Time Out Youth (TOY) is one of the few LGBTQ+ organizations in Charlotte, North Carolina, that provides a safe space specifically geared toward youth, one of our most vulnerable demographics. Located at 3800 Monroe Road, near the intersection of Monroe and Wendover, it offers programming, acceptance, and a place for self-expression.
TOY bridged an important gap in Charlotte. In the late 1960s, LGBTQ people began to create more open community. Gay bars and night clubs like Oleen’s and The Woodshed, run by Gregg Brafford and others, provided spaces for newly turned eighteen-year-olds and older LGBTQ+ people to assemble and have fun. Adult bookstores like “The Friends of Dorothy Bookstore” and ” White Rabbit” were founded by Donaldson Wells King and Jim Yarbrough, respectively. There was also Sinister Wisdom, the nation’s longest running lesbian journal, which was started in Charlotte.
Those LGBTQ-owned businesses would be started and centralized in older, run-down neighborhoods that gay men would buy from landlords and renovate. The first neighborhood that hosted these business hubs was the older side of Dilworth. These places were also not tailored towards younger audiences and did not provide a space that met their specific safety needs.
Time Out Youth was founded by Tonda Taylor, who grew up in the 1950s as a lesbian in a conservative Methodist household that was not supportive of her identity. She decided to leave Charlotte in 1964 to seek a more tolerant climate in New York. Taylor’s experience was common as many families felt shame about their children’s identity and some sought “treatment” for their children including traumatic conversion therapy and torturous electric shock therapy.
Taylor returned to Charlotte and founded Time Out Youth in 1991, with help from her younger sister, Terry Taylor. On April 8, 1991, TOY hosted its first weekly discussion group, which consisted of four lesbian and gay youths. Various young men and women would call Taylor to ask about providing shelter or a place to talk. As TOY evolved and became an essential community space, Tonda learned advocacy from her brother Sam who was diagnosed with AIDS.
After inheriting $100,000 from Sam, Taylor was able to purchase new space for TOY movement instead of running it through a Unitarian Universalist church. This provided consistency for programs like weekly discussion groups. These meetings were often the only place LGBTQ+ youth could be themselves without fear. It was a space of open dialogue and community that youth could use to escape from their families and other people who did not accept them as their whole selves.
Today, Time Out Youth offers services from weekly discussion groups to permanent housing assistance to emergency financial assistance for young people who need it. As of 2021, 4% of the Charlotte Metropolitan area identified as LGBTQ+. In 2023, TOY’s achievements were numerous: “956 counseling sessions, provided $21,600 in financial assistance, helped 42 youth find housing in the community, hosted 1,897 people at a training or presentation, and saw our drop-in space utilized 1,645 times!”
The physical space on Monroe Road provides a drop-in area for youth who are escaping homophobic communities. The center caters to youth as young as 13 to as old as 24. Personal and professional development workshops help these youth stand independently and realize the scope of their worth beyond their rejections. Time Out Youth is focused on providing youth with the lessons that Tonda Taylor learned long ago from her own experiences.
Describing its mission and purpose, Time Out Youth believes “our young people, especially those who are Black, brown, trans, and nonbinary, currently find themselves placed at the front and center of public debate and discourse. We want to remind them, and the Charlotte community, that they deserve to be protected. Loved. Valued. Uplifted and seen for who they are.”
