June Jordan

June Jordan was an American writer and poet. Also a nationally renowned lecturer and activist, she produced an extensive and varied body of work, through which she strongly affirmed herself, her rights as a woman, her thoughts on black consciousness, and her ties to the African-American community. Though she was best known for her intimate, powerfully direct poetry, Jordan also wrote award-winning children's fiction, highly charged nonfiction pieces, plays, and songs. Jordan died on June 14, 2002, in San Francisco, California, leaving behind a legacy of her writings for future generations to read and emulate.

Audre Lorde

Poet, essayist, and lecturer Audre Lorde spent a lifetime exploring the pleasures and pain of being a Black lesbian woman in America. Lorde's was an essential voice in African American letters. Her work bravely confronted some of the most important crises in American society: racism, homophobia, the insensitivity of the health care system, relations between the sexes, and parenthood. Fellow author Jewelle Gomez noted in Essence magazine that Lorde's work in several genres was "a mandate to move through ... victimization and create independent standards that will help us live full and righteous lives.... She was a figure all women could use as a grounding when they fought for recognition of their worth." At the time of her death in 1992, Audre Lorde was poet laureate of New York State--an honor bestowed upon her the prior year.

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk (1930-1978), a San Francisco city politician, helped open the door for gays and lesbians in the United States by bringing civil rights for homosexuals, among many other issues, to the political table. Since Milk's murder in 1978, he has remained a symbol of activism.

Lil Nas X

Lil Nas X is the Atlanta rapper whose half-country, half-hip-hop single "Old Town Road" became a stunning number-one hit in the spring of 2019. Less than six months after its release on SoundCloud, Nas X had made his first live stage appearance at a California music festival and released the EP 7, his major-label debut for Columbia Records. "As hip-hop continues to push the limits of its sound," declared Pitchfork writer Sheldon Pearce, Nas "X is far from the only rapper to experiment with country themes, but he was the one who figured out how to package them just earnestly enough for a mass audience." The artist received six Grammy Award nominations in 2020 and took home two trophies for his song "Old Town Road."

Sylvia Lee Rivera

Famously known for tossing a Molotov cocktail during the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City, Hispanic-American transgender activist Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) devoted her life to the gay, lesbian, and transgender liberation movements. In 2015 a photograph featuring Rivera was added to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, making her the first transgender American to be featured there. In 2019 the city of New York unveiled plans to build a monument in honor of Rivera and fellow transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson.

Jacqueline Woodson

Winner of the 2001 Coretta Scott King Award and nominee for the 2002 National Book Award, Jacqueline Woodson writes about "invisible" people: young girls, minorities, homosexuals, the poor, all the individuals who, many feel, are ignored or forgotten in mainstream America. They are the people, as the author wrote in a Horn Book article, "who exist on the margins." An African American and lesbian herself, Woodson knows first-hand what it is like to be labeled, classified, stereotyped, and pushed aside. Nevertheless, her stories are not intended to champion the rights of minorities and the oppressed. Rather, they celebrate people's differences. Her characters are not so much striving to have their rights acknowledged as they are struggling to find their own individuality, their own value as people. "I feel compelled to write against stereotypes," Woodson commented, "hoping people will see that some issues know no color, class, sexuality. No--I don't feel as though I have a commitment to one community--I don't want to be shackled this way. I write from the very depths of who I am, and in this place there are all of my identities."

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin never stood directly in the media spotlight that shone upon other black activists, but his contributions as a strategist and tactician place him among the most influential of twentieth-century civil rights leaders. In a career spanning more than five decades, Rustin worked on behalf of equal rights with a variety of organizations--including the Communist party, labor unions, and pacifist groups--and exercised a leading role in the creation of two significant civil rights organizations: the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Rustin was particularly instrumental in the development of the nonviolent protest movement that evolved from the Montgomery bus boycott associated with Martin Luther King, Jr. Although it was King who was catapulted into a position of national leadership by the boycott, it was Rustin, a man twenty years King's senior, who provided much of the organizational know-how, political savvy, and theoretical underpinning for King's civil rights victories.

Janet Mock

Janet Mock is an American activist and journalist. A transgender woman, Mock speaks about issues that affect the transgender community. She also works as a journalist for several media sites. Mock published two memoirs about her life.

Danica Roem

Danica Roem is a former journalist who made history in 2017 when she became the first openly transgender candidate elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. Roem was facing a 13-term incumbent who had introduced legislation to prevent transgender individuals from using restrooms that correspond to their gender identity. Although Roem acknowledged that her victory was for those who had been "singled out" or "stigmatized," her campaign mostly focused on the issues she cared about, such as improving education, job opportunities, and traffic in her district.

Jared Polis

Colorado voters made history in the 2018 midterm elections when they chose Democratic Party candidate Jared Polis to become their state's next governor. The first openly gay man to win a US gubernatorial race, Polis is a technology entrepreneur, education philanthropist, and five-term Congressperson. "Tonight we reaffirm what an amazing state we live in," he said in his election-night speech, according to the Denver Post. "In Colorado, we dare, we dream, and we do."

David Wojnarowicz

David Wojnarowicz was an artist whose work stands among the most visceral and confrontational in the late twentieth century. Images of death, decay, sex, and destruction populate his art. When he died at the age of thirty-seven from an AIDS related illness in 1992, he left behind an amazing legacy of creative work--writings, paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, films and videos, music, and installation and performance art. Between his first solo exhibition and his death, Wojnarowicz presented his artwork in an impressive nineteen individual and nearly two hundred group shows.

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker is remembered primarily as a spirited entertainer, the glamorous "Josephine" who became the toast of France. But there was a great deal more to Josephine Baker than the banana skirt she wore in the Folies-Bergeres or the leopard she walked along the streets of Paris. She was a great lover of life and humanity and devoted herself to making the world a more hospitable place and securing a better future for its citizens.

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is an American writer of fiction and essays. Although she began publishing her work in the late 1990s, it was not until 2014 that she rose to literary prominence with the publication of her first novel, An Untamed State, and a collection of essays titled Bad Feminist. A survivor of childhood sexual assault, Gay is particularly concerned with writing about the experience of trauma and its aftermath. Her work also explores topics in contemporary popular culture as well as issues dealing with race, body image, sexuality, and desire. Gay's writing has appeared in publications such as Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Time, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Laverne Cox

Laverne Cox captured the attention of television watchers in 2013 in the role of Sophia Burset in the hit Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. Her character is a transgender woman, incarcerated for using stolen credit cards to fund her sex change. Cox herself is the first transgender woman of color to appear in a regular role in a scripted television series. Her scene-stealing appearances earned her an Emmy Award nomination and a ticket to fame. In 2014 her photograph appeared on the cover of Time magazine--another first for the transgender community. Cox, who has appeared in numerous film and television roles and coproduced a reality television series, is also a writer, motivational speaker, and advocate on behalf of a highly disadvantaged minority. She shuns the term "role model," however, preferring to think of herself as a "possibility model." In 2018, Cox became the first transgender model on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

James Baldwin

The American Civil Rights Movement had many eloquent spokesmen, but few were better known than James Baldwin. A novelist and essayist of considerable renown, Baldwin found readers of every race and nationality, though his message reflected bitter disappointment in his native land and its white majority. Throughout his distinguished career Baldwin called himself a "disturber of the peace"--one who revealed uncomfortable truths to a society mired in complacency. As early as 1960 he was recognized as an articulate speaker and passionate writer on racial matters, and at his death in 1987 he was lauded as one of the most respected voices--of any race--in modern American letters.

Sappho

Sappho (ca. 625-570 BC), a Greek lyric poet, was the greatest female poet of antiquity. Her vivid, emotional manner of writing influenced poets through the ages, and her special quality of intimacy has great appeal to modern poetic tastes.

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo was a painter whose work fascinated prominent and diverse artists around the world. The wife of world-renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo forged a place in the art world that was completely her own. Her dramatic work consisted primarily of self-portraits, although she did capture her family and friends on canvas on occasion. Some critics contend that Kahlo's paintings were reflections of her personal history, her relationship with Diego Rivera, her damaged physical condition, her philosophy of nature and life, and her individual and mythological worldview. Although Kahlo never had formal training in art, she developed into an artist who fascinated a wide range of fellow artists, including Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, painter Pablo Picasso, and novelist André Breton. In addition to these literary and artistic luminaries, her circle included political figures such as Leon Trotsky and the Rockefeller family. In 2019, the Mexican government released an audio recording that appeared to include Kahlo's voice. However, skeptics allege that the voice may belong to someone else.

Janelle Monáe

Eclectic performer Janelle Monáe rose from her humble beginnings and gained a well-deserved place in the spotlight for her unique style and vision. She has been compared to music legends Michael Jackson, David Bowie, James Brown, and Grace Jones, but her creative talent and music is all her own, a product of her wild imagination and various influences. After taking on roles on many noteworthy films, Monáe also proved that she was also a talented actress.

Rebecca Sugar

Rebecca Sugar is an American cartoonist, writer, and composer, known for her artistic and musical contributions to the highly popular Cartoon Network animated series Adventure Time. Sugar later created her own animated show, Steven Universe, which debuted on the network in November of 2013. She was the first female show creator in the Cartoon Network's history. She has also worked as a storyboard artist for the big screen animated feature Hotel Transylvania.

Sally Ride

Sally Ride (1951-2012) will be remembered as the first American woman sent into outer space. She also served the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in an advisory capacity, being the only astronaut chosen for President Ronald Reagan's Rogers Commission investigating the mid-launch explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in January, 1986, writing official recommendation reports, and creating NASA's Office of Exploration.

Phyllis Ann Lyon and Del Martin

For well over forty years, two American women have stood for much that is insightful, brave, pioneering, and progressive in the development of a successful lesbian community in the United States: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin of San Francisco.

Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee's debut novel, Edinburgh, addresses the painful subject of child abuse. "If a story about child molestation could ever be beautiful, this first novel comes very close to that unusual mark," wrote Michael Spinella in Booklist. In the story, Aphias Zee, nicknamed Fee, is a young Korean American in a professional boys' choir, whose director turns out to be a serial child molester. "Big Eric"'s sexual assaults have devastating results on Fee and his friends, especially his first love, Peter, who kills himself rather than live with the shame and the pain of what happened to him. Even after the choir director's arrest and conviction, Fee's life continues to spiral out of control. "Chee is a gifted, poetic writer who takes big risks, from the background and sexual orientation of his protagonist to the chapters dealing with drugs, pedophilia and casual sex with grace and unflinching honesty," wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

Rivers Solomon

Rivers Solomon's debut science fiction novel is titled An Unkindness of Ghosts, and it has attracted attention for its provocative examination of race, gender, and sexuality. It is set on a multigenerational colony ship that is sharply divided by race. Protagonist "Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak," explained a Qwillery website contributor in a plot summary linked to an interview with Solomon. "Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster." However, Aster is not as powerless as she seems--she has inherited her late mother's notes on making medicines from herbs grown on the ship, and she has been asked to use them to heal the ship's commander. "Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer," continued the Qwillery contributor, "Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war."

Publick Universal Friend

Wilkinson, Jemima (Nov. 29, 1752 - July 1, 1819), religious leader, was born in Cumberland, R. I., daughter of Jeremiah and Elizabeth Amey (Whipple) Wilkinson and sister of Jeremiah Wilkinson [q.v.]. Her father, a prosperous farmer and a member of the Colony's Council, was almost exclusively interested in profits and politics; her mother, who belonged to the Society of Friends and who might perhaps have exercised more influence on her daughter's development, died, worn out with child-bearing, when Jemima, the eighth of twelve children, was about ten years old. Owing to her prettiness and cleverness, the future prophetess managed to avoid the hard work on the farm and grew up as a self-indulgent girl devoted to the reading of romances and other "frivolous literature," without further discipline than that afforded by irregular attendance in the common schools. Her religious interest was first aroused when she was about sixteen by the sermons of George Whitefield and by the meetings of the "New Light Baptists," an evangelizing sect which just then appeared in Rhode Island. Later, in 1774, the coming of Ann Lee [q.v.] aroused a spirit of emulation in her. Soon afterward, during the course of a fever, she fell into a prolonged trance from which she emerged with the conviction that she had died, that her original soul had ascended to heaven, and that her body was now inhabited by the "Spirit of Life" which came from God "to warn a lost and guilty, gossiping, dying World to flee from the wrath . . . to come." Her belief was not shaken by the insistence of Dr. Mann, the physician in charge of the case, that there was no evidence whatever of her having died.

Lana Wachowski

Lana Wachowski is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer best known for writing and directing The Matrix trilogy of science fiction-action films with her sister, Lily Wachowski. Other notable films Wachowski has written or directed with her sister include V for Vendetta (2006), Speed Racer (2008), and Cloud Atlas (2012). In 2015 the Wachowski sisters wrote and directed the science fiction film Jupiter Ascending and created the Netflix science fiction series Sense8.

Elliot Page

Nova Scotia actor Elliot Page grew up on camera. At the age of ten, Page's screen debut was the made-for-TV movie Pit Pony--and just a decade later, a performance in the independent film Juno pitted Page against Julie Christie and Cate Blanchett for an Academy Award. Page went on to work with some of Hollywood's biggest directors including Christopher Nolan in Inception and Woody Allen in To Rome with Love. In 2020, Page revealed he was transgender, chose the name Elliot, and said he would use he/they pronouns.

Bowen Yang

Bowen Yang is a comedian from Brisbane, Australia who started the podcast Las Culturistas with his former schoolmate Matt Rogers. The podcast was immediately popular, drawing media attention and allowing Yang to develop his comedic skills.

In 2018, Yang landed a position as a staff writer for the famed comedy series Saturday Night Live. However, he worked as a writer for only one season before being promoted to cast member. He was the first Chinese-American cast member of the program, and one of its first openly LGBTQ cast members.

Marsha P Johnson

Marsha P. Johnson was an African-American transgender woman and a fearless activist for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights, decades before such terminology was used in mainstream culture. Although she expressed identities ranging from gay to transvestite to drag queen during her life, she is understood in modern terms as a transgender woman. Johnson is remembered for her actions during and immediately following the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots, an event that is considered the most influential catalyst for the gay rights movement worldwide. Johnson died in relative obscurity in 1992, under suspicious circumstances. During the 21st century, her legacy has been revisited, resulting in greater awareness of her exuberant, tireless advocacy on behalf of some of the most vulnerable members of society. In 2019 the city of New York announced plans to honor Johnson and fellow transgender activist Sylvia Rivera with a monument commemorating their roles in the Stonewall riots. In 2019, Johnson was inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument.