Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up in poverty after her father left the family when she was only a few months old. At the age of 8, she started working as a domestic servant for white families to support her family. Later on, she lived on the streets and earned money as a street performer. At 13, she began to work as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur’s Club, where she met Willie Wells. The couple got married but divorced only a few months later. She joined a street performance group, and in 1923, at the age of 16, she moved with them to NYC, leaving her second husband, William Howard Baker, whom she married the previous year. In NYC, she performed at the Plantation Club while auditioning for serval productions, finally landing a role in the chorus line of the Broadway revue Shuffle Along. Her comic touch made her stand out as an audience favorite, and soon, she booked her next Broadway role in the course line of The Chocolate Dandies. In 1925, at 18, Baker moved to Paris to dance in La Revue Nègre at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she introduced to the French audience her danse sauvage (savage dance), wearing nothing but a skirt made of a string of bananas. Her star was on the rise, and she became one of the most popular entertainers in France, being admired by artists such as Ernest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, and Picasso, who drew paintings of her. After a successful European tour in 1929, she acted in numerous films. With the money she earned, Baker bought an estate in the South of France called Château des Milandes. In the mid-30s, she sailed back to the US, trying to establish herself as a performer in her home country, but left after being scrutinized by the critics and receiving racist reactions from the crowd. On her return to France, she married her third husband, the French industrialist Jean Lion, and gave up her American citizenship to become a French citizen. When WW2 erupted, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency. As an entertainer, she traveled across occupied Europe and socialized with German politicians and high-rank officials to gather information. When Nazi Germany invaded France, she moved to her estate in the south, joined the Red Cross, and worked for Free France – the exiled French government. Later, she relocated to the French colony in Morocco, smuggling hidden messages in music sheets while entertaining the troops in North Africa and the Middle East. After the war, she received numerous honors for her work with the resistance. In 1947, Baker married her fourth husband, the French orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, returning to Paris and the stage, more popular than ever for her performance and tribute to the war effort. In 1951, she was invited to perform in the US and was appalled by the racial discrimination she had encountered. Though no longer an American citizen, she began to work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and by refusing to perform in segregated venues, she helped to integrate live shows in Miami and Las Vegas. Baker could not get pregnant because of a hysterectomy due to complications of a stillbirth she had during the war. In the early 1950s, she began adopting children from different ethnicities and religions, calling her family The Rainbow Tribe. They lived on her estate in Southern France, which included a farm, rides, and numerous hotels. She charged an entrance fee for guests to use the facilities and watch her children sing, dance, and view her “experiment in brotherhood.” In 1968, at the age of 62, after a few years off the stage, she realized that her popularity had declined. In 1973, she made a comeback when performing at Carnegie Hall in NYC and was greeted with a standing ovation. In Paris, two years later, she had 50 years in business revue financed by Princess Grace and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The sold-out show was attended by A-listers such as Liza Minnelli, Mick Jagger, and Diana Ross. Four days later, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was found in her bed surrounded by newspapers with raving reviews of her show. She died in the following year at the age of 68. Read more...

Stormé DeLarverie was born in New Orleans to a white father and black mother. During her childhood, she often faced bullying for been biracial. DeLarverie discovered her baritone voice and her love for jazz music at a young age, and at age 15, she began to sing at clubs in New Orleans. Around 18 years old, she realized she was gay and left the city, finally settling in NYC. In 1955, at the age of 35, DeLarverie joined the Jewel Box Revue – the first racially integrated drag show in the US. She was the only women drag king alongside 25 male drag queens. During the shows, she wore tailored three-piece suits, and with or without her wardrobe, she could pass as either a woman or a man, black or white. At the time, the law required people to wear clothing that matched their assigned gender, and DeLarverie, who obeyed the law, was arrested a couple of times for wearing women’s clothes, been identified as a man in drag. Afterward, DeLarverie wore her suits in the streets and not only on stage. Her androgynous looks inspired other lesbians to wear more “manly” clothes. Today she is credited for influencing gender-nonconforming fashion, years before the unisex style became a trend. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, 49 years old DeLarverie finished a show and came to the Stonewall Inn gay bar in Greenwich Village. As happened occasionally, the police raided the bar and arrested the people in it, including her, a woman in man’s clothing. During the arrest, she was pushed and hit by at least four policemen. She fought back and shouted to the bystanders, “Why don’t you guys do something?” Though it is unknown who threw the first punch, the rumors said it was her. The crowd began to fight back, and the six days rebellion became known as the Stonewall Riots. This event initiated the gay rights movement. In the following month, DeLarverie co-founded the Stonewall Veteran’s Association. Throughout the years, she served in various positions in the organization, including Chief of Security, Ambassador, and vice president. For the next few decades, DeLarverie worked as a bouncer in lesbian bars across the city and volunteered to patrol the streets of Greenwich Village with a concealed rifle to protect gay people and keep them safe from the “ugliness” – her term for intolerance, bullying or abuse against the queer community. She also organized benefits for women and children who experienced domestic violence. In her last years, DeLarverie suffered from dementia and lived in a nursing home in Brooklyn. She died at the age of 93. Read more...

Caitlyn Marie Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner in Mount Kisco, New York. As an undiagnosed dyslectic boy, Jenner struggled at school but found an outlet in sports. After high school’s sophomore year, Jenner’s family moved to Newtown, Connecticut, where he began his athletic career, playing basketball and gridiron football and practicing waterskiing independently, winning the East Coast all-over champion three times. After graduating, Jenner earned a football scholarship at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, and studied physical education. A few months into freshman year, Jenner had a knee injury and was forced to stop playing football. His coach recognized his talent and encouraged him to switch to track. In 1970, at the age of 21, Jenner debuted as a decathlete, reaching 5th place in the Drake Relays decathlon. Less than two years later, he participated in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, finishing in 10th place. In the next Olympics in Montreal, Canada, 27 years old Jenner won the gold medal in the decathlon and set a new world record with a score of 8,634 points. Following his Olympic success, Jenner became a television sports commentator and a spokesperson for Wheaties breakfast cereal. In the next few decades, he made television commercials, starred in several television programs, published numerous books, became a motivational speaker, and headed the aircraft company Bruce Jenner Aviation. In 2007, Jenner’s fame renewed when he starred on the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians alongside his (then) wife Kris Kardashian and their children. In 2015, at the age of 66, Jenner revealed that she identifies herself as a woman and adopts the name Caitlyn Marie Jenner. Her transition was documented in the reality series I Am Cait. Her coming out as a trans woman and her public gender reassignment process became a cultural milestone, breaking many stereotypes and prejudices for American people. Jenner became a transgender rights activist advocating for transgender rights. Read more...

June Millicent Jordan was born and raised in NYC, NY, the only child of Jamaican immigrants. Her father, with whom she had a complex and abusive relationship, expose her to poetry and literature from a young age, and by the age of 7, she began to write poetry. Jordan attended the predominantly white preparatory school Northfield Mount Hermon School, where the teachers encouraged her interest and writing talent but did not introduce her to Black poets’ works. After high school, Jordan attended Barnard College. There she witnessed again that black history is not part of the school’s white-male curriculum. At 19, she married Michael Meyer, and the couple moved to study at the University of Chicago. Later, she returned to Barnard and earned a BA degree. In 1958, at the age of 22, Jordan gave birth to her only son, and a few years later, she got divorced and raised her child alone. At the time, Jordan had her first career success, working with the architect Buckminster Fuller on a film in which she examined the architectural and environmental impacts on the low-income Black families. In 1967, at 31, she began her 30 years career as a professor. First, at the City College of New York, and then at Sarah Lawrence College, Yale University, and University of California, Berkeley. There, she taught at the Women’s Studies and African American Studies departments and founded the Poetry for the People program in 1991. When she was 33 years old, Jordan published her first book, a collection of poems for children titled Who Look at Me, in which she described paintings of Black American artists in an intended Black English vernacular. The use of this style of language is a recurring motive of Jordan’s work. She used it as a way to legitimize it and to keep the Black community alive. During the 1970s, Jordan’s books were aimed at children and young adults, though over time, she began to publish essays, magazine columns, poetry, musical librettos, and plays. In all of her work, Jordan explored complex issues, both personal and political, from women, black and LGBT’s rights, sexuality, and single motherhood to race, class, capitalism, the educational system in the US, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Her writings evoked conversations, and her ideas and thoughts rose from the papers to the daily life of her readers and students. Throughout her life, Jordan wrote 27 books, and three more were published post posthumously. Jordan died of breast cancer at the age of 65. Read more...

Harriet Hosmer was born in Watertown, Massachusetts. By the age of 4, her mother and her three siblings died of tuberculosis. Her father, who was a physician, was determined that his only surviving child would be healthy and strong, and from a young age, Hosmer knew to ride, row, and skate. Her father also supported her artistic passion and built her a studio where she sculptured animals from clay. After high school, Hosmer decided to become a professional sculptor, which required both anatomy and art training. Not able to attend medical school and live modeling classes because of her gender, Hosmer took private lessons at the Medical Department of the state university (today the Missouri Medical College) and then studied sculpting with an artist in Boston. At 23, Hosmer realized that she would not be taken seriously as a sculptor in the US, and together with her girlfriend at the time, Charlotte Cushman, moved to Rome, Italy. There, she was accepted to the studio of the sculptor John Gibson and practiced live modeling. She joined a group of expatriate artists and writers that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Bertel Thorvaldsen, and numerous American women such as Edmonia Lewis, Anne Whitney, and Vinnie Ream. Together they were known as the Sisterhood of American Lady Sculptors and as the White Marmorean Flock. Six months after she arrived in Rome, Hosmer received her first commission. Not long after, she began working on her first life-size sculpture of Oenone. In 1855, she created a sculpture of Puck, based on the character from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It became one of her most popular pieces, selling 50 copies, one of them to the prince of Wales (later Edward VII). Afterward, Hosmer became a well-known artist both in Europe and in the US, and by 1859, she had earned enough money and secured enough commissions to open a studio of her own and run her business independently. Influenced by the artistic trend of that time, Hosmer sculptured in the Neoclassical style, mostly depicting mythological figures, strong and courageous female characters, such as Daphne, Medusa, and Zenobia – the Queen of Palmyra. At the time, Hosmer met Louisa, Lady Ashburton, a Scottish philanthrope and art collector, who became her life partner for the next 25 years. The couple lived mainly in England, and Hosmer traveled between her studio in Kent and her studio in Rome. In the late 19th century, the neoclassical style fell out of fashion, and Hosmer became focused on designing and constructing new devices to convert limestone into marble, as well as inventing a modeling process in which the shape of the statue is made first in plaster, and the wax coating came second. In 1900, Hosmer returned to the US and settled in Chicago, where she befriended Susan B. Anthony and became involved with the women’s rights movement. Her last work, a sculpture of Queen Isabella of Castile, commissioned by her fellow members at the women’s suffrage group the Queen Isabella Association, was displayed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In her last years, Hosmer lived in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she died, 78 years old, from respiratory disease. As a successful professional sculptor with international recognition, Hosmer created almost a hundred pieces and became one of the most independent women of her time. She made her mark in art history and paved the way for generations of women who became artists, especially sculptresses. Read more...

Growing up in Los Angles, Dorothy Arzner spent time in her parents’ café in Hollywood, a gathering place for many silent film stars and directors. After graduating from Westlake School for Girls, Arzner started to study medicine at the University of Southern California but quit after two years, deciding it was not her destiny. At 22, a meeting with Lasky William DeMille, the director, and co-founder of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, led her to explore the different departments of the movie set, deciding she aspired to be a director “because he was the one who told everyone else what to do.” Her first role was as a stenographer, then a synopsis writer. Arzner was promoted from script girl to film editor within a year. At 25, after editing more than 50 films, Paramount Studio asked her to edit the film Blood and Sand, starring Rudolph Valentino. Her work on this film impressed the director James Cruze, who then employed her as the editor of his following four films. Over time, her ambitions to become a director grew, and Paramount assigned her as an assistant director. When Arzner threatened to leave the studio to work for Columbia, Paramount offered her to direct a comedy film. At 30, Arzner debuted her first film – Fashions for Women. After directing three more silent films, she got to direct Paramount’s first talkie film – The Wild Party, making history by being the first woman director of a talking movie. In her films, Arzner examined the patriarchal systems and the expectations imposed upon women. She featured strong female characters and explored female relationships, marriage life, and the balance of power between the sexes. During WW2, Arzner left Hollywood and began to direct training films for the Women’s Army Corps. Afterward, she worked on several documentary films and commercials and as a consultant at Pepsi. In 1950, Arzner founded the filmmaking program at the Pasadena Playhouse and was its first teacher. She also produced theater plays and starred in a radio program. At 64, Arzner became a staff member of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television and taught there for four years. In her last years, she left LA and moved to the desert, where she lived until she passed away at 82. Throughout her career, Arzner directed twenty films; to this day, she is the female director with the largest body of work in Hollywood. Read more...

Anna Pauline Murray was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents of mixed racial origins. At age 3, her mother had died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and not long after, her father also passed away in tragic circumstances. She was raised by her mother’s family in North Carolina and then New York City. Her application to Columbia University was declined because of her gender, so she attended Hunter College, as one of few students of color, and earned a degree in English. At the time, she secretly married William Roy Wynn, but she soon regretted that decision, disgusted by the act of having sex, and they parted a few months after. At 28, she applied to the University of North Carolina, this time she was rejected because of her race. Trying to change the university’s position, she wrote to various officials, from the university president to the US President. While on a bus at Petersburg, Virginia, she and her friend moved from the broken seats in the black section and sat in the white section. Refusing to return to the back, they were arrested and convicted of disorderly conduct (15 years before Rosa Parks). The Workers’ Defense League paid for their release. Murray’s personal experience with injustice led her to pursue a career in civil rights law, and at the age of 31, she began to study law at Howard University. Being the only woman in her department, she became utterly aware of sexism and discrimination against women, especially black women. She labeled this behavior as “Jane Crow,” by which she emphasized the struggle of African-American women for racial and gender equality. Murray graduated first in her class, but because of her gender, she was denied the fellowship at Harvard University, traditionally given to the class’s valedictorian. Instead, she did her post-graduate studying at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. At the age of 36, one year after passing the bar exams, she was hired as the state’s deputy attorney general and became the first African-American person to serve in this position. In that year, she was named “woman of the year” by the National Council of Negro Women.   In 1950, Murray published the book “States’ Laws on Race and Color” – an examination of the segregation laws in the US, in which she encouraged civil rights lawyers to claim segregation laws as unconstitutional instead of unequal. Later the book was credited as “The bible of the civil rights movement” and became a turning point for assessing segregation cases. After coining the term 20 years earlier, in 1965, she published the article “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII,” in which she examines Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its implications on women, comparing discriminatory laws as applied to women and men under Jim Crow Laws. The next year, she co-founded the National Organization for Women, as a parallel organization to the NAACP, focusing on women’s rights. In 1966, alongside Dorothy Kenyon, she argued a case in which the court ruled that jury selection cannot be discriminated by race or sex. Throughout her life, although she struggled with her sexual and gender identity, she was open about being a gender-nonconforming person, claiming she has an “inverted sex instinct.” She shortened her name to the gender non-specific “Pauli” and wished for a monogamous married life in which she was the man. She cut her hair short and wore pants instead of skirts. During the 1940s, she pursued hormone treatments to correct what she referred to as “personal imbalance,” and she even asked for an abdominal surgery to test if she had hidden male sex organs. Today she is recognized as one of the earliest transgender figures in US history. At the age of 62, Murray resigned from her academic position and enrolled in a General Theological Seminary. Five years later, she became the first African-American woman priest to be ordained by the Episcopal church. For the next seven years until her death in 1985, she ministered to the sick at a parish in Washington, DC.     More About Pauli Murray: Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice Pauli Murray In Her West End Neighborhood Walking Tour   Read more...

Born as a male named Malcolm Michaels Jr. in Elizabeth, NJ. At age 5, she started wearing dresses but stopped after suffering from recurring harassment from the kids in her neighborhood. During her childhood, she constantly heard from her mother that homosexuals are considered “lower than dogs.” After she was sexually assaulted, Johnson figured that being openly gay is no more than a dream, and she thought herself as asexual. That changed when she graduated high school, and at 17 years old, she took a bag of clothes and $15 and moved to NYC, where she felt she could be herself and come out. In the city, Johnson frequently lived on the streets and had to work as a prostitute. She was often arrested and even got shot once. She settled in Greenwich Village and became involved in the thriving gay scene. She changed her name to “Marsha P. Johnson” and became a member of the Hot Peaches, an international drag performance troupe based in the Village. Her performances as a drag queen were considered “not serious” because she couldn’t afford to spend her money on expensive clothing. Her dress style was a combination of masculine and feminine – wig, makeup, sheer shirts, alongside pants and parka. Johnson was one of the first drag queens to go to the Stonewall Inn gay bar after it opened its doors to other members of the LGBTQ community (besides only gay people). At the time, gay bars weren’t granted licenses, and the police were raiding them regularly. On June 28th, 1969, a raid on the Stonewall Inn sparked a riot, known as the “Stonewall Riots.” Those were spontaneous demonstrations by the LGBTQ community members. Many credit Johnson as the one who started the riots by throwing a brick or a glass shot at a mirror while screaming, ‘I got my civil rights,’ though Johnson claims that she wasn’t at the bar when the rioting broke out. On the second night of the riot, she climbed up a lamppost and threw a bag with a brick in it on a police car, shattering the windshield. Soon after the riots, Johnson became a prominent advocate for the gay rights movement. She joined the Gay Liberation Front, participated in the 1st Christopher Street Liberation Pride Rally, which marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, and was among the protesters who demonstrated against New York University for canceling a dance after realizing gay organizations sponsored it. Jonson co-founded with Sylvia Rivera, the “Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries” (STAR) organization. In 1972, the two established the STAR House (Street Transvestite), a home for gay and trans street kids. Marsha was the ‘drag mother’ of the house, providing the kids’ food, clothing, and emotional support. During the ’80s, she was a founding member of the ACT UP – a political group who raised awareness of the AIDS pandemic and worked to end it. Throughout her life, Johnson suffered from a mental illness and had recurring breakdowns; those occurred especially when she was under her male persona. In July of 1992, 46 years old Jonson was found floating in the Hudson River. Some say she killed herself as a result of her mental illness, while people who knew her claim that it was a homophobic hate crime. The police didn’t investigate the case; some say it is probably because she was a “gay black man.” Read more...

Born as Ray Rivera in NYC to parents of Venezuelan and Puerto Rican descent. Her father abandoned the family soon after she was born, and she became an orphan at the age of 3 after her mother committed suicide. Afterward, Rivera was raised by her grandmother, who disapproved of her feminine behavior. Bullied both at home and school, 11 years old Rivera left her grandmother’s house to live on the streets, where she worked as a child prostitute. A local community of drag queens took her under their protection and gave her the name “Sylvia.” At 18, after the Stonewall riots, Rivera joined the Gay Activists Alliance, where she fought for gay rights and especially for the inclusion of drag queens in the LGBT community. Together with Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to support homeless queer youth. Her focus as a gay liberation advocate was on the rights of people of color, homeless youth, and gay prisoners. She was also a loud supporter of the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York – a law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, education, housing, credit, public accommodations, and the exercise of civil rights. In 1973, Rivera and Johnson were banned from a gay rights rally because “drag queens giving the community a bad name”. Rivera burst onto the stage and made a speech in which she criticized the gay community for ignoring trans people and marginalizing the already repressed. After the rally, she had a breakdown, and she attempted suicide. She was found and saved, disbanded STAR, and left activism for almost 20 years. The death of Marsha P. Johnson in 1992 had a significant impact on her, returning to substance abuse and living on the streets. But once again, Rivera was managed to rehabilitate herself and resumed her political activity. She worked at the food pantry of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, gave speeches promoting Trans rights, and in 2000, she traveled to Italy for the Millennium March, where she was announced as the “mother of all gay people.” In 2001, Rivera renewed STAR as a political organization, which fought for trans-inclusive and promoted the NYC Transgender Rights Bill. Even on her deathbed, she kept on fighting for the inclusion of trans and gender-nonconforming people. She died from liver cancer at the age of 51. Read more...

Sally Ride was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. She was an athletic child who also loved science, but her passion for tennis began when she was nine, while on a year-long family trip in Europe. In addition to practicing tennis professionally, she also focused on her studies, graduating high school with the aspiration to become an astrophysicist. Ride got accepted to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, winning the Eastern Intercollegiate Women’s Singles championship in 1968 and 1969. After three semesters, she transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, aiming to become a professional tennis player. Soon, she realized she didn’t have what it took to be the best and decided to focus on her studies. Ride moved to Stanford University and graduated in 1978 with a Ph.D. in physics and astrophysics. In 1977, Ride came across an advertisement in the students’ newspaper that NASA was recruiting scientists for the Space Shuttle program. She applied and got accepted into NASA Astronaut Group 8, one of 35 out of 8000 applicants. While in training, she started a relationship with Steven Hawley, also a member of Group 8. They got married in 1982 (divorced five years later). On June 18th, 1983, Ride took off on the Space Shuttle Challenger and became the first American woman in space and the third woman in history. She returned to space for her second and last mission in 1984. Ride left NASA in 1987 to pursue an academic career. Two years later, she was appointed a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and director of the California Space Institute, retiring from Cal Space in 1996 and UCSD in 2007. Her passion for space and longtime desire to encourage youngsters, especially girls, to study science and technology led her to participate in several educational programs, including the EarthKam and GRAIL MoonKAM projects in collaboration with NASA. These projects have enabled people to view, request and use pictures of the Earth and moon from space. She also co-established “Sally Ride Science” (2001), which promotes and educates teachers and students in STEM. She died from cancer in 2012. Read more...