Transgender and Immigrant Rights Activist Known as the mother of the transgender Latina community in Queens, New York, Lorena Borjas emigrated from Mexico to the United States at twenty years old with the goal of obtaining hormone therapy and transitioning to live as...
June 1, 1924 – April 12, 2006
Ruth Charlotte Ellis was an African American woman who became widely known as the oldest surviving open lesbian, and LGBT rights activist. Ellis came out as a lesbian around 1915 (with help from a psychology textbook). Ellis spent her days working for a printing...
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1993-2020) Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a tireless champion for equality and civil rights. She knew from personal experience the sting of being underestimated or dismissed because of her gender. She was challenged for...
May 22, 1942 – February 28, 2011
May 21, 1925 – October 11, 2011
Playwright, Author, Public Health Advocate, and LGBT Rights Activist Best remembered for his play The Normal Heart and his novel Faggots, Larry Kramer was a tireless—and often strident—advocate for gay visibility and HIV awareness and public action. He co-founded Gay...
Feminist and LGBT rights activists; Longtime partners Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon had been together for three years when they cofounded the Daughters of Bilitis, the first social and political organization for lesbians in the United States, in San Francisco in 1955....
May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978