alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass. Although Riggs has often criticized the Black Nationalist agenda for excluding queerness from blackness, in his essay Black Macho Revisited Riggs Malcolm X after he got involved with the Nation of Islam for adopting a more multicultural view of the black community. Riggs has often questioned how the black community, which was subject to exclusion from the white community for generations, could exclude its queer members. In Affirmations Riggs uses phrases commonly associated with the Civil Rights Movement (Langston Hughes’ "dreams deferred" or Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream"). This demonstrates to the audience that the struggles Blacks went through parallels the struggles queer African Americans are going through. Dedication Affirmations was dedicated to the memory of Gene Garth. Gene Garth was an on-screen participant in Riggs’ film Tongues Untied. References 1990 films Films directed by Marlon Riggs American LGBT-related short films 1990s English-language films African-American LGBT-related films African-American films 1990 short films 1990s American films