Channing Joseph (OC'03) -- Black Queer Genius: What African American LGBT+ Culture Can Teach Us About Ourselves

Join a lecture by Channing Gerard Joseph ’03, who explains why learning Black queer history is critical to understanding American culture.

Names like Bayard Rustin, Frances Thompson, and William Dorsey Swann have largely been erased from the public narrative, but they and other Black queer leaders played central roles in Reconstruction, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. Joseph connects their stories to present-day movements and explains the lessons that Black queer culture can teach us — about surviving oppression, building community, finding joy, and changing the world. 

A TED speaker and an award-winning journalist, Joseph is also a visiting Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and an authority on the origins of African American queer history and culture. He has been a featured guest on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, CBS Mornings, BBC World News, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, and Canada’s CBC. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Guardian, and many other publications, and his groundbreaking work has been recognized by the U.S. National Archives and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. 

In 2022, TED honored him as one of 20 global “visionaries” whose work is sparking “future-shaping change around the world.”