Famous lgbtq activists

In honor of LGBTQ History Month, HRC is noticing our international partners and fellow LGBTQ advocates from across the world.

Post submitted by Prianka Srinivasan, former Content Producer  

In honor of LGBTQ History Month, HRC is releasing a series of blog posts that pay homage to the diversity and breadth of our community.

Today, we are recognizing our international partners and fellow LGBTQ advocates from across the nature. Their strength and courage to fight for LGBTQ rights, sometimes risking their lives to do so, is a solemn reminder of how dangerous the road to equality can be.

To find out more about HRC’s global partners, and what HRC is doing to amplify their voices, please visit hrc.org/global.

• Arsham Parsi: Arsham Parsi is a queer activist from Iran, currently living in exile in Canada. In 2003, he first started secretly advocating for LGBTQ rights in Iran, using underground online groups to unite the community in order to evade Iranian authorities. In 2005, after being pursued by Iranian police for his activities, he fled to Turkey and then Canada. It was in Canada th
  
  

  LGBTQ+ Women Who Made History

  In May 2019, the city of Brand-new York announced plans to honor Gay activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera with a statue. The town of New York claimed the monument will be the "first permanent, universal artwork recognizing gender diverse women in the world." Johnson and Rivera were prominent figures in uprisings against 1969 police raids at the gay bar Stonewall Inn. Their protests increased visibility for the cause of LGBTQ+ acceptance. 

  In celebration of Pride Month, we honor Queer women who own made remarkable contributions to the nation and helped advance equality in fields as diverse as medicine and the dramatic arts. Here are a rare of their stories, represented by objects in the Smithsonian's collections. 

  1. Josephine Baker 

  Entertainer and activist Josephine Baker performed in vaudeville showcases and in Broadway musicals, including Shuffle Along. In 1925, she moved to Paris to perform in a revue. When the show closed, Baker was given her own exhibition and found stardom. She became the first African American woman to actor in a motion picture and to perform with an integrated cast at an Americ
  

  16 queer Black trailblazers who made history

  From 1960s civil rights activist Bayard Rustin to Chicago's first woman loving woman mayor, Lori Lightfoot, Shadowy LGBTQ Americans have distant made history with innumerable contributions to politics, art, medicine and a host of other fields.

  “As prolonged as there have been Black people, there hold been Black LGBTQ and same-gender-loving people,” David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, told NBC News. “Racism combined with the forces of stigma, phobia, discrimination and bias linked with gender and sexuality have too often erased the contributions of members of our community."

  Gladys Bentley (1907-1960)

  Bentley was a gender-bending performer during the Harlem Renaissance. Donning a uppermost hat and tuxedo, Bentley would sing the blues in Harlem establishments enjoy the Clam House and the Ubangi Club. According to a belated obituary published in 2019, The New York Times said Bentley, who died in 1960 at the age of 52, was "Harlem's most famous lesbian" in the 1930s and "among the best-known Black entertainers in the United States."

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  Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)

  Rustin was an LGBTQ and civil rights activist best known f

  14 LGBTQ Rights Activists Who Have Shaped History and Inspired Generations

  Barbara Gittings

  1932–2007

  Considered the “Mother of the Gay Rights Movement,” Barbara Gittings founded the country’s first lesbian rights nonprofit, the Daughters of Bilitis, in 1958 and was an editor at The Ladder, the first nationally distributed sapphic magazine. She later became involved in the American Library Association's first same-sex attracted caucus and helped start the National Gay Task Coerce in 1973, now known as the National LGBTQ Task Force. She died at age 74 in 2007.

  Marsha P. Johnson

  1942–1992

  Drag queen and transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson was a central figure in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising and cofounded the organization Street Transvestite Activity Revolutionaries (STAR) to help homeless LGBTQ youth. She later joined the HIV/AIDS activist organization Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in the 1980s. Johnson continued her activism work until her untimely death in 1992. She was 46 years old.

  Read Her Biography

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  Sylvia Rivera

  1951–2002

  Sylvia Rivera was a drag queen and trans activist who played a prominent role in the gay
  
  

  15 LGBTQ Activists of the Past and Present You Should Know

  It’s LGBTQ Identity Month — a time to celebrate love, but also to champion equality and LGBTQ rights.

  Throughout June, cities around the world own been hosting marches in honor of LGBTQ lgbtq+ fest. In many countries today, people are free to join these marches, wed whomever they choose, and openly show their care for. But that’s still not the case for LGBTQ communities in every nation, and even in countries where it is harmless to march, there is still a long way to go before accurate equality is achieved.

  Without these incredible activists, the LGBTQ rights movement would not be where it is today. 

  In honor of Identity festival Month, Global Citizen is celebrating the brave activists fighting for LGBTQ rights in places where it can be dangerous to do so, and the inspiring champions for alter, without whom there might never have been a Pride Month. 

  While certainly not an exhaustive list by any means, these are 15 LGBTQ activists you should know.

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  1. Marsha P. Johnson

  Image: Courtesy of Netflix

  Marsha P. Johnson is sometimes referred to as the “Rosa Parks of the LGBT movement,” but Johnson is a celebrated legend in her own r