This Black History Month, The History Project is highlighting the stories, histories, and projects of Black LGBTQ artists, activists, and historians. 

Rev. Goddess Magora Kennedy has been an activist for the last five decades. A self-proclaimed Black lesbian, crone goddess, and woman of God, Rev. Kennedy was part of Boston’s first Pride Committee in 1971. During that first Pride March, protesters gathered in front of Jacques Cabaret in Bay Village as the first stop on a march that would also stop at the Boston City Police Headquarters, the Massachusetts State House, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

At Jacques, Rev. Kennedy read the list of demands:

“Because we can’t go anywhere else, because as gay women we have been especially ghettoized here in Boston, and because the conditions at gay bars are by and large determined by the straight world, those in control know they can be as oppressive as they want. Jacques is terribly crowded and a fire hazard on weekends. Women entering the bar were subject to taunts by [straight] men, who not only [took] up badly needed room but also got their kicks leering and propositioning the women here. Sanitary conditions hardly exist at all. We are effectively ghettoized, since dancing between members of the same sex and other behavior, which the law deems to call lewd and lascivious, are illegal.” 

Rev. Magora Kennedy, born in upstate New York in 1938, knew she was a lesbian from a young age.  When her mother found out, she was forced to marry a man 21 years her senior at age 14 in an attempt to “cure” her homosexuality. Now she calls herself the “gayest great-grandmother” you’ll ever meet. She went to school in Boston and worked as a comedian and singer before moving to New York to attend seminary. She took part in the Stonewall Uprising in New York in 1969. She had been on her way to Provincetown, but when she heard that queer people were fighting back against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, she turned her car around and joined the fray.

She’s spent the last several decades as an out and proud lesbian, and a civil rights activist, taking part in protests for Black rights, Women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights. She describes her philosophy on life in her book “This Goddess Has Landed: Does She Have a Message For YOU!” and a forthcoming book called “Shades of Stonewall.” She was interviewed and highlighted in the exhibit “Not Another Second: LGBT+ seniors share their stories,” and in an article for Vice honoring 50 years of Stonewall. She also tells the story of her forced marriage in the documentary "Cured."

Image 1: Rev. Magora Kennedy, 1971, Boston Phoenix. Image 2: Rev. Magora Kennedy takes part in an International Women’s Day march on March 6. 1971, Cambridge Women’s Center. Image 3: Rev. Magora Kennedy, Not Another Second: LGBT+ seniors share their stories. Image 4: “This Goddess Has Landed” book cover.