Meet 6 Black trailblazers fighting racism: “I didn’t come to play; I came to dismantle white supremacy.”

2. Andrea Jenkins

Black trans women face unique hardships in every facet of life and continue to experience violence and murder at an appalling rate. Representation remains not just about acceptance–it’s a matter of life and death. That reality makes Andrea Jenkins achievement as the first Black, openly transgender woman elected to office in the United States all the more significant. And she won with over 70% of the vote.

But even prior to Jenkins’ historic 2018 Minneapolis City Council campaign victory, she worked to elevate the transgender community. Notably, she founded the Trans United Fund with Hayden Mora, a political action committee devoted to helping other trans candidates run for office.

Active in the Trans Lives Matter movement, Jenkins, who is also a writer and poet, has continued to embody leadership in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, which happened in her own town. As the nation has focused its attention on the injustices plaguing Black America, Jenkins has worked on legislation to rein in racial profiling and police violence. And her voice is more powerful than ever.

After singing “Amazing Grace” at a press conference for Floyd, she told the crowd:

We feel as if there was a knee on all of our collective necks — a knee that says Black life does not matter. I am a part of this system to help to take that knee off of our necks. And that is the work that I will be doing.

3. Barbara Smith

If you think the term “intersectionality”–the combination of identities in a single person–is a newfangled term, think again. In fact, it may as well have been invented by the great Barbara Smith. In 1974, she was among the founders of Boston’s Combahee River Collective, a political group that organized around how the overlapping combination of sexual, racial, gender, and economic identities was often used against Black women of color in varying degrees and at the same time.

After the collective disbanded in 1980 and inspired by Alice Walker, Smith realized that the next step was to project this vision into the world in a positive fashion through literature and creative non-fiction. She formed Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press which quickly established a platform for the great writers of the day who wrote through the lens of intersectionality. Among the literary lights she published before the press shuttered were Audre Lorde, Cherríe Moraga, Hattie Gossett, Susan L. Yung, June Jordan, and Gloria Anzaldúa.

After flourishing in organizing, publishing, and then academia, Smith broke through to mainstream politics, elected for two terms to the Albany, New York Common Council where she continued her fierce equality advocacy but on a street level.

Predating the Black Lives Matter movement by decades, today she still sounds like a central part of its demands for racial and economic justice:

Unless we eradicate the systemic oppressions that undermine the lives of the majority of L.G.B.T.Q. people, we will never achieve queer liberation.

4. Shea Couleé

Jaren Merrell has captivated drag fans as Shea Couleé, first as a finalist on season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race and now riding a new wave of momentum on season five of All Stars. But the Chicago-based queen is much more than a pretty face (and let’s be real a standout triple-threat talent). Couleé has long emphasized the importance of using their platform to inspire and uplift queer people of color to feel confident in their identities and hasn’t shied away from addressing racism in the drag community and the world at large.

With the All Stars spotlight coinciding with a renewed wave of Black Lives Matter activism, they have doubled down on that responsibility with aplomb.

That started with speaking candidly to fans about their conflicting feelings as All Stars premiered in the wake of COVID-19 and the national outrage sparked by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police. In an Instagram post, Couleé wrote:

I have struggled…with the desire to share and celebrate my return to All Stars, and a sense of guilt in feeling that would be too self serving during these incredibly sensitive times. I with I had a proper answer, but I am still learning. In this moment however, I do feel that sharing successful black stories is an important tool in creating hope for the younger Queer POC who watch the show looking for inspiration.

And while their story is certainly an inspiration, Couleé has emphasized how vital it is for QPOC to seize this moment of change. In addition to leveraging social media to raise awareness of the injustices afflicting Black Americans, they gave a particularly powerful speech at the Chicago Drag March for Change protest earlier this month in support of BLM, telling the crowd:

We are Black, we are queer and we deserve to take up space…My value shouldn’t be wrapped up in my talent. My value should not be wrapped up in Instagram followers. My value should be strictly based on the fact that I’m a human being walking this earth right next to you…You want to show up? Y’all need to hire Black people in your bars. And I’m not just talking about to wipe up your drinks, I’m talking about I want to see Black managers. I want to see Black people decide who gets to come in and who gets to make the money. And while we’re at it, we need to get a f*cking Black-owned bar up in this b*tch…My name is Shea Couleé and I didn’t come to play; I came to dismantle white supremacy.

5. Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford knows the power of art and imagery. The acclaimed abstract artist’s work at first glance may seem purely interested in aesthetics, but just like the varied materials and textures he uses, there are emotional and visceral layers to his art. Much of his work focuses on aerial-type assemblages, often depicting his hometown of Los Angeles, taking a bird’s eye view of the suffering felt by the African American communities on the streets below. And right now, in Los Angeles and in cities across the country, those struggles are getting more of the attention they deserve.

With the media so often missing the forest for the trees, Bradford’s massive pieces give the viewer a chance to absorb the vastness of racial inequality. The pain is painted into the places he depicts, inseparable from the land beneath the city streets. It’s a vitally important lesson for those still struggling to grasp the context of racism in America.

Take, for instance, his 2006 piece, Scorched Earth, which represents Tulsa, Oklahoma as a place that can never get out from underneath the racist massacre carried out in 1921 by white residents against the city’s thriving Black community:

While everyone must keep their eyes open to the daily events of protest and stay vigilant in demanding change, we’re lucky there are artists like Bradford weaving the past and present together, reminding us why the stakes are so high.