“Equality, Truth, and Matter”: Diversifying LGBTQ+ Leadership

Leading in to Transgender Awareness Week (Nov. 12 – 19), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) hosted the 13th annual Historically Black and Universities (HBCU) Leadership Summit: “Leading In Truth”, this past week from Thursday, November 8 – Monday, November 12.
This year’s program was hosted in Atlanta, Georgia, and encompassed 46 “fierce advocates” of an applicant pool of 156 HBCU students that identify in the LGBTQ+ community.
Associate Director of the HBCU Program, Leslie Hall, shed some light on the statement behind the name of this year’s summit.
“‘Leading in Truth’ is more than a tagline, it is a call to action. It requires you to LEAD from a place of authenticity. Make an effort to lead in your truth each day,” he elaborated.
Students from 25 HBCUs, and 12 states total, joined forces for five days to discuss and dissect topics like leadership, equity, inclusion, identities, oppression, health & wellness, religion, and self-discovery.
Various workshops and discussions were led by trendsetters and advocates in the LGBTQ+ community like Hope Giselle, Amiyah Scott, Ryan Jamaal Swain, Karamo Brown, Kirk Pressley (MC Boom Boom Balenciaga), and Isaiah R. Wilson and more; each holding status a crusader for marginalized groups in the LGBTQ+ community.
According to the HRC website, “HRC Foundation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Program empowers LGBTQ+ HBCU students to be change-agents on their campus and lead resourcefully through the intersections of race, religion, gender identity, class and sexual orientation.”
Senior at Philander Smith College, Christiana Marie Webb feels that the experience provided that empowerment through the introduction of ball culture.
Ball culture can be described as a creative outlet and genre of LGBTQ+ subculture in the community. Partaking in ball culture is a liberating and expressive form of talent that the students of the program were able to delve into with confidence.
“This summit has impacted me in a very positive way; I’m usually very shy and don’t participate in things such as the ball. By taking part in the ball and actually winning a category, for me, it took me out of my shell and I had a great time and felt really good and pretty. I loved the energy and vibes that were given and received. I had an amazing time,” Webb expressed.
Over the course of the program, students were given the opportunity to not only interact intellectually and emotionally with one another, but with alumni of the program and active advocates of the LGBTQ+ community as well.
Alumni of the program were allotted the opportunity to return as mentors to the students, as well as members of the organizing committee, offering a mirroring experience for the previous cohorts.
Alumna, Ashlie Arvin, partook in the fall of 2016, representing Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia as the president of MOSAIC, the LGBTQ+ group on campus. Her experience during the summit led her to pour that support back into the program’s latest cohort.
“This is my second time going to the HRC HBCU Leadership Summit and this time was very different because I was able to see how my work impacted others. I enjoyed the participants and the fact that they really took in the lessons of the summit. It’s not often that Black LGBTQ+ folk are able to be in a space solely dedicated to them and their success. Often times we are overlooked, but the summit continuously validated that we are deserving to be heard like everyone else,” Arvin expressed.
LGBTQ+ students from HBCUs across the country were able leave the summit seeing themselves as leaders and social change agents with increased skills and competency for engaging the intersection of race, religion, gender identity, class, and sexual orientations.
To learn more about the program, visit www.hrc.org/campaigns/hbcu-leadership-and-career-summit.