Black History Month is a time to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements and courageous acts of people of African descent in the United States and around the world. This year, Black History month celebrates its 100th anniversary. And yet, Black History Month has failed to fully acknowledge or celebrate the contributions of Black LGBTQ+ people. Just as Pride Month remains overwhelmingly white in its representation, Black History Month continues to be deeply homophobic in its omissions.
Jamal's nine-year-old body is paralysed. He experiences constant, uncontrollable, violent spasms. He cannot sleep through them. Nor can his mother. To keep the spasms under control, a drug called baclofen is required. It relaxes the muscles and stops the shaking. Suddenly halting the use of baclofen can have serious health consequences. Jamal's mother, my cousin Shaima, wrote to me from the family's tent in al-Mawasi displacement camp in Gaza a week ago.
Although many people feel strongly about this one way, other people may disagree or feel strongly another way," he said, adding, "Ultimately, the government gets to choose the message it wants to convey.
In 2025, LGBTQ+ people watched hard-won progress unravel in real time. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs were dismantled with startling speed, often under the false banner of "fairness." Queer people, particularly trans Americans, were targeted in the military and elsewhere, once again treated as liabilities rather than patriots. LGBTQ+ history was scrubbed from government websites, our contributions quietly erased from history as if they were inconveniences rather than facts.
We have passed into the era of unhistory. The other day, it was announced that a famous 1863 picture of an ex-slave showing the crisscrossed scar tissue from dozens of whippings would be removed from a national park. And, as The Washington Post says, this was part of a general campaign on the part of the administration to quite literally whitewash American history as presented on our public lands.
The Trump administration's removal of trans references from the Stonewall National Monument's site is an egregious act of erasure against a vital part of LGBTQ+ history, denying the contributions of trailblazers like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in the riots that sparked the modern LGBTQ+ movement.
