Rustin Lorde Community Breakfast celebrates 25th anniversary on MLK Day
In 1998, social worker Darlene Hudson stopped by Atlanta Civic Center’s parking lot to meet members of the Black queer community ahead of the annual march observing Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
As everyone chatted over coffee and pastries, she came up with an idea to turn the informal meeting into a yearly event that would bring them together and recognize Black LGBTQ activists and organizers.
“My partner and I stopped by there with no intentions but to be supportive. I told the organizer we could do a little better than this, get businesses to support this gathering by donating food, and take it up,” Hudson said.
Hudson’s vision became Rustin Lorde Community Breakfast, which she co-founded and named after Bayard Rustin, gay organizer behind the 1963 March on Washington, and lesbian writer and activist Audre Lorde. The free event, which held its first sit-down meal in January 2002, is having its 25th annual event before the MLK Day march Monday at Loudermilk Conference Center.
The breakfast unites activists, clergy, educators, artists and politicians to network, discuss personal experiences, injustices, and strategize on advancing civil and human rights.
Rustin Lorde Community Breakfast is the flagship event for Southern Unity Movement, a community organization Hudson co-founded that trains and educates communities on Black LGBTQ history and its contributors.
Special guests are Alexis Pauline Gumbs, biographer of “Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde,” and Princeton University professor Marcus Lee. Hudson said the breakfast connects and empowers like-minded people who want to drive social change.
“Rustin and Lorde are the big brother, sister for the Black gay community, and our link to demonstrate. It allows us to plant seeds, invite our ancestors, hear and draw strength from each other. People leave feeling hopeful and know they can also create change,” Hudson said.
The first Rustin Lorde Community Breakfast was held in the Saint Mark United Methodist Church’s basement off Peachtree Street. Fifty people showed up.
More people attended as years passed, so Hudson and her team contacted churches with large fellowship halls that welcomed the Black LGBTQ+ community.
“It started to get tight. People were standing along the wall, so we knew we had to have a larger space. Predominately white churches were kind enough to let us use them,” Hudson said.
Hudson, who usually connects with donors and food sponsors, said planning breakfast is a labor of love.
“There are times I complain and say ‘Lord, no more.’ I’m up at midnight and 1 a.m. packing stuff, and someone will call to tell me I left a period off a sentence. I’m just happy they got the communication,” she said, followed by a light chuckle.
“I couldn’t go around to pick up all of that stuff, so I started asking people to volunteer, and it was such a tremendous community response.”
For future events, Hudson said she hopes to raise money for interpreters for guests who are visually or hearing impaired, and plan programming around Black LGBTQ+ community’s influence on the Harlem Renaissance.
Rustin Lorde Breakfast’s 25th anniversary is being held at a time when the current U.S. administration is rolling back diversity, inclusion efforts and human rights. She said she wants Black queer people to continue their advocacy efforts.
“We’re trying to get brothers, sisters onboard, and work to empower Black gay people to know they’re part of a lineage that played a profound role in the development of civil rights in this country,” she said.
“This is healing, and we need this more now than we needed it before.”
Hudson is considering retirement from planning the breakfast and is keeping her eyes open for a younger organizer to carry on or reimagine her concept.
“I do enough begging for this breakfast, I’ll ride it until I’m unable to do it, or things change. It doesn’t have to be this. We didn’t know we’d still be here 25 years later, so it could be another version or next level,” Hudson said.
IF YOU GO
25th annual Rustin Lorde Community Breakfast.
9 a.m. Monday, Jan. 19. Free with RSVP.
Loudermilk Conference Center, 40 Courtland St. SE, Atlanta.
About the Author
Christopher A. Daniel is a Black Culture reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He is an Atlanta-based, award-winning journalist, cultural critic and ethnomusicologist. He previously taught courses at Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University and Georgia State University.
