Journalist
Zaya’s bravery is contagious.
Her willingness to be who she is at such a young age not only sets an example, but her family’s public navigation of it—especially in regards to her exemplary father Dwyane Wade—shows families across the country that they can learn from their children just as much as teach them.
This bio is short, because Zaya has only been on this earth for 13 years, but I’m sure her excellence and advocacy will continue to inspire others for decades to come.
#QueerHeroes Day 9.
Big Freedia
Big Freedia is the queen of New Orleans.
As a child, she was inspired by Salt-N-Pepa and the legendary queer artist Sylvester.
Like Sylvester, her first exposure to music was in her church choir. She became skilled in piano as well.
In the late 90s, she began performing as a backup dancer for the drag queen Katey Redd—who also introduced her to the New Orleans hip hop genre Bounce.
In the wake of Katrina in 2005, she was displaced to Texas where she began performing Bounce shows for the locals, spreading the genre’s influence throughout the South.
She came back to New Orleans, performing as many as ten shows a week while the city was fighting to come back. Before long, she was a local celebrity.
In 2010, she released Big Freedia Hitz Vol. 1 on her own label. By that summer, she was on tour with features in the New York Times, the Village Voice, and appearances at the MoMa and on late night television shows.
In 2016, her voice became famous all over the world when it was featured in Beyoncé’s hit single Formation.
In addition to all this, she continues to run an interior design business and maintains her deep roots in New Orleans.
I got to see her perform in New Orleans last summer and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a city more connected to a performer and vice versa.
#QueerHeroes Day 6
Angelica Ross.
It was acting that made Angelica Ross famous, but it’s her determination and raw intelligence that make her a mogul.
Her career started in tech when she taught herself computer code. Using this knowledge, she founded TransTech Social Enterprises—a networking firm that boosts visibility of transgender people in the tech industry.
In 2015, she was a featured speaker at a White House LGBTQ Tech and Innovation Summit.
Then she started her acting career.
After working on the web series Her Story, Ross got her breakout role as Candy Ferocity in the FX series Pose. Candy would become one of the show’s most beloved characters and the conscience for the series as a whole.
She’s currently working on her second season of American Horror Story.
Last September, Ross hosted the presidential summit on LGBTQ issues making her the first ever openly transgender host of a presidential forum.
#QueerHeroes Day 5.
Patrick Kelly.
Patrick Kelly was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1954. His mother was a home economics teacher and he learned to sew in his teenage years.
After graduating high school, he moved from Mississippi to Atlanta, where he worked in a thrift shop. He began modifying the donated designer fashions and constructing pieces of his own, which he sold outside his store within a beauty salon.
He became a favorite designer of Black supermodel Pat Cleveland. She encouraged him to move to Paris, which he eventually did.
It wasn’t long before Kelly became one of the city’s premiere fashion designers, becoming the first American EVER admitted to Fédération française de la couture, du prêt-à-porter des couturiers et des créateurs de mode—the governing fashion body for all of Paris fashion.
Every celebrity from Bette Davis to Grace Jones to Madonna to Cicely Tyson became clients of his. He held runway shows at the Louvre.
Kelly was just about to reach his peak, developing lingerie, perfume, and menswear lines before he was diagnosed with AIDS.
He died in 1990 at only 35 years old. He’s buried in his beloved Paris today.
#QueerHeroes Day 3 – Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was born 114 years ago today. She died at 68 years old, but had dozens of lifetimes’ worth of experiences.
After becoming a breakout Vaudeville star in her teenage years, Baker appeared in Shuffle Along—a hugely successful 1921 Broadway musical starring and written by Black Americans. Baker became a figurehead of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the highest paid chorus members on Broadway. She also had a relationship with the Blues singer Clara Smith—who was dubbed “the queen of the moaners” for her voice.
Exhausted with America, Josephine moved to Paris where her star skyrocketed. She had successful European tours and danced in the Folies Bergère. On tours, her performances were so controversial that at one point a church across the street blared its bells in hopes of distracting from it.
It was during her early years in Paris that she mastered her singing talent, and her voice soon became as hypnotic as her dancing.
Ernest Hemingway called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” She bought Marie Antoinette’s actual bed. She owned a cheetah which she adorned with a diamond collar.
Then World War II hit, but Baker refused to leave Paris. Instead she became a spy for the French resistance. YEAH.
She used her famous charm to collect information from German, Japanese, and Italian officials during parties at various embassies, never raising suspicion.
When the Germans ultimately invaded Paris, she left the city but continued to house and obtain visas for members of the French resistance in her new residence.
Y’all, she still wasn’t even done.
In the 1950s, she focused her efforts on the Civil Rights Movement. Though still based in France, she began touring the American south. She refused to appear in front of segregated audiences.
Her work continued with the NAACP, and she would be the only official woman speaker at the March on Washington, where she said:
“I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth.”
Josephine Baker died in 1975, and the world is an infinitely better place because she opened her “big mouth.”
This bio doesn’t do her storied life justice, so you should absolutely research it deeper to learn how not to waste a second of life and what it means to work towards justice even when it comes with risking your life and career.
Evan Brechtel 