Black Youth Project

Pride isn’t always a parade. Sometimes it’s a password, a ticket shared only on close friends, a jacket that comes off once you’re through the door.

In Lagos, where the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act carries penalties of up to fourteen years in prison, Prosper Dave Ogechukwu writes about what it means to celebrate q***r identity anyway — in a hidden venue, shared only a day before the event. Inside: ballroom categories walked in Ankara prints and exaggerated headpieces, art by q***r artists with nowhere else to show their work, and the particular relief of being in a room full of people who require no explanation. A gathering built not around visibility for the public, but around the simple, profound act of being known.

Pride here isn’t defined by spectacle. It’s defined by the community that keeps creating space for itself despite the cost.

🔗 Read the full story at BlackYouthProject.com

Gender Fluidity, Chosen Family, and the Invitation to Realness by Amanzi Arnett Dowdy.

Drawing from a lifetime of navigating imposed masculinity and the transformative power of q***r friendship, Dowdy explores how chosen family doesn’t just offer refuge — it offers a new imagination of the self.

Through the lens of Black q***r kinship, they ask what becomes possible when we stop performing identity for survival and start building worlds where fluidity can flourish freely.

Chosen family isn’t a substitute for belonging. It’s where belonging actually begins.

🔗 Read the full story at BlackYouthProject.com

The Danger Of Memorializing Men Like Justin Fairfax and Afrika Bambaataa.

When Justin Fairfax killed his wife Cerina Wanzer Fairfax before taking his own life, the immediate response from many was to post memorials centered on him. Not her. Him.

This piece examines what it means when we reflexively protect the legacies of men who have caused harm, and how patriarchy conditions us to center their mental health, their achievements, and their grief while erasing the women who carried everything.

Cerina Wanzer Fairfax was the planner, the caretaker, the primary earner, and the port in a storm for her children. She deserved to be named as such long before her death made it unavoidable.

Black women and femmes deserve better than to disappear behind the men who harmed them.

🔗 Read the full story at BlackYouthProject.com

The Truth About Hierarchy and the Push for Supremacy in Our Dating Lives by Mo Viviane.

Drawing from a personal experience of relationship conflict and harm, Viviane explores how hierarchy, control, and punishment shape the ways we move through our intimate lives.

Through an abolitionist lens, they challenge the idea that accountability begins and ends with blame, asking instead what it might look like to build relationships rooted in care, complexity, and collective responsibility.

Abolition isn’t just a political framework. It’s a way of loving.

🔗 Read the full story at Black Youth Project.

Happy Pride! 🏳️‍🌈

Marsha P. Johnson. Bayard Rustin. James Baldwin. Audre Lorde. Josephine Baker. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Langston Hughes. Essex Hemphill. Stormé DeLarverie.

Black q***r ancestors who created, loved, and led — often without the recognition they deserved. And here’s what history doesn’t always say loudly enough: Pride began as a rebellion led by Black and brown trans women. The joy we celebrate every June was born from their refusal to be erased.

This Pride, we honor them. Swipe to meet them!

What Is Critique and Who Gets To Do It? by Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield.

Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield asks a question the art world keeps dodging: when we separate the critic from the creator, who gets pushed out?

Drawing on Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Mariame Kaba, Stringfield makes the case that critique isn’t cruelty — it’s care. The insistence that we deserve better, and the belief that something better is actually possible.

She traces critique through three movements: naming what is, correcting what’s broken, and daring to build what doesn’t exist yet. That last part is where Afrofuturism lives. Where abolition lives. Where every circle of people who refused to accept the world as fixed lives.

Truthtelling isn’t comfortable. For Black women especially, it can be costly. But to look at something for all its beauty and still want more isn’t ingratitude. It’s vision.

🔗 Read the full essay at BlackYouthProject.com

Thurgood Marshall Still Asks Us To Protect The Less Powerful by Daniel Johnson.

Daniel Johnson traces the enduring legacy of Thurgood Marshall, lawyer, Solicitor General, and the conscience of the Supreme Court, and asks what his jurisprudence demands of us now.

Moving between landmark courtroom victories and decades of dissent, the piece examines how Marshall understood the Constitution not as a fixed document, but as a living one, capable of growth and accountable to the people it had long failed.

With the Voting Rights Act now dismantled and civil rights protections eroding in real time, Johnson returns to Marshall’s body of work as both a map and a mirror. Marshall never measured the law by what it was. He measured it by what it owed.

At its core, the piece leaves us with the question Marshall never stopped asking: do we have the courage to protect ourselves, or will we keep sacrificing each other until no one is left?

🔗 Read the full story at Black Youth Project.

Pride Month stories deserve depth, nuance, joy, and truth. ✍🏾🌈

Black Youth Project is now accepting pitches from Black writers for Pride Month essays and reportage exploring q***r life, identity, politics, dating, community, and global perspectives on q***rness.

If you’ve been waiting for a sign to pitch your story — this is it.

Submit your pitches to [email protected] Learn more + explore BYP’s style and voice at blackyouthproject.com

Pitches accepted through the end of the month — don’t wait too long! 

Desire Has a Racial Hierarchy by Taylor Allyn.

Taylor Allyn examines how race, HIV stigma, and q***r desire shape intimacy for Black q***r men navigating dating apps, relationships, and systems of exclusion.

Moving through personal memory and lived experience, the piece unpacks how so-called “preferences” are often informed by racial hierarchy, colorism, and the politics of desirability. It reflects on the emotional toll of being hyper-visible as fantasy while simultaneously excluded from love, safety, and recognition.

At the same time, the essay explores the ways Black q***r communities continue building spaces of care, honesty, and belonging beyond those systems. Through friendship, intimacy, and mutual recognition, Allyn reminds us that survival also lives in the act of seeing each other fully.

Read the full story at BlackYouthProject.com.

✨ Series Alert: Abolishing Patriarchal Violence ✨

Join us for a transformative conversation as we continue our Abolish Patriarchal Violence Series with two researchers and organizers from the movement.

We are diving deep into the intersections of abolition and identity with and . We’ll be discussing the Abolition Study!

🗓️ THE DETAILS
• WHEN: May 15, 2026
• TIME: 3:00PM ET
• WHERE: Right here on IG Live

Set your reminders, tag a friend who needs to be in the room, and we’ll see you there!