Stonewall Soul Brings Black Queer History, Juneteenth, and Pride Together in Atlanta
- C. Aigner Ellis
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
Southern Unity Movement will present the 3rd Annual Stonewall Soul: A Rhetorical Riot at The Art Exchange, located at 2148 Newnan Street in East Point, Georgia, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The event centers the Black LGBTQ+ presence during the Harlem Renaissance while celebrating both Juneteenth and June Pride Month.
Atlanta does Pride differently. There’s June Pride, Atlanta Pride, Black Gay Pride — honestly, Atlanta keeps a Pride season on rotation like it’s a streaming platform. But on June 27, 2026, one event is bringing Pride, Juneteenth, Black queer history, performance, and community power into the same room.
The evening will be hosted by Tracee McDaniel and Dewight Queen, with a special performance by Onyx Keisha Production highlighting Black LGBTQ+ life, creativity, and cultural influence during the Harlem Renaissance. The program will also feature a spoken word presentation from Tim’m West, whose work has long helped document and amplify Black queer artistry and history.
For those familiar with Atlanta’s Black LGBTQ+ organizing scene, Southern Unity Movement needs little introduction. The organization is widely known for producing the annual Bayard Rustin/Audre Lorde Community Breakfast, a longstanding MLK Day tradition in Atlanta honoring two towering Black LGBTQ+ figures whose contributions to civil rights, literature, organizing, and liberation work remain essential. Southern Unity’s Rustin/Lorde Breakfast celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2026 and is described by the organization as a gathering grounded in Black LGBT organizing, mutual support, and social change.
That context matters. Stonewall Soul is not just another event on the Pride calendar. It is a reminder that Black queer people have always been present in the freedom struggle — not as footnotes, not as side characters, and certainly not as afterthoughts.
The title itself invokes Stonewall, the 1969 uprising that followed a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City and helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Each June, Pride Month continues to carry that legacy of resistance, visibility, and collective defiance.
But Stonewall Soul also reaches further back, toward the Harlem Renaissance — a period when Black artists, writers, performers, musicians, and thinkers reshaped American culture while many navigated sexuality, gender, race, and respectability politics in public and private. For anyone curious about that cultural lineage, films like Brother to Brother offer a powerful entry point into the world of Black queer artists and intellectuals whose lives helped shape the movements and cultural possibilities we inherit today.
At a time when many communities are being forced to rethink how they gather, fund, organize, and protect one another, Stonewall Soul arrives as both celebration and strategy. The event is also a fundraiser supporting the Rustin/Lorde Breakfast and Southern Unity’s broader community initiatives.
And let’s be clear: after everything this country is carrying into its 250th year, we are going to need joy. Not the shallow kind. Not the performative kind. The kind rooted in memory, music, art, survival, and people who know how to turn history into a room full of life.
If you are in Atlanta — or plan to be — Stonewall Soul: A Rhetorical Riot is happening Saturday, June 27, 2026, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at The Art Exchange, 2148 Newnan Street, East Point, GA.
Registration and volunteer information are available at southernunity.org.
Disclosure: Aigner “Anye Elite” Ellis is a board member of the Southern Unity Movement.
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