Wilhelmina Perry Reflects on Life With Late Puerto Rican Activist Antonia Pantoja

Wilhelmina Perry Reflects on Life With Late Puerto Rican Activist Antonia Pantoja

This video features a black woman who lost her lesbian lover, a famous Puerto Rican civil rights activist, after a life of 30 years together.

It hurt that they were denied the right to marry. Still, the dying partner encouraged Perry to shift her labor from the Puerto Rican Community, where they had served together building leadership and doing community development work, to work in her black community as an LGBTQ activist.

"Spiritually devastated" and even rendered suicidal by her partners' death, Dr. Perry bemoans how they were not legally allowed to marry before her partner transitioned. This loss and other experiences of the couple being denied access to sacred space motivated Perry to displace her former reliance on political ideology with a new dependence on her former religious training. With this renewed spiritual approach to social justice, Perry strove to found an organization called the LGBT Faith Leaders of African Descent. This form of social justice organizing allowed Perry to create a safe, sacred space for LGBTQ people.

NBC News, in collaboration with Karlo Karlo, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Lalaboy PR, Riverside Church, and Tisha Tikina Burgos

Pacific Standard
https://psmag.com/magazine/wilhelmina-perry-after-80

Photo
www.cityandstate.com

Parity
https://parity.nyc/dr-wilhelmina-perry

New York, Puerto Rico

Lesbian activist opens the way for LGBT people to worship in a sacred space.

5:27

NBC News

Samy Nemir Olivares