Category: #QueerHeroes

#QueerHeroes Day 5
Jean-Michel Basquiat

Basquiat was born in Brooklyn in the 60s. Poor and often homeless in his youth, he and a friend began collaborating on graffiti murals downtown under the name SAMO.

#QueerHeroes Day 4
Stormé Delarverie

She was born in New Orleans to a black mother and white father (her mother was employed by her father’s family). She rode horses for the Ringling Brothers as a teenager. She realized at 18 that she was gay.

Embracing her identity as a butch lesbian, she toured the black theatre circuit as a drag king with the Jewel Box Revue, often performing at the Apollo Theatre.

She went for a drink at Stonewall on June 28, 1969. When the infamous raid occurred, she and other witnesses say she began tussling with the cops, encouraging others to do so.

Her dedication to fighting back wouldn’t end there. Well into her 80’s, she would patrol the lesbian bars of the West Village with a gun, ready to defend against anyone harassing her “baby girls.” She also organized benefits for battered women and children.

She died in her sleep in 2014. Her obituary in the New York Times likened her to a “gay superhero.”

#QueerHeroes Day 3
Sister Rosetta Tharpe

This black lesbian gospel singer was the godmother of Rock and Roll. Her sound was different than anyone else’s at the time not just because of her stunning voice, but because she would heavily increase the distortion on her electric guitar, giving it an added grit that, by the 60s, would become the sound of the nation.

Tharpe would mentor Little Richard and heavily “influence” artists like Johnny Cash and The Beatles.

She had a long “open secret” relationship with fellow singer Marie Knight, beginning in the 40s.

Her recording career halted in the 70s after a debilitating stroke. She succumbed to a second stroke a few years after, on the night before a comeback recording session.

She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year.

#QueerHeroes Day 2
Emma Gonzalez.

Like too many other Americans, Emma’s life was changed forever by gun violence. A student burst into her school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, with an AR-15. Seventeen people died that day, but Emma made it her life’s work to honor them.

She went on to organize the March for our Lives, as well as the foundation that shares its name, using her platform to call for common sense gun law reform, so that fewer people will have to endure the pain she did that day.

This week, 12 people died in a shooting at a Virginia Beach municipal complex. It was the 150th mass shooting this year, occurring on the 151st day of 2019.

Happy Pride! I loved doing this series last year, so I’m bringing it back, starting with some of the activists that make this celebration possible.

#QueerHeroes Day 1

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.

Their actions at Stonewall would be a huge reason the riots are seen as an epoch in the LGBTQ rights movement. They would go on to form the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and continue to fight for our rights until their deaths, including during the ACTUP era.

They often found themselves shut out of the more public liberation movements like GAA, Mattachine, and ACTUP. Many of the organizations feared their radicalism and feared allowing trans people a voice in the movement, but their radicalism set the stage for us to celebrate this month.

It was recently announced that the two will be honored with a monument on their historic stomping grounds: Greenwich Village