St. Louis Black Gay Pride - A Growing Community

Erise Williams Jr. has been a part of St. Louis Black Pride since it emerged eight years ago from the B Boy Blues Festival, an intervention program sponsored by Williams and the now defunct BABAA (Blacks Assisting Blacks Against AIDS).

Williams, who serves as the president of the St. Louis Black Gay and Lesbian Pride Committee, admits he couldn’t have envisioned the success of Black Pride, which serves as a resource for the metropolitan African American gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community. Black Pride will host the eighth annual St. Louis Black Pride celebration, which culminates on Aug. 17 with a festival at Kiener Plaza downtown.

“It’s a real good tool in terms of bringing the African American GLBT community together,” Williams said of the Aug. 15-17 celebration. “It has also served as a venue or opportunity for the non-African American GLBT community to work with the African American GLBT community.”

“We’re constantly looking for other ways to do community mobilization within the African American community beyond the whole pride weekend,” Williams said. “We welcome any input, assistance and involvement not only from the black GLBT community but from the GLBT community overall. I think we all should understand that those issues that we all face as GLBT people are issues we have to face together, not separately.”

One of the purposes of Black Pride is combating homophobia through visibility. Williams points out that while homophobia remains a problem for the entire GLBT community, the impact within the African American community is magnified, in part, due to cultural issues.

“There are some real deep ramifications within our own community in terms of coming out or in terms of identifying oneself as GLBT,” said Williams. “Some of those ramifications can result in ostracism not only from one’s individual family but from the community as a whole.”

Muriel “Blue” Jones, executive director of the LGBT Community Center of Metropolitan St. Louis, echoed Williams’ sentiment.

“Homophobia in the African American community is definitively an issue that is problematic,” Jones said. “Visibility in itself for LGBT people in the African American community is an issue. Unfortunately, religion has been used as a tool to make that even more problematic within the African American community, which is really sad—it’s a beautiful, healing entity, and it’s been used in a negative way.”

Williams pointed to the “down low” phenomenon of married men having sex with other men on the sneak and while not unique to African American men, it has become the subject of much debate.

“Guys on the DL are driven by homophobia because they wouldn’t dare identify themselves as gay because of the stigma associated with it,” said Williams. “And it’s even worse because then you have folks in the media saying that the rise of infection among African American women is a result of black men on the DL. So then they’re demonizing black men again … so it makes it hard for someone to actually come to terms with who they are and celebrate it.”

“I just hope that everyone comes to Black Pride,” Jones continued. “[To] enjoy themselves, learn their culture and that as an entire LGBT community we have to always remember that all of it is our culture and we need to celebrate it all, regardless of our ethnic background.”

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