Entrepreneurs put those spectacles on and take another look see at our community from yet another perspective for your market studies. Hopefully, we'll always surprise you.
Many thanks to Miko Evans, our local Black Gay Historian for giving us firsthand history lessons on how Atlanta's Black LGBT Qummunity rose out of obscure shadows within the broader African American community to not fully integrate with its White LGBT neighbors but create an identity of its own and put the city on the national and international map as a flagpost for others of their kind. Once establishing a niche market, Evans describes the trial and triumphs of those who have attempted to build an economic infrastructure for this community on the road to self-sufficiency. Key Chapters: HIV/AIDS Prevention & Healthcare Advocacy, Olympics, ITLA and the current budding of a Neo Renaissance.
For this segment of “History Class” we capture the inspiration of Black Excellence exhibited during the period which has become known as the Harlem Renaissance and in its heyday, “The New Negro Movement”. It situates itself between the bookmarks of the end of World War I and the end of World War II 1918-1945. The nearly 30 year period spans over The Great Black Migration North (1915-1960) and The Great Depression (1929-1939). It captures the boom of "The Roaring Twenties", the organized crime of "The Prohibition Era" and the rise of Pan-Africanism led by Marcus Garvey. This Renaissance is believed to have been birthed out of and fueled by the aspirations of Southern Blacks fleeing the heavy oppression of the South and its prolific feature being choked off by the hardships brought on by The Great Depression. Within it, we have some of the richest periods of Black creativity in art, business and social organizations led independently by Blacks for Blacks. While Black Southern refugees did not find welcoming arms in the North, what they did find was opportunity and a safespace free of the harassment and terrorism of the Klan and an enveloping White Society hostile toward Black achievement. In this period of History and in tiny insulated enclaves of Northern industrialized cities like New York’s Harlem, Blacks found fertile ground to be and create for themselves, to independently identify and express themselves like never before. After The Depression choked the life out of this Renaissance, these tiny insulated pockets inhabited by Blacks and largely controlled by Blacks were left as urban wastelands which created what we know today as the “ghetto”.
Harlem was not the only location experiencing a Renaissance at this time borne out of these forces. The Southside of Chicago, Detroit, Tulsa’s Greenwood, Baltimore, Washington D.C., West Philadelphia and even Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn in the South were also having theirs as well. But Harlem situated itself as the North Star of this movement bringing together icons like Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and many other stars in close proximity of just a few blocks in Uptown Manhattan. Hughes led a literary consortium of writers under a publication titled “Fire” and the Duke featured this jumpy new rhythm known as jazz with his big band at “The Cotton Club”. Within this dynamic social backdrop, James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924 and experienced his youth and it deeply affected him. This is why we call him the “Native Son” of the Harlem Renaissance. He was a student schooled in poetry by Countee Cullen, another one of the literary greats of this era and was mentored by Richard Wright who wrote, “Native Son”. What’s more is that these three men had something in common besides being Black and legendary writers. They were all gay or some variation of SGL “same-gender loving”. Not only was Blackness for the first time given freedom to be identified and expressed, for the first time the experience of same gender love and gender bending expressions also began to peek its head around the corner to be seen through the works of Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. See article, “The Gay Harlem Renaissance” wherein celebrated historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. admits it “was surely as gay as it was black.” The drag performances of Gladys Bentley in top-hat, waistcoat and cane became a showcase, and the cultural phenomena of drag balls got it start. All of this could be said to have created James Baldwin, a man who was proud and unapologetically Black and Gay in a broader society which shamed both parties.
Like it must have done for James Baldwin, The Harlem Renaissance inspires us, the founders of The Baldwin Project, LLC to use our four lines of businesses to in invest in the richness of Black creativity in art, business and social organization, to launch a Neo Renaissance almost 100 years later. When the Black and LGBTQ get together in one person, and a community is created among these people, we are not lacking in originality, imagination, creativity, genius and magic. This ingenuity is indeed capital and a real commodity. Starting in Atlanta, touted as The Black Gay Mecca we could not have found more fertile ground. We have only to cultivate it, and that is what we intend to do with our four lines of businesses, (Marketing, Investing, Networking, Education) to M.I.N.E. these resources as if they were gold, because indeed it is. We are sitting on a G.O.L.D. M.I.N.E.
Grow- Stay in the mode of expansion, progression, innovation and evolution.
Organize- Unite all stakeholders under one common concern for mutual benefit and be orderly.
Lead- Be original and lead with excellence. Teach others on how to follow your gold standard.
Discipline-Master your craft through ongoing education and training. Keep your skills sharp and cutting edge. Be self-regulated.
