, to author James Baldwin, to the brilliant gender non-conforming lawyer, activist, and priest Pauli Murray. Yet lesser…

Remembering Félix González-Torres: Queer Latinx Art and the Caribbean-American ‘South’

Posted on October 2, 2019

Forty years ago, Félix González-Torres arrived in New York City from Puerto Rico, marking the beginning of his emergence as one of the most influential conceptual artists of his generation. During a brilliant career cut tragically short by his death from AIDS, the openly gay, Cuban-born, Latino-American artist produced a wide range of works that challenged spectators to participate in the creative experience and to formulate their own meanings. Through photography, billboards, and installations comprised of everyday objects, he evoked…

The Southern Roots of LGBTQ Religious Activism: The Curious Story of George Hyde’s Gay Ministry in 1940s Georgia

Posted on December 7, 2018

Over the past 50 years, as conflicts over homosexuality have wracked religious denominations across the United States, LGBTQ people have both fought for affirming inclusion within their faith communities and formed distinct groups of their own. When most folks today think about early LGBTQ religious activism, Reverend Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) spring easily to mind. Perry, a southerner by birth who grew up in northern Florida and was first licensed as a Baptist preacher there at…

A Tennessee Trans Icon Comes Home: Remembering Aleshia Brevard

Posted on November 20, 2017

In her classic interdisciplinary manifesto Borderlands/La Frontera, Chicana lesbian writer Gloria Anzaldúa explores homophobia as "fear of going home." Especially for LGBTQ folks of color and those straddling different cultural worlds, she writes, "We're afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged." For many trans folks who leave the South to transition or to find community, this fear of rejection by our communities of origin is all too real. Yet, before drag…

Queer Southern Staples: Where Did All The LGBTQ Bookstores Go?

Posted on October 31, 2017

For a brief time beginning in the 1970s and stretching up to the 2000s, a new species of community institution sprinkled the southern landscape—the LGBTQ bookstore. Once prolific, these stores are now endangered. While LGBTQ visibility and community participation has expanded exponentially, economic changes have forced nearly all small bookstores to either close or shift their retail focus. Yet a few determined LGBTQ and feminist bookstores—from the funky Faubourg Marigny Art and Books in New Orleans to feminist stalwarts such…

‘I Feel That I Have Arrived’: The Journey of a Southern Latina Trans Health Advocate

Posted on September 27, 2017

A photo of Latina trans health advocate Lea Córdova.

When you meet Lea Córdova, MA, MS, you don't know what is more astonishing: the action-packed life she has lived as a Latina trans health advocate, or the fact that this irrepressible dynamo is in fact 76 years old. Lea and I have seen each other at LGBTQ and activist events around North Carolina for many years, and I've come to admire her as one of my elders. I caught up with her on a sunny September afternoon, shortly after she'd…

Like a Mimosa Blossom: Making My Peace With the Queer South

Posted on September 13, 2017

An illustration of mimosa blossoms in the queer South.

Well, that’s what I always told myself, at least. When I arrived in North Carolina from the Northeast as an effeminate, bookish eight year old, nothing seemed right. Southern twang and slang mystified me, while I struggled to adjust to new foods, schools, and manners. And the homophobic and gender-oppressive bullying I’d always encountered seemed, if anything, to intensify. I couldn’t wait to grow up and get out.…