In this article, we (Black community social psychologists and community organizers with over 40 years of collaborative research experience) share the successes and challenges of using Black Feminist Participatory Action Research to actualize The Community Engaged Research Academy (CERA). CERA was a two-year multi-method project (utilizing community dialogues, focus groups, surveys, PhotoVoice, body mapping, and space mapping) aimed at teaching Bronx patients the language and ethics of research. CERA did not merely teach research methods for its own sake. It redressed research and schooling as sites of trauma and humiliation for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) persons by nurturing the capacity of participants to develop research projects without researchers. We scrutinize the missteps and accomplishments of the CERA project to offer a tangible example of what attending to racial justice in community psychological inquiry looks like from all facets. Our imagined audience of readers is composed of burgeoning and veteran Black community psychologists, members of community-based organizations, and members of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). We write to this audience mindful that analyzing what went wrong, and right would be instructive to academicians and practitioners, about how to ethically and respectfully collaborate with skinfolk and kinfolk. We start by interweaving a brief engagement in critical reflexivity about our prior experiences with Black participatory research as next generation Black scholars/organizers, which grounds our theoretical framework. We move to a discussion of community-academic partnerships (CAPs) within Black communities, where our engagement with the scholarship that has influenced our work refuses the traditional structure of a literature review. Historically, CAPs between Black professionals (researchers, doctors, nurses, educators, social workers, etc.) and Black communities have not always begun or ended well (Brown, 2017; 2019; Chilisa, 2009; Freimuth et al., 2001; Guishard et al, 2005; Guishard, 2009; 2015; Heyward, 2019; Jordan et al., 2001; Smith & Guishard, 2017; Suarez-Balcazar, Harper, & Lewis, 2005). Too often, the epistemes, theories, methodologies, and approaches to community engagement Black community psychologists learn, from largely whitestream institutions, are imbued with scientific racism, are extractive, and some likely with exploitative intentions. This past work has done more harm than good and has made our kinfolk distrustful of us and our intentions. We share our confrontations with ways of being, we had to leave behind and adopt to accomplish the CERA project. Some of the lessons we learned included centering Black community psychology, embracing critical race praxis, naming sacred moments that were excluded from the purview of research, and honoring the complex stories Black patients shared with us with hermeneutics of love (Guishard, 2016; hooks, 2001a; hooks, 2001b; Laura, 2013). We move to analyzing moments within the Community Engaged Research Academy that taught us much about the importance of healing-centered engagement. We offer: unwaveringly committing to loving all and not some Black folx, checking your professional humility before you wreck the project, being of service before making an ask, developing community agreements, articulating refusals, shared decision making, returning findings quickly, and shared ownership of the products of our research as ethical levers to readers. It is important to note that in addition to being evaluated by our institution’s IRBs, the CERA project was also constantly evaluated by members of a local community-based IRB. The Bronx Community Research Review Board (The BxCRRB) ethically assessed the extent to which we attended to the project’s focus and remained accountable to Black and Brown Bronx patients. We conclude by sharing the community agreements, template for our research presentations, and an evaluation tool we developed, with the BxCRRB, with hopes that they: 1) will expand and build upon critical race community psychological interventions, 2) can be reused and remixed by other CAPs between Black community psychologists and Black communities.