June Jordan, a Black queer and bisexual poet who dedicated her “life-activism” to the liberation of Black (queer) people globally, once declared in the face of so much queer death that “some of us did not die.”1 Jordan was speaking out against long-held beliefs that Black queer people either didn’t exist or were simply phased out of existence after the Civil Rights Movement’s legislative victories and the subsequent splintering of grassroots organizations that mobilized Black feminist, Black lesbian feminist, Black gay men’s, and Black trans women’s activist work. Jordan insisted, in no uncertain terms, that Black queer people have always lived within and against the histories that categorically deny their presence, cultural work, and activisms. Indeed, Jordan’s formulation not only stands against time and declension narratives that defined historiographies of Black activism in the “post-civil rights era” but also demands a reconsideration of Black queer life, art activism, and...

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