Mandy Carter: Scientist of Activism

COALITION BUILDING

Coalition building has been crucial to much of Carter’s work and activism, especially for Black LGBTQ movement work. Carter worked with the first national organization for Black LGBTQ people, the National Coalition for Black Lesbian and Gays and started a local chapter. In December 2003, she founded the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer+, and same-gender loving (LGBTQ+/SGL) people through coalition building, policy change, research, and education. Carter’s coalition-building efforts show the power of what happens when people come together across personal and organizational values to work towards a common goal.

“Coalition Addresses Minority Concerns,” The Front Page newspapers, Raleigh, NC: September 9-22, 1986, vol. 7, no. 15.

“As Proud of our gayness as we are of our blackness.” This was the motto of the Triangle Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, a group co-founded by Mandy Carter in August of 1985 as a chapter of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, the first national organization for “African American and Third World gay rights.” The organization and its chapters around the country highlighted the concerns of the Black LGBTQ community and provided spaces for the community and its allies to engage in social and political endeavors.

Photographs of Mandy Carter in Washington D.C., where she worked with many organizations, including those represented in this case.

“Big paper”: “NBGLLF People of Color Summit: Countering the Radical Right in our People of Color Communities,” Washington D.C.: September 16-17, 1994.

National Black Justice Coalition Mission/Vision One Pager, Washington, D.C.: 2004. Loan from Mandy Carter.

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