It's just after 11 am on a Friday when Gregory "Gee" Smalls walks into Virgil's Gullah Kitchen & Bar – West Midtown.

As members of the staff mull around prepping for the day, he stops at a table to talk to a familiar face. They strike up a quick conversation.

Eventually, he stands and greets us – me and Johnnie "Jay Ray" Kornegay III, creative director of the Counter Narrative Project. We are there to capture a few images of Smalls and his husband of 13 years, Juan. It's 12 days after their anniversary.

Smalls hugs us and says, "Juan is up the street. He's on his way." But actually, Juan is already here. He appears at the top of the establishment's stairs. As we take notice, he slowly saunters down the stairs – making an entrance – and pulls his shades from his face.

They are dressed in seemingly coordinated outfits—Gee in a long sleeve, black sweatshirt, camouflage pants, yellow, high-top sneakers, and a Black beanie. Juan is wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a black asymmetrical button-down, long-sleeved shirt. If their wardrobe choices indicate their relationship dynamic, it shows how their unique personalities and styles complement each other.

In a food truck in Southwest Atlanta, identical twins Jada Grèmillion and Branden Louis, 31, are serving up crawfish beignets, cornbread waffles, chicken, and candied yams at What Cha Cooking Baby, a thriving to-go-order restaurant on wheels that infuses the culture of their native New Orleans with authentic creole recipes passed down from their late grandmother Betsy Ann Anderson. The business is the manifestation of a lifelong dream for the owners and chefs who first opened their food truck to the public in March 2021, after a series of personal and professional setbacks that threatened to derail their future.

“We’re the same person, we just live in different bodies,” said the openly gay Louis in a 2018 documentary where he describes life with his twin sister Grèmillion, a trans woman.

“When we were younger, people would always say, 'Oh, Branden is the boy twin and Jada is the girl twin,' Louis said. “And then, I would always think in my head, what do they see that I don't see?”

“I just knew something about me was always different,” Grèmillion said. “And I knew that I didn't wanna grow up to be an old man. I knew that was not my story.”

Grèmillion tells The Reckoning that she knew she was going to transition as early as age 14.

Corporations jump at the opportunity to capitalize on cultural moments.

This has especially been true with Pride Month over the past few years. Pride Month—recognized in June in honor of the 1969 Stonewall Riots—has become heightened, in some respects, because of the support of corporations like Apple, Nike, and the like. While some members of the LGBTQ community welcome the Pride corporate support, with the addition of Juneteenth as a national holiday, there is a refusal to jump on the corporate support bandwagon for the new federally recognized commemoration.

“I resist it,” said Curtis Lipscomb, LGBT Detroit Executive Director. “My approach on Juneteenth is to use that as an educational moment.

President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in June 2021. The origins of Juneteenth can be found in Galveston, Texas, where Union soldiers informed enslaved Africans that they were free two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. During the civil rights movement, Juneteenth began experiencing a sort of resurgence which has continued through Biden’s signed order, declaring it a federal holiday.

Married couple David Wilmott and Darnell Morgan, co-owners of the successful Kennesaw, GA restaurant “Forks & Flavors,” will step onto the national stage during their television debut on the May 12 episode of “Restaurant Impossible” on the Food Network.

The Chef Robert Irvine-hosted reality show, now in its 19th season, works to turn around restaurants that are facing impending demise within 48 hours on a $10,000 budget. On day one, Irvine assesses the business by observing the staff and kitchen during a full service. He then updates the menu and makes aesthetic changes to the restaurant in preparation for the grand reopening the following day.

But there’s one thing that separates “Forks & Flavors” from the majority of restaurants in crisis that have appeared on the show; they are thriving.

The twice-married gay couple who first appeared in a feature story on The Reckoning in March 2021, says they experienced a significant increase in business after their story was published, with old and new customers clamoring to experience their cuisine or to get the tea on their interesting relationship journey directly from the source. So when Morgan says the Food Network contacted them in August 2021, to apply to be on “Restaurant Impossible,” instead of the other way around, it’s not surprising.

Valentine’s Day is upon us, and by now, you should have already purchased that special gift for your partner. But if you’re experiencing panic because you’ve waited until the last minute, take a deep breath and relax—we’ve got you covered. The Reckoning has compiled a list of great gift ideas that can be delivered directly to your doorstep or serve as an inspiration for similar gifts that can be found at shops in your local area. And if you’re in Atlanta, we’ve also listed a few Black LGBTQ+-owned businesses that you can support. After all, the love expressed between you and your partner should never be confined to a commercial holiday. Many of the gifts and dining choices on our list can be shared every day of the year. Check out the items that are making our hearts flutter inside.

Often already experienced with outright discrimination or bigoted slights because of their skin color, for a number of Black gay men, the biggest concern when coming out of the closet is not whether they’ll be able to withstand homophobia in the workplace or on the streets. Instead, many worry about the family cookout: Will they be invited? Will they be treated differently? Will their spirits be fed?

Season—it’s a simple yet versatile word that can encompass everything from the month on the calendar to how many gray hairs are on your head. Yet for most ethnic foodies, one definition reigns supreme: It’s that mysterious yet irresistible touch of flavor that makes a dish mouthwatering.

Generations of Black cooks have perfected an almost preternatural talent for using a pinch of this and a dash of that to transform the simple into the sublime, earning a cultural badge of honor if you know how to make a roast sing, or a scarlet letter if your dish evokes the dubious cookout question, “Who made this potato salad?”

Growing up in the Caribbean nation of British Guyana, Christopher Inniss, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Area Chief of Staff at Banfield Pet Hospital in Lawrenceville, GA, had no blueprint for a career in his chosen field. Of the veterinarians he was exposed to, not a single one matched the reflection he saw when he looked in the mirror. Now decades later, Inniss is becoming a role model for aspiring veterinarians during a crucial time when there is an industry shortage and an even greater shortage of Black veterinarian students and professionals.

For a city known as a magnet to Blacks, gays, and serial entrepreneurs, Atlanta has a surprisingly short list of people who check off all three boxes.

Mychel “Snoop” Dillard is a high-profile exception. At 36, the Nashville transplant who u-turned from hard-scrabble youth to Vanderbilt University alumni heads a string of successful restaurants and salon spaces across Atlanta.

Now she’s setting her sights on lifting others as she climbs. Dillard recently launched a series of business courses and a four-week mentorship program she hopes can provide tips and tricks for people starting a small business or just trying to keep one afloat.

If you ask David Wilmott, 38, and Darnell Morgan, 34, co-owners of the new Kennesaw restaurant Forks & Flavors how long they’ve been married, you’ll likely encounter a moment of awkward silence followed by laughter that comes from a place deep inside their bellies indicating to anyone within earshot that there is a story behind their reaction.

“A year and a month this time,” said Morgan, as he interrupts the laughter to explain the couple’s complex history that led them down the aisle and to divorce court before ultimately remarrying and opening their restaurant in 2020.

Perry Meeks, 39, master barber and owner of The Grain Grooming Studio in Buckhead is affectionately called Blanca by many of his clients—a reference to the character and mother of The House of Evangelista played by trans actress MJ Rodriguez on the hit show “POSE.” The Grain is nestled on the corner of North Fulton Drive before a row of beautiful homes in Buckhead, and if you drive too fast you’ll most likely miss it. But the same can’t be said for the Black gay men and other members of the community who regularly flock to Meeks’ shop for his cutting expertise and the de facto community center environment he’s created in the absence of an actual LGBTQ center in Atlanta. At The Grain, Meeks and his staff are providing more than just haircuts, they’re changing the narrative about how Black gay men should expect to be treated once they enter a Black barbershop by expanding on the model that has historically been unwelcoming to gay men by making the experience more inclusive.

Award-winning chef Deborah VanTrece is laying it all on the line. The highly-respected chef and owner of “Twisted Soul Cookhouse and Pours” in West Midtown has had to reinvent the model for her successful soul food restaurant more times than she could have ever imagined in 2020. But during times of uncertainty and stress, clarity is not often far behind–or in VanTrece’s case—the desire to no longer publicly sugarcoat the challenges brought on by the pandemic, and the racism that she and other Black colleagues have endured in professional kitchens long before the pandemic upended the restaurant industry.