Honor the Community
Take the time to honor the memory of these activists, artists, scientists, and other people of note throughout history. Without them, Danny and I would not have the privileges or rights that we live with as LGBTQIA2S+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Two Spirit, and more) people.
Guests of Honor
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Marsha P. Johnson - Table 1
ACTIVIST | DRAG QUEEN | ENTERTAINER
Lifetime: August 24, 1945 — July 3, 1992
* Key “vanguard” member on the first and second nights of the Stonewall Riots (June 28-29, 1969).
* Member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR).
* Member of the drag performance troupe Hot Peaches, participating in HIV/AIDS activism productions during ACT UP.
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Joséphine Baker - Table 2
ACTIVIST | ACTRESS | ENTERTAINER | SINGER | OFFICER
Lifetime: June 3, 1906 — April 12, 1975
* First Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the French silent film Siren of the Tropics.
* Aided the French Resistance as a counterintelligence agent, a pilot, and a refugee safe house/resistance center owner.
* Supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement, particularly for racial integration in public venues.
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James Arthur Baldwin - Table 3
ACTIVIST | PLAYWRIGHT | POET | WRITER
Lifetime: August 2, 1924 — December 1, 1987
* Voice to both the American Civil Rights Movement and gay liberation movement with his talks and writings.
* Participated in the Selma to Montgomery Marches after calling for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience.
* Won a historic, influential intellectual debate on race relations in America against William F. Buckley (February 18, 1965).
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Walter Whitman Jr. - Table 4
POET | WRITER
Lifetime: May 31, 1819 — March 26, 1892
* Father of free verse poetry due to writing style being more prose-like than his predecessors’ styles.
* Influenced by deism, accepting all faiths as equal without a belief in any of them.
* Published Leaves of Grass in 1855, but continued to edit and republish it until the seventh “Deathbed Edition” in 1891.
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Keith Allen Haring - Table 5
ACTIVIST | ARTIST
Lifetime: May 4, 1958 — February 16, 1990
* Started with graffiti art in the New York Metro, drawing in white chalk on unused advertisement backboards.
* Based art on themes concerning anti-apartheid, anti-crack, safe sex, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS awareness.
* Advocate for affordable, commercialized artwork for the public at large, blurring the line between “high art” and “low art”.
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James Mercer Langston Hughes - Table 6
ACTIVIST | PLAYWRIGHT | POET | WRITER
Lifetime: February 1, 1901 — May 22, 1967
* Leader of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as an innovator of jazz poetry with emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as basis of his poetry.
* Champion of racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate, encouraging pride in the diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic.
* Proponent of the Double V campaign during World War II.
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Chevalière d'Éon de Beaumont- Table 7
DIPLOMAT | SOLDIER | SPY
Lifetime: October 5, 1728 — May 21, 1810
* Member of King Louis XV’s Secret du Roi, a network of spies unknown to the French government.
* Captain of dragoons during the later stages of Seven Years’ War, and later sent to draft peace treaty that formally ended the war.
* Enquired to join the French troops in America during the American War of Independence, but could not due to banishment from France.
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Table 8
COMPOSER
Lifetime: May 7, 1840 — November 6, 1893
* Educated for a career as a civil servant at first due to a lack of public music education system and musical career opportunity in Russia.
* Wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, such as Swan Lake and the 1812 Overture.
* Compositional style was of the world, using both Russian folk song and other native elements and Western European compositional practices.
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Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón - Table 9
PAINTER
Lifetime: July 6, 1907 — July 13, 1954
* Icon of the Mexican national and Indigenous traditions, Chicano Movement, feminist movement, and chronic disability representation.
* Based art on themes concerning Mexican folk culture, naïve folk art, postcolonialism, and the human condition.
* Member of the Mexicayotl movement as well as multiple communist political parties like the Fourth International.
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Stormé DeLarverie - Table 10
DRAG KING | ENTERTAINER | SINGER
Lifetime: December 24, 1920 — May 24, 2014
* Incited bystanders to act while being assaulted by police on the first night of the Stonewall Riots (June 28, 1969).
* Emcee of the Jewel Box Revue, North America’s first racially integrated drag revue, on the Black theater circuit.
* Influence on gender-nonconforming women’s fashion decades before unisex style was acceptable.
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Alan Mathison Turing - Table 11
COMPUTER SCIENTIST | MATHEMATICIAN | PHILOSOPHER
Lifetime: June 23, 1912 — June 7, 1954
* Father of theoretical computer science, giving a formalization of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine.
* Leader of the Government Code and Cypher School’s Hut 8 section, focusing on German naval cryptanalysis during World War II.
* Conceptualized the “imitation game” to set a standard by which a machine exhibits intelligent behavior (i.e., artificial intelligence).
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Christine Jorgensen - Table 12
ACTIVIST | ACTRESS | SINGER | OFFICER
Lifetime: May 30, 1926 — May 3, 1989
* First person to be widely known for having gender-affirming surgery in the United States.
* First trans woman to perform at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City, and was welcomed back throughout her career.
* Viewed herself as a founding member of the sexual revolution movement.
Our Other Honorees
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Sappho of Lesbos
POET
Lifetime: 630 - 570BC — ?
* One of the first Greek poets to write poetry adopting the viewpoint of a specific person, often on the lives and experiences of women.
* Best known for her love poetry, but also wrote about family, epic-influenced narrative, wedding songs, cult hymns, invective, and religion.
* Member of the Nine Lyric Poets, a canonical group of ancient Greek poets esteemed by scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.
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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
ARTIST | ENGINEER | INVENTOR | SCIENTIST | POLYMATH
Lifetime: April 15, 1452 — May 2, 1519
* Founder of the High Renaissance and creator of some of the most influential paintings in the Western canon.
* No formal academic training but made significant discoveries in anatomy, engineering, geology, hydrodynamics, optics, and tribology.
* Used an observational approach to science, trying to understand a phenomenon by integrating artistic depiction and description.
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Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Freiherr von Steuben
OFFICER | INSPECTOR GENERAL | CHIEF OF STAFF
Lifetime: September 17, 1730 — November 28, 1794
* Father of the United States Army, and one of four European military leaders who assisted the U.S. during the American Revolution.
* Served in the War of the Austrian Succession, Seven Years’ War, and the American Revolutionary War.
* Addressed widespread administrative incompetence, graft, and waste in camps, then taught essentials of Prussian military training and tactics.
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Sylvia Rivera
ACTIVIST | DRAG QUEEN | ENTERTAINER
Lifetime: July 2, 1951 — February 19, 2002
* Advocate for gay, trans, and gender non-conforming youth, particularly on intersectionality of racial discrimination, poverty, and homelessness.
* Member of both Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), and co-founded Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries (STAR).
* Proponent of the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA), New York City Transgender Rights Bill, and New York State Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act.
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Calvin Bruce Anderson
OFFICER | POLITICIAN
Lifetime: May 2, 1948 - August 4, 1995
* First openly gay member of the Washington State Legislature when serving the 43rd district in the Washington House of Representatives.
* Court reporter for the 23rd Infantry Division in the United States Army, working as the lead for the Mỹ Lai massacre investigation.
* Introduced gay rights legislation 18 times during his tenure in the state legislature.
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Bayard Rustin
ACTIVIST
Lifetime: March 17, 1912 — August 24, 1987
* Activist and prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, gay rights, nonviolence, peace, and socialism.
* Participant in the Journey of Reconciliation, organizer of the Freedom Rides, and principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963)
* Philosophy was inspired by the union of Quaker pacificism and socialism, and his stance on non-violent protest by Mahatma Gandhi.
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Florence Nightingale
NURSE TRAINER | REFORMER | STATISTICIAN
Lifetime: May 12, 1820 — August 13, 1910
* Founder of modern nursing, setting an example of compassion, commitment to patient care and diligent hospital administration.
* Pioneer in data visualization, being the first to use infographics like the polar area diagram (i.e., pie chart) in order to present statistical data.
* Social reforms include healthcare improvement for all sections of society, abolition of harsh prostitution laws, and expansion of acceptable female participation in the workforce.
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Alvin Ailey Jr.
ACTIVIST | CHOREOGRAPHER | DANCER | DIRECTOR
Lifetime: January 5, 1931 — December 1, 1989
* Founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) and Alvin Ailey American Dance Center (i.e., Ailey School).
* Choreographed the ballet masterpiece Revelations, recognized as one of the most popular and most performance in the world.
* Work combined ballet, jazz, modern dance, and theater with Black vernacular in order to spread global awareness of Black life in America.
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Bessie Smith
ACTRESS | SINGER
Lifetime: April 15, 1892 — September 26, 1937
* “Empress of the Blues” who was the most popular female blues singer of the Jazz Age.
* Sang about social issues in the 1930s, including chain gangs, capital punishment, intra-racial conflict, poverty, and the convict lease system.
* Advocate for a more diverse vision of African-American womanhood, seeking empowerment and happiness through independence, sassiness, and sexual freedom.
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Lili Ilse Elvenes / Lili Elbe
PAINTER
Lifetime: December 28, 1882 - September 13, 1931
* One of the earliest recipients of gender-affirming surgery as a transgender woman.
* First known recipient of a uterus transplant in an attempt to achieve pregnancy as a male-to-female transgender person.
* Her case was a sensation in Danish and German newspapers, but all her medical documents were ruined due to the Bombing of Dresden.
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Laurence Michael Dillon
AUTHOR | DOCTOR | MONK
Lifetime: May 1, 1915 — May 15, 1962
* First known transgender man to undergo a phalloplasty as gender-affirming surgery.
* First recorded person to take testosterone exclusively for the purpose of gender affirmation.
* Author of Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology (1946), a pioneering text in the filed of transgender medicine.
* Performed an orchiectomy on Roberta Cowell, the first British trans woman to receive male-to-female gender-affirming surgery.
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Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde
PLAYWRIGHT | POET | WRITER
Lifetime: October 16, 1854 — November 30, 1900
* Key figure in the Aestheticism and Decadent movements of the late 19th century.
* Considered to be the greatest playwright of the Victorian era due to his comedies of society
* Concerned about the effect of moralising on art, as he viewed art’s purpose as being a guide for life in accordance with beauty.