Pride: Joy and resistance at a crucial crossroads for Black America

Pride was never born in comfort. It was born in defiance.

It was born from people who were told to stay silent, stay hidden, and stay afraid, yet chose to stand up anyway, casting off the intended marginalization.

As someone who served in both the Obama and Biden administrations, I have witnessed firsthand how progress in America is never linear and never guaranteed. I have sat in rooms where progress once felt inevitable. Today, I recognize how fragile that progress truly was. Today, it is clear that rights that generations fought, bled, and died for can be weakened, rolled back, or erased when democracy itself comes under attack.

That is why this Pride Month absolutely must be a celebration, because joy has always been an act of resistance for communities that were told they did not deserve to exist openly or freely.

Pride has never been only about celebration. From the very beginning, Pride has been rooted in resistance, in visibility, and in the courage of people who spoke out when their voices were being silenced, criminalized, and erased.

Pride began because LGBTQ Americans, many of them Black and Brown, refused to disappear. They refused to accept a country that told them they were less than human or unworthy of dignity and protection under the law. The 1969 uprising at the then-Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village was not just an act of protest. It was a declaration that visibility itself was power.

That legacy matters now more than ever.

The attacks we are witnessing today against the LGBTQ community, particularly the transgender community, are not isolated political battles. They are part of a broader effort to redefine who is entitled to full rights in America.

In Black America, we know this pattern

Black Americans understand better than most that rights are rarely lost all at once. They are chipped away piece by piece, community by community, until silence becomes normalization.

When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is weakened, it is not just Black political power that suffers. It becomes the first domino to fall in a much larger effort to roll back civil rights protections across the board. The same forces working to restrict voting access are often the same forces attacking reproductive freedom, targeting diversity initiatives, banning books, and legislating against LGBTQ people, especially trans youth.

The right to vote is the right that protects all other rights. Once political power is stripped away from vulnerable communities, every other protection becomes easier to dismantle.

History teaches us this clearly. When democracy shrinks for one group, it eventually shrinks for everyone.

For Black LGBTQ Americans, these attacks have particular force because we exist at the intersection of multiple identities that have historically been marginalized in this country. The Black freedom movement and the LGBTQ rights movement have never been separate stories. Bayard Rustin, one of the principal architects of the 1963 March on Washington, was a gay Black man whose contributions were often minimized because of his identity. Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans activist, stood at the center of the movement born at the Stonewall. Black queer organizers have long shaped America’s moral conscience, even when America refused to fully see them.

That is why recent efforts to erase or minimize LGBTQ history are so dangerous.

Earlier this year, the Pride flag was removed from what is now the Stonewall National Monument after a federal directive restricting non-authorized flags at National Park Service sites. The decision sparked immediate backlash from advocates, elected officials, and members of the public. Within days, community members and leaders raised the flag again in a public act of protest and reclamation. After continued pressure and legal challenge, the federal government ultimately agreed to restore the Pride flag at the monument, ensuring its continued presence as a lasting symbol of visibility and resistance.

These may appear symbolic to some, but symbols matter. Historical erasure is often a precursor to political erasure — and we have already seen the political targeting escalate dramatically.

Threats from all sides

In 2024 alone, the transgender community faced an unprecedented wave of legislative attacks nationwide, from restrictions on healthcare access to bans targeting participation in schools, sports, and public life. These policies are often framed as cultural debates, but for many families, they carry life-and-death consequences. The message being sent to LGBTQ people — particularly young people — is that their existence is negotiable.

At the same time, broader political movements have openly outlined plans that threaten long-established civil rights protections. Documents associated with Project 2025 propose sweeping expansions of executive power alongside efforts that many civil rights advocates warn could weaken protections for LGBTQ Americans, women, and marginalized communities. Whether one agrees with every characterization of these proposals or not, the direction is unmistakable: toward a narrower definition of who belongs and whose rights deserve protection.

Black Americans have seen this strategy before.

Every major expansion of freedom in this country has been met with backlash. Reconstruction was followed by Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Movement was followed by mass resistance. The election of America’s first Black president was followed by a wave of political extremism that continues to shape our national climate today.

However, history also teaches another lesson: Solidarity changes nations.

The coalition-building that transformed America in the 1960s remains essential now. The fight for voting rights is inseparable from the fight for LGBTQ equality. The fight for reproductive freedom is connected to the fight against censorship and political extremism. The struggle against racism and the struggle against anti-LGBTQ hatred are rooted in the same fundamental question: Who gets to be fully free in America?

Pride Month should remind us that visibility alone is not victory. Representation alone is not liberation. We cannot celebrate symbolic progress while fundamental rights are under assault.

This may indeed be the most important Pride Month in modern American history because the stakes are no longer abstract. We are witnessing, in real time, an organized effort to redefine civil rights protections, recast American history, and marginalize communities that fought for decades to be recognized under the law.

However, there is another America, too.

There is an America that marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. An America that fought back at the Stonewall. An America that believed democracy was strongest when it expanded opportunity rather than restricted it. That America still exists in organizers, young people, faith leaders, activists, voters, and ordinary citizens who refuse to surrender to fear or division.

The generation before us refused to be erased. The question now is whether we will show the same courage.

Karine Jean-Pierre served as the 35th White House press secretary under President Joe Biden and as regional political director for the White House Office of Political Affairs under President Barack Obama. Her most recent book, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” was published in October 2025.