Community was the unofficial theme of the 2024 Black Love Summit held in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 12, as a series of celebrity-laden panels emphasized the beauty and support that can be found within our least romantic connections.
“We need partners, we need friends, we need people in our lives that look at us for who we are fully and not just ‘You’re not like me,’” Black Love co-founder Codie Elaine Oliver said in a conversation with Sterling K. Brown and his wife Ryan Michele Bathe during the first session of the day, which centered on the couple’s newly launched podcast We Don’t Always Agree.
Lil Rel Howery later shared a similar sentiment when he spoke about forming a friendship with fellow “Father Noir” panelist Cory Hardrict over the past year following his divorce. “I knew he was going through some things, and I just wanted to reach out to another dad, another brother,” said Rel. “It’s one of the things I think that’s been helping me be a better dad. Going through therapy has made me a better person where I’ve been wanting to build more friendships with other dads, other Black men where we can have honest conversations,” he explained, later adding how mindful he’s become of the company he keeps. “I don’t like being around lousy dads.”
The community of motherhood was also discussed in a conversation with the hosts of the Mama’s Den podcast, Melanie Fiona, Felicia La Tour, Ashley Chea, and Oliver, four mothers who have 11 children between them.
“They were joking backstage like, ‘Girl, you created your own community,’ because I have so many children,” said Chea, a mother of four. “But I did. I learned that from my mom. She and her friends created what they called the African community. They bought up the block, had Black bookstores, they had this center where all the women decided to homeschool their kids together, they were growing gardens…I learned from her, because her family wasn’t super supportive of her being a mother, that sometimes you have to create your own family and create your own community.”
To that end, Fiona discussed how she believes the sisterhood she formed through their podcast facilitated the birth of her second child in 2021.
“I always say this because the Mama’s Den has been, for me, an incredible community that I really think manifested my daughter that was waiting for me to come down,” the singer said. “When I first had my son, I didn’t feel supported. I felt very isolated, and I didn’t have any friends or women who were going through the process at the same time. And I think in the spirit of finding this community and creating these conversations, I think the spirit was like, ‘you are supported; you can do this, and you have who you need to do it with.’ So I’m exceptionally grateful for this space every day.”
In a later discussion with Kerry Washington and Jemele Hill for “Voting as an Act of Love,” Washington talked about how showing up at the polls is one of the grandest acts of care one can demonstrate to those around them.
“I want us to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and look at the people we love and say, ‘I’m gonna show up for you because I love you and I care about what happens in our community,’” the actress shared.
“It’s hard to care because sometimes we get our hearts broken, but I don’t want to be like a four-year-old kid at the playground who takes my marbles and leaves just because things don’t always go my way,” Washington added. “Democracy is a game, I gotta stay in the game if I want to have a say, if I want to win. And I want us here at the Black Love Summit, I want us to win as a people.”
In the final panel of the day, actress Cassandra Freeman, in conversation with her Bel-Air co-stars Olly Sholotan and Simone Joy Jones, echoed the refrain that’d been reiterated throughout the day as she talked about balancing being away from home life on the East Coast with cultivating found family working in Hollywood.
“No matter what you do for a living, that will never be the thing to sustain to you,” Freeman said. “It’s the people who love you, your friends, your relationships. It’s hard; I have a great husband and a great kid, but I also have a great community and friends that are here, too.”
The 7th Annual Black Love Summit was held at Black Love’s headquarters from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Additional panels included a conversation on “Vulnerability as a Superpower” with Nneka Onuorah, Kammie Crawford, and Willie Greene; a discussion on Hulu’s new film She Taught Love with star Arsema Thomas; and a chat, “To Bae or Not to Bae” with Gail Bean, Malcolm Mays, Natalie Odell, and Obio Jones.
