Deep within San Diego’s Lambda Archives, the story of an unsung hero has been waiting to be discovered. Black queer journalist Corinne “Marti” Macki dedicated her life to writing revolutionary content for a local gay and lesbian publication. Now, historian T.J. Tallie is giving her words their due.

Tallie discovered Mackey when he visited the archives to learn more about life for Black queer people in ’80s and ’90s San Diego.

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Mackey, he discovered, was a strong and critical voice in what she called the “Anti-Fluff Brigade.”

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“Prior to 2010, the best way that you knew what was happening in the queer community was through local newspapers,” Tallie told KPBS. “They were free. They pointed out where any of the bars or community services were. They also had plenty of opinion pieces. Before the internet and smartphones took that public space, newspapers were our public space.”

Mackey’s writing, he explained, was popular and controversial. She held nothing back and wrote “with brilliant urgency.”

“I can forgive you only if your foot finally is released from my throat,” she wrote of the 1992 LA Rodney King Riots. “I can forgive if I stand here from a position of power and to powerlessness. I can forgive if we are able to stand toe to toe, eye to eye, for then and only then can forgiveness have any significance. Until the day of liberation comes and my need to be free is attained, there will be no forgiveness. There will be nothing to forgive.”

In response to the backlash she received for words like these, she said, “I mean, if you’re stepping on my foot and I tell you to get off, should I be called a troublemaker for not letting you stand on my foot?”

Mackey would also publish responses to angry letters. Responding to a deeply racist piece of hate mail, she wrote, “Umm. Not much that’s original, or even thoughtful, here. I’ll give it a 62. It’s got some kind of a beat, but you sho can’t dance to it.”

“When I saw that, I screamed. I screamed in the archive,” Tallie said.

Mackey also founded Lesbians and Gays of African Descent United (LAGADU), and was named Pride’s Woman of the Year by in 1991. “She gives this beautiful speech where she’s like, ‘I don’t know why you all want me. I’m just a troublemaker that writes what I see, but I guess this means that I got to keep on doing it,’” Tallie said.

Mackey accomplished all of this in only four years in the city. While he hasn’t fact-checked, Tallie said the story goes that her car broke down and she decided to stay after falling in love with both the city and her partner, Phyllis Jackson.

“So they became quite a team,” Talli said. “In a larger group together, their love story also becomes a story of activism.”

By 1992, Mackey’s writing waned. She died of cancer at the age of 42 that December.

Talli believes Mackey would have no interest in him elevating her story. “She would look at me and be like, ‘All right, so what are you doing?’ Just be like, adjusting her glasses and be like, ‘So what are you doing? Is it, is it better? Oh, we got phones now… that do all that? Fixed poverty? Did it fix the AIDS? No? Still got wars? They’re still racist out here?’ And I think that then she’d be like, ‘Okay, well, then stop praising me and go get to it.'”

But clearly, Talli can’t help but make sure her story is told: “I came here to do, you know, an investigative historical thought about what it meant to be Black and queer in San Diego, and I found a hero.”

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