08/13/2026
The Center for Black Equity joins our community in mourning the passing of Bishop Kwabena Rainey Cheeks, but to understand the weight of this loss, we have to be clear about what he actually built.
Bishop Cheeks helped build the ClubHouse, one of Washington, DC’s most important Black LGBTQ+ gathering spaces. He was there from its early years in the 1970s, helping create a place where Black gay people could gather without the racism and exclusion they often faced in white LGBTQ+ spaces. During the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the ClubHouse became much more than a nightclub. The community helped pay rent, utilities, medical bills, and funeral expenses for people affected by AIDS.
In 1985, Bishop Cheeks founded Us Helping Us, People Into Living, creating a culturally specific response for Black gay men living with HIV/AIDS at a time when far too few institutions were responding to us with urgency or care. What began as a support effort grew into one of Washington’s most important Black HIV organizations.
He also founded Inner Light Ministries in 1993, building a spiritual home centered on affirmation rather than rejection, particularly for Black LGBTQ+ people who had been told there was no place for them in faith communities.
And the ClubHouse community he helped build is part of the history that gave birth to DC Black Pride. Bishop Cheeks himself recalled that the gatherings that ultimately grew into Black Pride came out of the ClubHouse community. That history matters deeply to the Center for Black Equity because what began in Washington would grow into the Black Pride movement we continue to steward today.
The ClubHouse. Us Helping Us. Inner Light Ministries. A foundation upon which DC Black Pride could grow.
Bishop Cheeks did not simply advocate for Black LGBTQ+ people. He built institutions for us when the institutions around us were failing us.
We are still benefiting from what he built.
Rest in power, Bishop Kwabena Rainey Cheeks.
