SAKIA GUNN — Sakia Gunn was a 15-year-old African American lesbian who was murdered in 2003 in what has been deemed a hate crime in Newark, NJ. In 2008 a documentary was released about Gunn’s murder, titled “Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project.” Gunn’s death sparked outrage from the city’s gay and lesbian community….
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David Mixner
DAVID MIXNER — David Benjamin Mixner was an political activist and author. He was best known for his work in anti-war and gay rights advocacy. Mixner played a key role in defeating Proposition 6 in California, which sought to ban gays and lesbians from being schoolteachers. He also organized the Moratorium to End the War…
ABilly S. Jones-Hennin
ABILLY S. JONES-HENNIN — ABilly S. Jones-Hennin was an LGBT rights activist based in Washington, D.C. Beginning in the late 1970s, Jones-Hennin was active in African-American LGBT organizing, helping to found a number of groups, and acted as the logistics coordinator for the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979. In…
Cecilia Gentili
CECILIA GENTILI — Cecilia Gentili was an Argentine American advocate for the rights of transgender people and sex workers. Born in Argentina, she moved to New York City. She held leadership positions at the LGBTQ HIV/AIDS care nonprofits GMHC and APICHA, co-founded a free clinic for sex workers at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, co-founded DecrimNY,…
Larry Baza
LARRY BAZA — Larry Baza was a lifelong advocate of the arts and served as chair of San Diego’s Commission for arts and culture, before being appointed to the California Arts Council in 2016. He also served on countless panels, boards and commissions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Centro Cultural de la Raza,…
Gloria Allen
Gloria Allen, was an American transgender activist who ran a charm school for transgender youth in Chicago’s Center on Halsted. Allen’s school lasted only a few years — she was not paid, and she often used her own money to prepare students’ meals — but inspired a hit play, Charm, by Philip Dawkins. Her experiences…
Heklina
Heklina aka Stefan Grygelko was a drag queen, actor and entrepreneur in San Francisco and founder of the drag club Trannyshack in 1996, the longest drag event series in San Francisco – later rebranded as “Mother” at The Oasis in 2015. Heklina was voted the Community Grand Marshall of the 2004 San Francisco Pride Parade,…
Darcelle XV
Darcelle XV aka Walter Cole was a legendary Drag icon not only in her hometown in Portland OR, but in the drag universe. Walter served in the U.S. Armed forces and was discharged after the Korean War. In 1967, he bought a tavern in Northwest Portland, which became Darcelle XV Showplace. The name Darcelle honors…
J. Frederic “Fritz” Lohman
J. Frederic “Fritz” Lohman was a pioneering gay art patron. Together with his partner Charles Leslie, Lohman launched the first gay art space in New York in the Soho loft in New York City in 1969, exhibiting homoerotic art that most art galleries deemed too controversial at that time. Lohman and Leslie were also major…
Achebe Betty Powell
Achebe Betty Powell was an activist with the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and the National LGBTQ Task Force. She was one of the first Black women to have a leadership role in what was then called the lesbian and gay liberation movement in the 1970s. She was a “founding mother,” of the Astraea Lesbian…