Future Black History Month: Jussie Smollet's Dignified Star Power

Fuse is once again celebrating an extended Black History Month by highlighting a variety of rising forces who are creating Future Black History before our very eyes. While there are undoubted hardships, there is an understated power that come with being a minority and has utilized and Jussie Smollet is using his magic in an inspiring way to shake up the status quo.

For his first major television interview and performance just months after taking the role of beloved Jamal Lyon on the sensation that is Empire, Smollet subtly "came out of the closet" in a talk with Ellen DeGeneres. But, as he puts it, "there is no closet, there's never been a closet" and instead he treated the entire televised interview just as he would with any other human and chose to remain quiet about his personal life. There was no big magazine cover or dramatic reveal on the matter. Instead he was simply being Jussie and even later recorded another conversation with Ellen to show his appreciation for the LGBTQ trailblazer and how on her show he was simply being "who God made me," before hilariously adding, "I take my mom to the Sound of Music singalong every single year, so, any questions?"