heroes are people too

On Black Wholeness and the Power of Play

Jan 08, 2025

When Nikki Giovani died, I was bereft.

It felt like losing an elder who had always known how to speak the unspeakable, to put words to the weight we carry and call it something beautiful.

But in the days following her death, the tributes began to pile up, and with them came an insidious flattening of her humanity. Nikki Giovanni was praised as an icon (as she should be), but no sooner had the mourning begun than the internet was ablaze with talk about her personal life—how she’d had a white partner, and how that was anti black, and how she couldn’t be our hero if she was out here sleeping with the “snow bunnies”.

This is what we do to our heroes, I thought. We hold them to impossible standards, demanding they represent the best of us while denying them the right to simply be.

I sat with the mess of it all, the lack of nuance, the impossible standards. It made me think of all the ways we demand perfection from our icons, especially Black women. I thought about the homophobia within our community, both now and in the ’80s and ’90s, when Giovanni was out here being sapphic.

If avoiding the oppressor were the standard, wouldn’t we all be lesbians?

I need a hero …

To be a Hero™, one must be flawless. Untouched by contradiction and unscarred by life. Twice as good, as the saying goes. All that respectability politic bullshit.

"Heroification [is] a degenerative process (much like calcification) that makes people over to be heroes. Through this process, our educational media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest. ... It will come as no surprise that heroification has stolen from us the important facets of life, leaving only melodramatic minutiae.”
—James W. Loewen1

But our heroes were human beings. Full. Fabulous. Flawed. Fleshy human beings. They took lovers, and drugs, and dark turns down wrong alleyways. They trusted the wrong people. They stood up to bullies. They folded under pressure. They rose to the occasion. They rallied, railed, and reached pinnacles of historic magnitude.

But they also played. Rested.

Maya Angelou laid across a bed, reading a magazine.

Ertha Kitt drinking that brown water. Photographer unknown.

This realization sent me searching—digging through archives, scrolling through photo collections2, trying to find images of our heroes doing something besides marching, working, or rightfully admonishing The White Man. Not because those images aren’t important, but because…. I’ve seen it.

I wanted to see them smiling. Laughing. Riding bikes. Eating ice cream. Drinking whiskey. Dancing under the stars. I wanted to see them at play.

Play is human. Rest is human. Yet too often, the way history is preserved erases those moments of humanity for Black people. We are flattened into martyrs and laborers, forever hustling for survival or demanding justice. Rarely do the archives honor our joy, our fun, or our leisure. Rarely do they capture what it means to simply be.

But there is so much power in these glimpses of Black life; in a stolen laugh, a carefree pose, or a celebratory dance. These, too, are acts of resistance. These, especially.

Duke Ellington, in bed, eating one of four pints of ice cream. Flavor and Photographer unknown.

Muhammad Ali receiving a haircut at the barbershop.

And yet, it isn’t just the images themselves. It’s what they represent: a refusal to be consumed wholly by struggle. An insistence on living a full life. A reminder that to be human is not just to persevere but to experience joy, to rest, to love, to laugh.

Have you ever seen Dr. King ride a bike?

For many, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s image is one of unyielding dedication, sacrifice, and a stoic fight for justice. He is frozen in time in a black and white photo, standing behind a podium, mouth poised to usher into the room the only words the masses know for certain they can attribute to him.

We know that Martin had a dream. We know he was shot down. We know the hopes of many died with him.

Some of us know more, but MLK’s legacy is often sanitized in historical retellings, shaping him into a saint-like figure whose purpose was singular: to lead the fight for civil rights, at any cost. The man behind the speeches often gets overshadowed. And yet, if we are to truly understand the fullness of King’s legacy, we must see him in his humanity: flawed, complicated, vulnerable, and, yes, even playful.

What we need, is to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a bike.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. commuting via bicycle at Fire Island in September 1967.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a bike on Fire Island

We need to see him so we can ask ourselves very important questions like:

Could he ride with no hands? Has he ever ridden on the handlebars of a friends’s bike? Or the back pegs? What does his laughter sound like as it is snatched away by the breeze as he pedals down a hill?

These questions matter because they allow us, for a moment, to elevate Dr. King beyond the status of Hero™ and to literally see him as a human being.

So that, when we think of him, that we can imagine him as a boy, and a friend, and a husband, and an urbanist. So that we have a visual, playful image to call to mind of him asserting the right to move through the world on his terms—an assertion of freedom, both personal and collective.

Martin Luther King tries difficult behind the back shot while using his "best stick" in pool match with Chicago civil rights leader Al Raby. Photo by: Bettman

Imagining Dr. King on a bike, or making a trick shot at pool, feels like an act of rebellion against the rigid iconography that keeps him tethered to podiums and pulpits. It allows us to see him not just as a leader, but as a man.

Back to life, back to reality.

As we reflect on the heroes of the past, it’s impossible to ignore how the demand for flawlessness continues to plague today’s heroes. Figures like Serena Williams, Simone Biles, and Beyoncé embody the immense pressure placed on Black women, not just to succeed, but to do so flawlessly.

Serena Williams, with her unmatched athleticism, has faced harsh scrutiny for everything from her physique to her emotional expressions on the court. In a society that demands perfection, every win becomes a statement, but every loss is a point of attack. Similarly, Simone Biles faced intense criticism during the Tokyo Olympics for prioritizing her mental health over physical performance. Her decision to step back was met with scorn and dismissal. And then there's Beyoncé—endlessly scrutinized for her curated image of Black excellence, whether on red carpets, social media, or in NFL halftime shows.

But here's the thing: our heroes—whether from the past or present—are just that: human. They are not infallible symbols of perfection but complex beings who have earned their greatness through struggle and triumph. They, too, have moments of doubt, fear, joy, and rest. Their legacies are shaped not just by their battles, but by the fullness of their lives—their ability to laugh, to love, and to live beyond the grind of resistance.

James Baldwin dancing the "hitchhike" with a CORE worker, New Orleans, 1963. Photo by: Steve Schapiro

Toni Morrison dancing jubilantly at a disco party in NYC in 1974. Photo by: Waring Abbott

If you knew better, you’d do better.

We gotta reject the respectability politics that demand we conform to a sanitized, unyielding version of Black excellence. We must embrace the messy, beautiful humanity of our heroes and, in doing so, affirm our own right to be whole, to be flawed, to be joyful. The fight for liberation is not just about striving for perfection; it’s about embracing the fullness of who we are.

The legacy of our heroes is not just in their public victories or the ways they have shaped history. It is in their ability to be human, to experience joy, to rest, to be imperfect. And it is this fullness that Nikki Giovanni demanded we see in ourselves and each other. She reminds us us through her poetry, her wit, and her unapologetic truth-telling, that our lives are ours to live, contradictions and all.

Nikki Giovanni brandishing her ‘Thug Life’ tattoo. Her one and only tattoo, gotten in honor of rapper Tupac Shakur. Photo courtesy of Joyce Taylor

If we truly want to honor her contributions and the legacies of others like her, we must give ourselves, and them, the freedom to exist fully, without the constant weight of perfection hanging over us. Our heroes are not icons carved from stone; they are flesh and blood, laughter and love, play and rest. By reclaiming and celebrating these moments of humanity, we honor not only their wholeness but also our own right to simply be.

This, too, is liberation.

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