Blactorvist
How a Black actor fused art into activism.
It’s not easy being born a sensitive, smart, fragile, queer black femme in the 1980s. It helped being raised by two very different sets of southern grandparents, all born in the teens, deeply religious, Episcopal, Southern Baptist, raised in the Deep South. Raised picking cotton, cleaning spittoons, collecting money from jazz musicians in brothels, working as an orphaned child to support a family of 5, while their mothers died of tuberculosis, cancer, and worse. They survived being abused, neglected, scarlet fever, lynchings, WW2, The Korean War, the Great Depression, the great northern migration, integration, and even McCarthy. They became accomplished musicians, educators, hairdressers, the first black director of nursing in California and first Commissioner of Aging in San Francisco, even the accompanist to Paul Robeson. These are people who watched women bleed to death on their kitchen tables after illegal abortions, people who breastfed strangers’ babies so they always had a place to turn. These are people who boycotted buses and marched for AIDS research. People who taught me to speak my mind and stand tall.
My first day of kindergarten as everyone gave me kisses and hugs, my grandmother leaned down and said,
“You have to remember that you can’t act like these white kids and you can’t expect them to hand you anything, you will have to make it or take it. You have to be better. They are going to be watching you, waiting for you to mess up. Just remember they will never see you as an equal.”
I wouldn’t have to remember. I would be reminded constantly. When I was kicked out of class for sneezing, the teacher said I was distracting. When I was kicked out of class because my friend talked to me, the teacher said I was the only one they noticed. When I was told I was pretty, for a black girl. When I found myself creating diversity in every brochure photo shoot for my school and choir. When I was told I was so well spoken. I don’t talk black. I sang Opera. I was articulate. I was ‘one of the good ones’.
Life was full of daily micro-aggressions to remind me of my blackness, my inferior and subordinate position as a woman, my queerness, my neurodivergence, my otherness, and the constant daily struggle I would have to be heard, not to mention listened to and seen.
I found my voice. I learned to repeat myself. I learned to insert myself in the conversation. I refused to be silenced. I watched the women in my family make changes in the city we were in. I worked on my aunt’s Supervisor campaigns. I worked on everyone’s campaigns. I followed my grandma to board meetings. I watched them build long-standing city institutions and literal buildings. I learned how to fight at a policy level for the changes I wanted to see. It didn’t matter if it was yelling at cat callers, creating a safe space for students of color to discuss the challenges at our school, or getting warm ups for the varsity girls soccer team, no fight was too big or too small.
Then Trayvon Martin died and I learned to organize took to the streets. I could no longer only work from behind the scenes.
I found my voice
I began meeting and learning how to plan and organize protests. I learned how to educate people on social justice issues. In addition to using every organization I was part of to advocate at a policy and governmental level, I united other actors of color in activism, we performed plays, we sang, we wrote, we write, we sing, we create and keep creating. This is a step in a journey that has always been and has just begun. It started long before I was born and will continue long after I’m gone. This is a page in the neverending story, a chorus in the song that never ends. Because the fight never ends.
