Portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X are filmed floating down the center of the parade.
The film then documents a black man yelling at the pro-gay African American group from the side of the street.
The following messages are then displayed in text on the screen: I dream a world where homosex, desire, affection, love, no longer invite prosecution.
I dream a slave song, a freedom anthem, voices, ancient, yet alive, lifting my life, yours, to new visions of liberation.
As the text fades out the film concludes with gay African Americans expressing their dreams for kinship and the right to be included in the Black community.
David B. Kirkland, Alan Miller, Cornelius Moore, Colin Robinson, Britt Tennell, Donald Wodds Riggs wrote in his essay “Tongues Retied”, which defended his documentary Tongues Untied, that his works “unabashedly celebrate”[1] African American gay culture.
During the African American Freedom Parade images of Malcolm X are shown alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass.