Whether activists, artists, doctors, or writers, all have had a lasting impact on the LGBTQ community around the world.
Many people dressed in their best outfits attend the parades where the rainbow flags fly. Gay Pride is a time of celebration and acceptance of others. But it is also an opportunity to pay tribute to the people who paved the way for activism for gay rights, like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, or those who have become cultural icons through their work, like writers Virginia Woolf and Ifti Nasim.
Learn about some of the personalities who have made LGBTQ history and what the impact of their engagement is for the long term.
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Sylvia Rivera
Latina, queer, and drag queen Sylvia Rivera has fought tirelessly for the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming people. She allegedly threw the first brick at the police during the Stonewall riots. Following this episode, she decides to found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Marsha P. Johnson: this organization was created to provide shelter and support for homeless queer youth. Sylvia Rivera also fought against the exclusion of transgender people in New York City through the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, a law that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. She fought this fight her entire life, going so far as to meet on her deathbed with the Empire State Pride Agenda organization to discuss the inclusion of transgender people in society.
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson has spent much of her life fighting for equal rights. Black transgender woman and prostitute, she was the loving mother of drag queens and homeless transgender women on Christopher Street in New York City. She was alongside Sylvia Rivera during the Stonewall riots and with her founded the STAR organization Marsha P. Johnson was a central figure in the early stages of the gay liberation movement in the United States, a movement that began in the 1970s.
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was a very famous artist of the jazz era. Bisexual, she is certainly the most successful African American dancer in France. She used her image to demand an end to segregation, refusing to perform in segregated places and speaking in 1963 during the March on Washington. During World War II, Josephine Baker was a spy for France, giving the Secret Service information she heard when she danced in German soldiers.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
Some consider Karl Heinrich Ulrichs to be the founding father of the modern gay movement. He is also the first person to have made his homosexuality public. According to Volkmar Sigusch, a German researcher specializing in sexual sciences, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs had "a determining role and a strong influence on homosexual emancipation throughout the world." A judge in Germany was forced to resign in 1854 when one of his colleagues discovered he was gay. He then decided to get involved in the fight for gay rights. He notably wrote essays on homosexuality. On August 29, 1867, he addressed the Munich Law Congress to demand that everyone have the same rights, regardless of their sexuality.
Michael Dillon
Michael Dillon was the first transgender man to undergo phalloplasty, the surgical construction of a penis. He would also be the first person to have benefited from testosterone-based hormone therapy to begin his transition. Michael Dillon later became a medic and served as such in the British Navy. When the press finds out that Michael was born female, he takes refuge in India to escape media attention. There, he took his vows and became a monk in a Buddhist monastery.
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