Source: Courtesy of Cassius / Courtesy of CASSIUS
Got Something to Say, CASSIUS’ four-part video series examining Black LGBTQ+ life in Atlanta, continues with “Episode 3: Coming Of Age & Into Our Own.”
On this episode, host and narrator Darnell L. Moore is talking with Erica “Eazy the Great” Bells, a host and emcee, and her grandmother. Bells’ family history is deeply intertwined in the history of Atlanta and Black history at large; her grandfather was Martin Luther King Jr.’s first cousin. Bells discussed what it was like growing up queer in Atlanta as well as the folks in her family who saved her in her times of need.
Jamal Lewis, a filmmaker and cultural worker known as fatfemme, talks about their experience as a gender non-conforming individual who went to the all-male HBCU, Morehouse College. As a transfer student, Lewis said their experience at the school was in many ways similar to a high school setting as even the queer Black men were scared to be seen around them due to their nonbinary identity.
They also spoke about their experience owning the identities of fat and femme, coexisting in the Black and queer communities.
“Desire not only shapes what occurs in the bedroom but that very thing that occurs in the bedroom impacts everything else in the world,” said Lewis. “Desire in the Black gay context becomes about the eye and the visual… people lead with what they see. There’s a certain type of body that held up on the hierarchy as desirable or the prize.”
Check it out above and click here for a brief history of how the city became the home of a lasting legacy.
