Mandy Carter: Scientist of Activism
STRENGTHENING LEADERS
By the 1980s, many LGBTQ organizations were mobilizing and centering white LGBTQ people. The Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum was formed in 1988 as a space to educate and train Black gay and lesbian leadership to challenge white supremacy and the rise of the Radical Right. During her time with the organization, Carter worked to create visibility for Black LGBTQ leaders and ensure they had a seat at the table. For Carter, the goal of leadership was to engage Black lesbians and gays into mobilizing Black religious leaders and Black churches to challenge homophobia in the Black community.
An article in the Princeton student newspaper reporting on Carter’s upcoming talk on campus entitled, “Race, Sex, Gender, Religion: Bridging Communities, Effecting Change.” At the time of this article, Carter was the director of the National Black Gay Lesbian Leadership Forum’s National Call to Resist Campaign, an initiative focused on increasing support for gays and lesbians in Black churches and communities.
“The gap between theology and practice is not just in the black community. [Marriage equality] has failed in twenty-nine states because of the white church. The Black church did not alone bear the cultural cross of this tension and transition.”
- Jesse Jackson, Time Magazine, May 17, 2012
This magazine article highlights the significance of establishing and building Black gay and lesbian leadership. Author Nadine Smith, a co-chair of the 1993 March on Washington, asserts that Black church leaders and Black gays and lesbians can mobilize together to eradicate homophobia in Black communities in order to build momentum in liberation movements.
An article outlining Carter’s life story and her vision for the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum.
“She says she wants to create a national organization for gay people of color. ‘We need to have that,’ Carter says, ‘We can put our energy and resources into working with our own people of color queer community, and then work cooperatively with other national organizations. There’s nothing like that right now and we need it.’”
Mandy Carter’s copy of a conference program for the National Black Gay and Lesbian Conference and Institutes, “the largest gathering of lesbians and gay men of African Descent from the United States and Abroad.” This was the seventh annual such gathering. At the time of this conference, Carter worked with the Human Rights Campaign and established “A National Call to Resist: Countering the Radical Right in Our Black Community” in Washington, D.C.
A flyer promoting the Leadership Forum’s tenth anniversary conference. The keynote speakers are some of the most renowned Black writers, scholars, and activists of the twentieth century. Carter worked as the National Field Director of the NBGLLF during this conference.
A brochure for the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, including their logo featuring the Greek letter lambda. The lambda has long been a symbol used by LGBTQ liberation movements. In the early 1970s, in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion, New York City's Gay Activists Alliance selected the Greek letter lambda as its emblem, suggested by member Tom Doerr because of its scientific use to designate kinetic potential.
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