Set against the backdrop of Pride parades and Juneteenth celebrations, this weekend reflects the enduring legacies of a nation shaped by the pursuit of freedom and those determined to win.
While corporations showcase rainbow apparel and flags and wares inspired by Black power, African American LGBTQ+ individuals are honoring the collective resistance that paved the way for generations — from the roots of the Pride movement in D.C., to Texas’ stomping grounds that marked the end of legalized slavery.
“All of it has shaped me because I know my history. I’m rooted in revolution, I’m born out of resistance,” said Rayceen Pendarvis, D.C.’s “Empress of Pride.” “I [come] from people who come from greatness. As I walk into spaces, I don’t walk in just one way — I’m far greater than just my queerness. I am my Blackness. I embrace all of the essence of who I am, makes me rooted in all that I stand for.”
With Capital Pride festivities underway, joyful resistance is taking on another form for those celebrating 161 years of Juneteenth this Friday.
While set to dawn the annual parade on June 20, the day before is all about reflection and spiritual reconnection, Pendarvis said, driven by an internal charge to “be the revolution” the ancestors started.
“If you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going. This country was built on the backs of the people that endured the pain, the sweat, the blood, the tears, [and] the sacrifice,” Pendarvis said, “if we really want to be this so-called America the Great, we must fully embrace all that named us who we are today and and never stray away from our history, no matter how dark it may seem to others.”
Capital Pride Month ambassador Dr. Ashley Elliott sees the back-to-back commemorations as a testament to the power of solidarity. More than a time for celebrations, she considers June an annual reminder of what it looks like when identity finds purpose — and the outcome is a path to liberation.
“I’m a mother to two Black girls. They will never forget where we’ve come from, and they understand that where we have to go, that potential is limitless,” Elliott told The Informer, “whether that be in their Black body, whether that be in the queer body of their mama, or whether that just be in the body of a little girl in D.C. who realizes…people see me, and if I remember that people see me, there’s nothing that I can’t do.”
‘Unapologetically Black and Queer,’ from the Nation’s Capital to Down South
Marked by the theme: “Exist. Resist. Have the Audacity!,” Capital Pride 2026 aims to set the tone for a year-round charge, according to its ambassadors.
While celebrations began for many with D.C. Black Pride (DCBP) Memorial Day weekend, recent activations included a celebration of LGBTQ seniors at Silver Pride on Friday, June 12, as well as a panel discussion on the Black LGBTQ History Preservation Report, featuring Pendarvis and District Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5).
Among several ambassadors selected by the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, Elliott is using the moment to reignite the spirit at the heart of the movement, embodying Pride as an act of rebellion.
“We will not be silenced, we will not be closeted, and we will be seen,” she declared. “I’m unapologetically Black and unapologetically queer. This is a time to reflect on that freedom.”
Having grown up in what she still knows to be “Chocolate City,” Elliott said she was deeply immersed into the culture and history of Black and queer pioneers. After nodding to the breadth of local trailblazers, including some of whom were part of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York, the local organizer emphasized what she considers the strength of ancestral wisdom: recognizing liberation surpasses “physical freedom.”
“It means spiritual freedom, sexual freedom, freedom of representation,” Elliott continued. “I have the freedom to show up as a little Black girl with Doctor in front of her name, with a sleeve full of tattoos, with a grill [and multicolored hair] when I want to, and that’s what real liberation is.”
What’s more, a 24-year-old Houston native, who goes by Zero, told The Informer she sees that concept in the evolution of both mounted in the struggles for freedom, ultimately reclaimed in the name of joyful resistance.
“I think the main takeaway is that there’s nothing without community. It takes people banded together to make change, on a micro and macro level,” said Zero, a graduate of the historically Black Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). “These [observances] are just a great reminder of how much our people struggled, and how much they found joy, despite that.”
Despite a less than 60-mile distance from Galveston — where more than 250,000 enslaved Texans were declared legally free on June 19, 1865 — some Houstonians say, in many cases, Juneteenth was undersold to Black youth in the suburbs.
While it was acknowledged in her household, Zero admitted the benefit of earning federal recognition in 2022 meant shedding light on the fact that not all aspects of American history are true.
“People have a duty to know that the [Emancipation Proclamation of 1863] did not mean that people were instantly free. It took time for the news to travel, it took time for slaveowners to even want to release people,” she emphasized, “and it took years and months for it to get down to the [enslaved Black people] in Galveston, Texas.”
Today, Juneteenth in Houston looks like anything from citywide parades and Pride poetry nights to kicking back with “my people and my culture,” Zero adds.
Where she and Pendarvis agree on a national scale: embodying one’s truth means championing that of others.
“There is power in knowing, power in understanding…and when we know our history, know that all the movements are connected,” said D.C.’s Empress of Pride. “We must walk in it every day — not focus on a celebration or a federal holiday, but embrace the spirit, in everything that we do.”
