Top: Sparkle A. Diamond outside APNH's 1302 Chapel St. home Saturday. Bottom: The Category is OTA (open to all) performance - The Dolls. Males were Chucky, Females were Megan, GNC (gender non-conforming) was Jigsaw. Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
The category was “The Dolls,” and contestants had brought their A game. In front of the stage, a life-sized M3GAN struck a robotic pose, eyes malicious and fiery as they fluttered open and blinked a few times. A Chucky doll kicked the air in knee-high gold boots and a pair overalls reimagined as a leotard. Another, in a tutu and matching rainbow crop top, did a seamless dip, and then kept on moving.
A fierce, unshakable, and unapologetic joy defined the sixth annual New Haven Black Pride last weekend, as A Place To Nourish Your Health (APNH) celebrated the event in an age of increasing political divisiveness. Held across three days between New Haven and Hamden, it included a lively discussion with Trinity K. Bonet at Blue Orchid, the third annual Greater New Haven Visibility Kiki Ball at the Whitneyville Cultural Commons, and a vibrant celebration of community outside APNH’s Chapel Street home. That expansion was meant to be in keeping with the theme, “Revolution.”
“New Haven Black Pride is now gaining a new respect within our community, and the visibility is out there,” said APNH Safe Space Coordinator Jovanni Cabanas, who organized the Visibility Ball for the third year in a row (their drag alter ego is the extraordinary Afro-Boricua queen Xiomarie LaBeija). “It took two Black trans women to step up against society’s norms and create these spaces. And now it’s on us to stand confidently for who we are.”
“I just hope that the message that comes out of this is visibility, representation, and overall love,” they added. “This year for New Haven Black Pride, the theme was ‘revolution.’ You can’t spell ‘revolution’ without ‘love.’”
Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
That magic began Thursday evening, as a discussion with Bonet doubled as a launch for the days-long event. For years, Cabanas said, they’ve wanted to create a space for both advocacy and conversation (and “an extra little something”) beneath the New Haven Black Pride umbrella, which has continued to grow since 2019 (read more about that here and here).
Bonet, a Black Trans woman and former contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, was the perfect fit. Not only is she a proud and out advocate, Cabanas said: she doesn’t shy away from speaking about her own HIV diagnosis, and in so doing, helps bust through stigma. After speaking on Thursday, she stayed in New Haven for Saturday’s festivities as well.
“If nothing else, control your peace and just focus on trying to be kind,” she said Saturday, when asked what advice she had for New Haveners. “I just choose peace and kindness. Just be nice. Be nice. And work on yourself before you judge others.”
“To have that voice was just absolutely beautiful,” Cabanas said of the discussion Thursday. “The message was just hope, and it can bring me to tears just seeing how many people walked away feeling hope.”
And indeed, that was just the beginning. As Friday’s gray skies gave way to persistent rain, spirits remained high inside the Whitneyville Cultural Commons, where nothing could dampen the Greater New Haven Visibility Kiki Ball. As attendees arrived, judges rolled out “spooky” themes meant as a nod to the date—Friday the 13th.
That, Cabanas said, and the fact that queer people are genuinely living with more fear than they were a year ago. “This is the opportunity to move that energy from a place of fear into a place of confidence,” they said.
Top: The Category is Face - The Addams Family. Bottom: Commentator Legendary Karma Versace shows the Skull Trophy awarded to each of the winners. Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
That came to life Friday night, as attendees transformed into vampires, killer clowns, space aliens and Addams Family characters all before the clock struck midnight. The Legendary Karma Versace, who had come from New York to emcee the event, praised the ball as a space for both unity and for education. Every time they head to a ball, they carry the spirit of their own drag mother, the Legendary Kassandra Ebony, with them.
The modern ballroom tradition itself goes back decades, to its creation as a form of support, mutual aid, and chosen family in the 1960s and 70s, when Black and Latina trans women founded the house system as we understand it today (its roots go back much further, to nineteenth-century practitioners like William Dorsey Swann).
“We’re all about love right now,” Versace said. “One thing that I love about coming here and doing this is basically the fact that it’s just so welcoming. It’s just so homey. It’s like, ‘Hey girlfriend, come on over.’ It’s like, come sit with me at the dinner table, let’s have dinner together. And I love that.”
Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
Nearby, Mr. Connecticut Leather Devonta Thomas (a.k.a. Sir Loves A Lot) drifted around the room, excited for his first Kiki Ball in New Haven. Earlier this month, he heard about the event while at Middletown Pride, where APNH reliably has a table. “I thought, well why not?” he said with a laugh. Raised in Kansas and now based in Providence, he’s all about visibility—and was excited to add another Pride Month event to the schedule.
“To come together and be fresh, fabulous and free, I just think that’s why the Kiki Ball needs to exist,” he said. He added that he was looking forward not just to the outfits and the performances, but also the camaraderie that was baked into the event.
That echoed for London Mulan, queen mother of the New England chapter of the Legendary Haus Of Hua Mulan (“pronouns are she, her, and the baddest one,” she said when introducing herself), who found a sense of community at the event. Attending with a dozen members of the haus, she stressed the importance of—and need for—LGBTQ safe spaces like the ball. She shows up, in part, because it’s a reminder of how not alone she and other queer folks are.
“To see New Haven be a new hotspot for LGBTQ Black queer individuals is a very good thing to see, and it’s really shaping the community and the world, honestly,” she said. “You guys are doing a wonderful job.”
Top: The Category is European Runway vs American Runway: Freddie vs. Jason. Bottom: Members of the Haus of Hua Mulan. Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
Saturday, that love for community continued outside APNH, as poets, performers, creatives and small business owners came together to celebrate New Haven Black Pride. As a “No Kings” protest filled the streets of New Haven, it was overwhelmingly queens who took up space at 1302 Chapel St. practicing a kind of joy as resistance that was contagious.
One of them was host Sparkle A. Diamond, whose vivid presence seemed to make Chapel Street shine. For years, Diamond has been performing in New Haven and across Connecticut and New England, turning her drag persona into a quiet, powerful kind of advocacy. From drag story hour at the New Haven Free Public Library to Pride Month events across the state, she harnesses performance as both a form of visibility and a kind of power.
“Listen, I think that we as Black people, we are an underrepresented group, and it’s important for us to celebrate our own joy,” she said. “It’s important for us to come together as a community and heal together. Black Pride is the reason that we have Pride, and we need to stick together to be able to build our community.”
Top: Mack and Cabanas. Bottom: Headliner Kimiyah Prescott. Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
She added that she’s especially drawn to New Haven’s vibrant and diverse LGBTQ+ community, which has continued to grow in the past few years. Often, she said, friends are surprised to hear that she doesn’t spend her free time in New York City, because they assume drag is so much better there than it is in Connecticut.
Not so, she’s told them over and over again. New Haven has a cultural richness all of its own.
“You know, we’re here and we’re queer and we continue to push the boundaries as it relates to our equal rights,” she said. “We have a very activist culture in and of itself, and that really helps us to really realize the spaces in which we have to celebrate our uniqueness. These are my people.”
In the crowd, attendees buzzed between vendor stations and info tables from service organizations, collecting free swag and unique artpieces as they went. As they made their way through the space, attendee Adrian praised the event. While they are no stranger to Pride Month celebrations (“I call June the holy Month of Pride,” they said with a smile as the poet Sun Queen took the mic), Saturday marked their first Black Pride.
“I think that it’s a great experience,” they said as Sun Queen announced We are now! We are freedom! “Having all of these different vendors together … there’s not a whole lot of opportunity to be a vendor like that.”
Top: Indigauxthefae performing spoken word. Bottom: Adrian and friends. Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
Back on stage, headliner Kimiyah Prescott was getting ready to make her grand entrance. Like many of the day’s attendees, she lauded the event for its tight-knit feel, more like a family reunion than a citywide resource fair. “Community,” in fact, was one of the first words out of her mouth. While she is based in New York, she was excited to travel to New Haven for the celebration.
Black Pride doesn’t just capture the riotous, revolutionary, radical nature of Pride, she said—it also makes space for the breadth of a diaspora and the power of Black stories.That was especially true for her this year, as LGBTQ+ rights face increasing attacks from both state legislatures and the federal government. Saturday, she was most excited to see attendees smile, she said.
“Especially in the time we’re living in right now, we do need to be together, with each other, standing, fighting, and just showing each other that we are there for each other,” she said. “We gotta support, because we are all we have. We need to still be seen.”
Tim Mack, who founded New Haven Black Pride six years ago, said he’s been thrilled to watch the event evolve into what it is today. Initially, he was inspired by D.C. Black Pride, which launched in May of 1991. When he brought the idea to New Haven, he aimed to focus on HIV and STI prevention and testing, public health education, visibility, and representation of New Haven’s diverse and vibrant LGBTQ+ community.
Top: Trinity K. Bonet. Bottom: Drag king Giri Spades. "Black Pride doesn't just affect Black folk, it affects everybody. We're all fighting the same battles. We're all in the same fight. And I believe that events like this, bringing the community together—all races, all sizes, all ages, all colors—it's a beautiful thing to have," Spades said. Linda-Cristal Young Photos.
At the time, he didn’t know if there would be a second or third year, let alone a sixth. Now, it’s a days-long event the community looks forward to and relies on. Despite a few early funding hurdles and a tough political climate, he added, he ultimately raised more money than in previous years.
“I think we really succeeded this year in reaching out to a lot of organizations that we haven’t reached out to before,” he said. “I just want people to know that we are all-inclusive. We’re here to celebrate people of color, our queerness. I know that we’re having a really tough time. We’re constantly fighting, you know, but this is not new to us. Pride began as a riot, and it will end as a riot.”
“We will always be here, and we will always fight.”