An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted on 06/12/2026,
Pride Month 2026
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"Things are better than they were, but we still have a long way to go. What I'm concerned about now is that young gay people are being thrown out of their homes, committing suicide... these little young people who feel like they have nothing to live for. And then, also getting rid of conversion therapy. Back in the day when people were put into places like Utica and Bellevue, men were castrated and women were given hysterectomies. And then the so-called gentler way was to start using conversion therapy. It's still going on today. I mean, I cannot believe this is still going on."
Over the years this trading card series has touched upon the lives and accomplishments of several individuals who were present for the Stonewall Uprising in 1969. Today we honor another, the Rev. Magora Elmira Kennedy (neé Molineaux). A lifelong New Yorker, Magora was born in 1938 and raised by a white father and a Black (Caribbean) mother, in strict Baptist and Methodist traditions. However she realized her own sexuality fairly early on, but was outed by her mother and threatened with conversion therapy. Rather than jeopardize herself, she forged her own baptismal certificate and lied about her age so as to enlist in the U.S. Air Force (she was 14). Unfortunately her mother went to the effort of hiring private detectives to locate her and bring her back, and forced her to marry an abusive man 21 years her senior, in an attempt to "cure" her homosexuality (remember, this was in the early 1950's).
For obvious reasons (and fortunately) this marriage failed pretty quickly --three months, to be exact. Magora did later remarry Eugene Kennedy (an old friend who was himself bisexual and a far much more sympathetic person and ally), and they in fact had five children, but this was only the beginning of her journey. Working as an entertainer throughout the rest of the 1950's and into the 1960's, she pivoted to a spiritual calling. Unable to complete her degree at New York Theological Seminary due to her frank admission to being a lesbian, Magora was ultimately ordained by the Baptist Association Board and served as a minister of the Universal Life Church. Later Rev. Kennedy would launch her own ministry, Revolutions Now --a temple where spirituality and queerness would not be diametrically opposed concepts, and where no-one ever had to "pray the gay away."
She threw herself wholeheartedly into the Civil Rights movement: she marched with Dr. King, protested in Selma, joined the Black Panthers Party, and by way of her connections at the Holy Cross Church of God in Boston, she also became a member of the Boston Black Action Committee. A fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, she also protected the still-closeted members of her church and community. Perhaps most famously, very late in the evening on June 27, 1969, she was driving several closeted friends and colleagues to Provincetown, Mass. (then, as now, a queer safe haven). But enroute on the news, she heard about what was unfolding at the Stonewall Inn, and promptly paid for a cab to safely carry her passengers the rest of the way to P-Town --she herself knew she had to turn around and make straight for Greenwich Village. Magora also made darned sure she was at Boston's very first Pride March in 1971.
"You ever hear someone speak and feel like the ancestors sat up? That's what it was like when this woman opened her mouth."
--AshleyTheeBaroness
Throughout her career Rev. Kennedy pushed back against the notion of homosexuality being regarded as some kind of "mental disorder;" appearing on talk shows and speaking at professional psychiatric organizations and gatherings. Her activism never dimmed over the years; she participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement, seeing strong parallels in its message, to that of queer liberation and Civil Rights. More recently she published The Goddess Has Landed: Does She Have a Message For YOU!; and featured prominently in the 2019 PBS documentary Cured, which addressed alarming suicide rates amongst the LGBTQ+ community. She died in November 2023 at the age of 85; at work on another publication, Shades Of Stonewall.
Enjoy Rev. Kennedy's recollection of Stonewall on the occasion of her 75th birthday.
For further study: https://www.queerhistoryboston.org/news-all/blackhistorymonth-reverend-goddess-magora-kennedy
Next lesson - Watch this space