Marsha P. Johnson

1945-1992

African American transgender activist, drag performer, and a key participant in the Stonewall uprising.

Larry Kramer

1935-2020

American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, LGBT rights activist, and a founding member ACT UP, created to publicize and protest the lack of treatment and funding for people with AIDS.

Anne Lister

1924-2020

Was an English diarist, famous for revelations for which she was dubbed “the first modern lesbian“.

Phyllis Lyon

1924–2020

Pioneering activist for lesbian visibility and civil rights whose decades of leadership helped to shape the modern LGBT and women’s health movements.

Xulhaz Mannan

1976-2016

Human rights activist brutally murdered for working openly to promote social acceptance and legal protections for LGBT people in Bangladesh.

Mario Mieli

1952–1983

Italian gay rights activist and irreplaceable provocateur whose exuberant, flamboyant and controversial way of life personified his hugely influential theory of queerness and vision of a new sexual utopianism.

Pauli Murray

1910-1985

American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest. Murray’s work influenced the civil rights movement and expanded legal protection for gender equality.

Marlon Riggs

1954-1994

Award-winning film maker whose examinations of Black gay life boldly confronted racism and sexual repression, most notably with 1989’s Tongues Untied.

Charley Parkhurst

1812-1879

The only known stagecoach driver in California history identified as female at birth, famed and respected for his expertise, resourcefulness, bravery, daring, fearlessness and attention to duty.

Oliver Sacks

1933-2015

Neurologist, naturalist, historian of science and author who wrote of his experiences with some of his patients to inform and inspire others.