The journey of an LGBTQ+ rights advocate: Jaymes Black tells their story

In James Baldwin’s 1960 essay “They Can’t Turn Back,” he reveals, “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” As a Black queer kid who was ostracized, rejected, and bullied in my small South Texas town, Baldwin’s words hit home for me.

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Today, I'm living a life I once only dared to imagine – a reality many queer youth struggle to envision for themselves. It's a life rich with family, overflowing with love, surrounded by genuine friendships, and driven by a fulfilling career. But what truly anchors me, what guides me like a brilliant North Star, is something I fought hard to achieve: a deep, unwavering love for myself.

It took a while to get to this place – and trust me, the road wasn’t smooth. Growing up in a Southern Baptist Black family, I grappled with my queer identity at an early age. I knew I was different, but I didn’t have the words or understanding to fully embrace those differences. I didn’t look or dress like the other girls. The kids at school called me gay before I even knew what gay meant. My parents were embarrassed and disgusted by the idea that their child was gay. I lived with my mother in my grandma’s home for a good portion of my childhood. In that home, we never showed affection or talked about our emotions – there were no “I love you’s” or hugs in our home.

At 15, I started self-harming as a way to mentally escape from the weight of my world. It was around this time that my first girlfriend had broken up with me. I was absolutely devastated – it was a pain I had never felt before. I felt unloved, abandoned, worthless. What did I do wrong? Why wasn’t I good enough? Self-harming quickly became my go-to coping mechanism to numb myself from the overwhelming emotional pain that I wasn’t mentally equipped to handle at a young age.

I felt alone in the world – left to fend for myself with no support system to help navigate the darkest times of my youth. Then, when I was 17, I was outed at school after a classmate discovered a note that I had written to my girlfriend. My world shattered. The shame and fear was so suffocating that I saw no way out of the situation. That year, I made the difficult decision to drop out of high school and spent the following years fighting to simply survive – I slept on friends’ couches and floors; I faced evictions; I lived in a trailer without running water; I worked three jobs just to barely scrape by. I knew this life wasn’t sustainable. So, at 21, while I was waiting on job offers from Little Caesars and Home Depot and never heard back, I took everything I had – about $70 to my name – and moved to Dallas.

It was in Dallas where I was finally able to live my true, authentic self. And not just survive, but thrive. I found an electric queer community that embraced, accepted, and affirmed me – something that I had never experienced before. I met my beautiful wife at our local gayborhood bar Sue Ellen’s. For the first time, I saw what queer joy looked like and I never wanted to let it go.

Living in Dallas gave me a renewed sense of purpose and motivation. I got my first real job as a call center analyst at a fast-paced, high volume information technology call center and continued to work my way up the corporate ladder at a major corporation. At age 36, I finished my bachelor’s degree while working as an IT manager. Then, six years later, my wife and I jointly pursued and finished our MBAs together – all while raising two-year-old twin boys. I was finally living the life I had always hoped for myself, but never imagined was possible.

After 20+ years in corporate America, I decided it was time for a change. The pandemic gave me the opportunity to slow down and realize that I had been running from parts of my story. I wanted to dedicate my time to something larger than myself; use my lived experience to help create tangible change for the LGBTQ+ community.

It was during this “COVID clarity” that I moved to the nonprofit sector and became President and CEO of Family Equality, where I had the privilege of leading a national organization fighting to protect LGBTQ+ families. My time at Family Equality was transformational – especially because my wife and I had experienced discrimination when we were starting our own family. Now, I am proud to enter a new chapter as the first Black, nonbinary CEO of The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people.

The reason I share my story is because there are so many others like me that aren’t able to envision a happy ending for themselves. July marks BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s imperative that we address the unique mental health challenges faced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color that are so often overlooked in society. BIPOC individuals experience negative mental health outcomes due to multiple systemic and structural factors including lack of access to culturally competent mental health services, cultural stigma surrounding mental health care, language barriers, socioeconomic disparities, and much more. When I was self-harming up until my 30s, it was because I didn’t have the resources and support system available to identify the care that I so desperately needed in my youth.

It's also crucial to acknowledge how intersectionality affects mental health; understanding the nuanced complexities that arise when individuals hold multiple marginalized identities, such as race/ethnicity and sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Trevor Project’s research found that 52% of BIPOC LGBTQ+ young people reported seriously considering suicide in the past year, with 19% attempting suicide. Additionally, 67% of BIPOC LGBTQ+ young people faced discrimination based on their race or ethnicity, and 49% encountered rejection related to their LGBTQ+ identity. These findings underscore the compounded impact of racial and LGBTQ+ identities on mental health, and the need to advocate for policy changes and systemic reforms that can improve mental health outcomes for BIPOC communities.

It took me decades to overcome my mental health challenges and get to a place in my life where self-love was not only attainable, but sustainable. I’m a proud parent, proud wife, and proud leader of an organization that provides 24/7 care for LGBTQ+ youth who are experiencing the same hardships I went through in my past. My hope is that my story can inspire a queer or BIPOC young person struggling with their mental health, or encourage an adult to step up and support a young person in need. Because at the end of the day, we all have a right to walk on this earth.

Jaymes Black (they/she/he) is the Chief Executive Officer at The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people.

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