Free, Black & Flamboyant: Holding Space at the Crossroads of Pride and Liberation
By Shaq Roberts, LCSW
Free, Black & Flamboyant: Holding Space at the Crossroads of Pride and Liberation”
June is layered. It’s a month where the scent of summer begins to rise, but for many of us living at the intersection of Black and queer identities, June holds deeper significance. Pride Month and Juneteenth don’t just happen to share space on the calendar—they vibrate together in a rhythm of remembrance, resistance, and radical joy.
To be Black and queer is to live in multiple truths at once. We carry ancestral memories of chains and cotton fields in our blood, while also dancing in the defiant lineage of Marsha P. Johnson, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin. We know what it means to be erased—by white supremacy, by cisheteronormativity, by institutions that weren’t built for our survival, let alone our thriving. And yet, here we are: loud, layered, and luminous.
Juneteenth commemorates the delayed freedom of enslaved Black people in Texas—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s a reminder that “freedom” in this country has always been unevenly distributed, and often arrives late, if at all, for the most marginalized. For Black queer folks, that delay is even deeper. We are still liberating ourselves—not only from systemic oppression but from the internalized messages that we are too much, too loud, too different to be worthy of celebration.
Pride, at its root, is protest. It is a response to erasure and a refusal to apologize. But Pride without Blackness is a parade with no rhythm. Without acknowledging that the first bricks at Stonewall were thrown by Black and brown trans women, the rainbow is incomplete. Pride and Juneteenth together call us to remember not just who we are—but whose we are. Our joy is not frivolous. It is sacred. It is rebellion.
So what does it mean to honor both Juneteenth and Pride?
It means recognizing that freedom and visibility are not the same thing. That you can be out, yet still unsafe. That you can be celebrated, yet still unseen. It means holding space for the grief of our ancestors and the glitter of our present selves in the same breath.
It means knowing that Black joy is not separate from queer joy. That the “chosen family” so often central to LGBTQ+ communities is something enslaved Black folks had to create centuries ago when their biological families were torn apart. That voguing and cookouts are both forms of survival and resistance. That twerking and testifying can coexist. That to be Black, brown, and queer is not to be confused—it is to be divine.
As Juneteenth and Pride Month overlap, let’s not dilute either celebration. Let’s deepen them. Let’s remind our communities that liberation is not a moment—it’s a movement. And that movement is dressed in Black skin, painted in bright colors, and walking with hips that don’t lie.
We’re not asking to be included in someone else’s freedom. We are reclaiming our own.
Because we have always been here—free, Black, and flamboyant.
And if you’re still figuring out how to hold all of your identities—if you’re unpacking what it means to exist at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, and everything in between—you don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes liberation looks like having the space to process, reflect, and be seen fully.
At Charlotte Black Therapy, our clinicians create affirming space for you to explore your whole self—loud, layered, and luminous. Let this Juneteenth and Pride be more than a celebration. Let it be a starting point for deeper healing.
You deserve to take up space—in therapy, in your community, and in your joy.
