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NBJC was proud to present the James Baldwin Legacy Awards on Senior Citizen Day, Saturday, August 21, 2021, at 12pm EST. This signature event provided our community with an opportunity to celebrate the process of aging while sharing the wisdom accrued by our elders through a virtual event. Our inaugural awardees included:
- Alvin Ailey, founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater whose legacy was to foster a freedom of unprecedented choice ranging from ballet, to modern, and cultural and social dance performance to best express humanity in movement. Although Ailey did not openly live his life as a same gender loving man, he worked quietly against homophobia and more openly against the many faces of racism.
- Imam Daayiee Abdullah, first openly gay Muslim Imam in America and founder of the Mecca Institute
- A. Cornelius Baker, special advisor to the Office for AIDS Research and PEPFAR Liaison at The National Institutes of Health
- Keith Boykin, co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition and former White House aide to President Bill Clinton
- Kylar Broadus, founder and director of the Trans People of Color Coalition, the first openly transgender person to testify in front of the U.S. Senate, and NBJC board member
- Ernest Hopkins, co-founder of Washington DC Black Gay and Lesbian Pride Day 1991 and Director of Legislative Affairs at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation
- ABilly Jones-Hennin, launched the National Coalition of Black Gays (later renamed the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays), the first national advocacy organization for Black gay men and lesbians, and founding member of the National Association of Black & White Men Together.
- Kenneth Reeves, former mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first openly gay African-American man to serve as the mayor of any United States city
- Reggie Van Lee, retired Executive Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton
- Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation
- Phill Wilson, founder and former CEO of the Black AIDS Institute
