By Mikkel Hyldebrandt
This year, Atlanta Black Pride is being relaunched to focus on empowering, educating, and celebrating the Black LGBTQ+ community in Atlanta. Peach spoke to Amber Moore who is one of the board members of the Atlanta Black Pride.
Under the hashtag #ReclaimingATLBlackPride, you recently launched a new marketing campaign to reclaim the heritage of Atlanta Black Pride. Tell us a little about the initiative.
The Reclaiming Atlanta Black Pride is us taking the pride back to its roots of empowering, educating and celebrating the Black LGBT community. For several years Atlanta Black Pride hadn’t protected its brand, and the focus has been on the nightlife and parties, so we lost the purpose of empowering and educating. So we are bringing that back. Having the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center as host hotel this year, it will allow us to bring back that focus of workshops and lunch and learn events along with our marketplace.
Why do you think it is essential to reclaim Atlanta Black Pride?
It is important because we had lost the purpose or focus of what Atlanta Black pride is due to previous not protecting our brand. So, people saw the nightlife and parties while the empowering and education piece was being put on the back burner. But now we are bringing it to the forefront along with good, affordable nightlife.
A few people still voice the opinion that there should be only one, diverse Pride in Atlanta. What do you have to say about that?
We must have two prides because the Atlanta Black Pride concentrates on making sure that we know what is happening in healthcare and how that affects us. Plus, the Black LGBT Community has different needs because all resources are not available to us or do not know about some of the resources and Pride gives that information as a workshop. It is not all about partying when it comes to Atlanta Black Pride. This is why we say Atlanta Black Pride is about empowering, educating, and celebrating the Black LGBT Community.
How will the next Pride be different under the leadership of Atlanta Black Pride?
It’s a new day at Atlanta Black Pride. It’s a new day how we handle business and interact with our partners, new leadership and structure, new community-driven programming, and town halls. We are 23 years old this year, and we could not continue to operate and perform as we did during our founding of 1996. We are committed to upholding our legacy while building our future. That means we are more community focused and driven to bring to the forefront issues that plague Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ community of color, that are often overlooked by mainstream entities. While our focus remains on LGBTQ+ community of color we advocate and partner with everyone to make Atlanta a better place to live, work and play.
Tell us a little bit about the lineup of events at the next Atlanta Black Pride.
We are bringing back the Interfaith Service which will be held Tuesday, August 27. This will start the weekend, but Thursday is the opening ceremony. We will have our signature events Speakfire (erotic poetry), Literary Café, Film Fest, two days of workshops/ lunch & learns, and Marketplace. On Sunday, We are at Candler Park to celebrate with stage, entertainers, food trucks, and lots of fun.
How can people get involved with Atlanta Black Pride?
We are looking for committee chairs and volunteers. To get involved go to the website: www.atlantablackpride.org or email amoore@atlantablackpride.org. We welcome any individual, group or organization that wants to host an event, workshop or a party to contact us at our community meeting which is every second Monday of each month at the Rush Center from 7 pm – 9 pm.