Tubman Museum hosts photo exhibit honoring LGBTQ+ trailblazers

A photo exhibit by Macon Pride honoring the community’s LGBTQ+ trailblazers is on display at the Tubman Museum for the entire month of June. 

The annual Pioneers & Trailblazers Photo History Exhibit was previously part of Macon Pride week’s one-night-only Broadway Does Pride cabaret event at the Piedmont Grand Opera House.

The exhibit officially opened June 5 and honors the contributions of more than 20 activists and community leaders in Middle Georgia who paved the way for the LGBTQ+ community, the arts, civil rights and community preservation. 

“The story has to keep getting told: the story of these communities that the oppressors of power do not want us to tell,” Tubman Museum education coordinator George Crowley said. “We need to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity to educate themselves, empower themselves, to immerse themselves and to expose themselves to culture and to art and to humanity.”

For the exhibit’s fifth year, Macon Pride celebrated two new inductees, Marques Redd and Richard Frazier-Sostillio. 

Frazier-Sostillio has worked at Theatre Macon for 14 years and served as artistic director for seven of those years. 

“I look at the other individuals who have already been inducted and whose shoulders I get to stand on,” he said. “I get to live the life that I live — not just in Macon, but in the world — because of the work that they did.”

Theatre Macon’s founder, Jim Crisp Jr., was also inducted into the exhibit in a past year. 

“We’re really lucky that we get to live in this ‘small town’ that has this big city ideals and culture,” Frazier-Sostillio said.

He also shared his personal story with attendees at the opening exhibit as part of an event presented by Storytellers Macon.

Frazier-Sostillio reflected on his move from California to Georgia at age 10 and recalled being asked, “what are you?” in regard to his race. He discussed how that question transformed into a more introspective question of, “who am I?”               

The museum nominated the second inductee: Redd an artist, traditional African cosmologist Macon native who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Redd attended Tubman’s heritage camp in his youth and is now the co-founder and co-executive director of Rainbow Serpent, a nonprofit dedicated to Black LGBTQ+ culture.

The museum currently has an exhibit titled “Miracles: A Selection from the Redd Family Collection of Black Art,” featuring African diaspora art from the Miracles Fine Art Gallery his parents once operated in Macon.  

Redd defines a pioneer as someone who tries to “push boundaries,” “create new spaces” and “elevate conversations about community, about acceptance and about forging what our new future will look like.”

Macon Pride is working to dismantle stereotypes about the South, he said, noting that the organization didn’t even exist when he grew up in Macon.

“People are coming together to stake a claim, to say that this is our culture and our history and our place as well,” Redd said. “It really gives people permission to live louder.”

The exhibit kicked off Pride Month and will return for Macon’s pride week in September, according to Macon Pride co-founder DeMarcus Beckham. The inductees’ stories will also be uploaded to the Macon Pride website. 

Pride is seen as an opportunity to party and dance, but it’s more than that, Beckham said.

“In years past Pride has only been focused on the festival,” Beckham said. “Now that we’re in these types of tumultuous times and visibility is so ever more important now, Pride has agreed as a board that we are now a 365 Pride.”

For more information on Macon Pride’s year-round offering of resources, events and meetups, visit its Facebook page.