Journalist
Zaya’s bravery is contagious.
Her willingness to be who she is at such a young age not only sets an example, but her family’s public navigation of it—especially in regards to her exemplary father Dwyane Wade—shows families across the country that they can learn from their children just as much as teach them.
This bio is short, because Zaya has only been on this earth for 13 years, but I’m sure her excellence and advocacy will continue to inspire others for decades to come.
#QueerHeroes Day 7.
James Baldwin.
Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, was widely praised when it came out in 1953. However, when he went to his publisher with his second novel, Giovanni’s Room, he was told to burn it. The book didn’t shy away from bisexuality or homosexuality and was met with controversy in 1956.
Baldwin’s activism was transformative. He moved back to the U.S. from Paris in the late 50s before traveling to Montgomery, Alabama to interview those living under Jim Crow. By the 60s, he was giving lectures on civil rights at college campuses all over the country, and the audiences were widely white liberals. Soon, his assessments of race in America and his accounts of being Black in America were too rallying for the American populace to ignore.
His insight would be invaluable to lawmakers. After expressing to Robert Kennedy that the U.S. Government was widely responsible for violence arising in Birmingham, the two met for breakfast at Kennedy’s apartment. A second meeting came later and with other formidable activists: Harry Belafonte, Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne, and others. Baldwin would be instrumental in coordinating the March on Jobs and the wave of civil disobedience following the Birmingham church bombing.
His body of work ranges from novels to plays to essays to short stories. Baldwin was a force and—like his comrades Hansberry, Belafonte, and Horne—knew that art and artistry are some of the most useful weapons against evil.
“I think that no one any longer can be fooled about the intentions of the American government because they’ve made it perfectly clear. And that may be the most healthy thing that has happened in this time. Nobody, after all, can say anything for the present administration. It represents the American illusion that it’s a white country, that it’s a white world and that they can make it a white universe — the moon is our first colony.” -James Baldwin in a 1970 interview for Come Out!, the Gay Liberation Front magazine.
#QueerHeroes Day 5.
Patrick Kelly.
Patrick Kelly was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1954. His mother was a home economics teacher and he learned to sew in his teenage years.
After graduating high school, he moved from Mississippi to Atlanta, where he worked in a thrift shop. He began modifying the donated designer fashions and constructing pieces of his own, which he sold outside his store within a beauty salon.
He became a favorite designer of Black supermodel Pat Cleveland. She encouraged him to move to Paris, which he eventually did.
It wasn’t long before Kelly became one of the city’s premiere fashion designers, becoming the first American EVER admitted to Fédération française de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode—the governing fashion body for all of Paris fashion.
Every celebrity from Bette Davis to Grace Jones to Madonna to Cicely Tyson became clients of his. He held runway shows at the Louvre.
Kelly was just about to reach his peak, developing lingerie, perfume, and menswear lines before he was diagnosed with AIDS.
He died in 1990 at only 35 years old. He’s buried in his beloved Paris today.
Evan Brechtel 