Youth Justice Board

Cathy Cohen, currently a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, was one of the founding board members of the Audre Lorde Project and Black AIDS Mobilization (BAM!) and is the founder of Black Youth Project. Her work focuses on the intersections of marginalized identities and power, particularly on the nuances within Black politics. For this year's #BlackHistoryMonth, we're focusing on queer & trans Black folks--the ones deliberately left out of the mainstream story, or the folks whose gender or sexuality has been erased to fit them in. #EveryMonthIsBlackHistoryMonth

Janet Mock is a media producer across multiple forms. She began her career at People magazine as a staff writer and has since published two best-selling memoirs and created the HBO documentary "The Trans List," the podcast "Never Before," and the MSNBC series "So POPular!" Most recently, she has been a writer, director, and executive producer for the FX series POSE. For this year's #BlackHistoryMonth, we're focusing on queer & trans Black folks--the ones deliberately left out of the mainstream story, or the folks whose gender or sexuality has been erased to fit them in. #EveryMonthIsBlackHistoryMonth

Nikki Giovanni is one of the most well-known Black poets alive and a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement. Her first collection, the self-published "Black Feeling, Black Talk," sold over ten thousand copies in its first year in print. Her work stands out for being radical, Afrocentric, and (as all good poetry is) unapologetically political. She has been teaching at Virginia Tech since 1987. For this year's #BlackHistoryMonth, we're focusing on queer & trans Black folks--the ones deliberately left out of the mainstream story, or the folks whose gender or sexuality has been erased to fit them in. #EveryMonthIsBlackHistoryMonth

Barbara Smith grew up participating in civil rights protests and joined the National Black Feminist Organization after college. She co-founded an NBFO chapter in Boston that later split off to become the Combahee River Collective--a class-conscious, sexuality-affirming, socialist, Black feminist organization. She coined the term "identity politics" to describe the intersecting identities that form unique oppressions for women of color. She served in the Albany city council beginning in 2005 and continues to work in the Albany government to address inequality. For this year's #BlackHistoryMonth, we're focusing on queer & trans Black folks--the ones deliberately left out of the mainstream story, or the folks whose gender or sexuality has been erased to fit them in. #EveryMonthIsBlackHistoryMonth

Mondaire Jones is one of the first gay Black members of the US Congress and currently represents New York's 17th Congressional District (Westchester & Rockland Counties). In the House of Representatives, he is the Freshman Representative to Leadership, Deputy Whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Co-Chair of the LGBTQ Equality Caucus. For this year's #BlackHistoryMonth, we're focusing on queer & trans Black folks--the ones deliberately left out of the mainstream story, or the folks whose gender or sexuality has been erased to fit them in. #EveryMonthIsBlackHistoryMonth