LGBTQ+ Icons
October is LGBTQ+ History Month, a month-long observance of the history, contributions, and influence of LGBTQ+ citizens and communities. In celebration of LGBTQ+ History Month, Queer Educators Equity Network (QuEEN) put together this list of notable LGBTQ+ figures.
Geraldine Roman
Geraldine Roman (b. 1967) was the first transgender person to be elected to Congress in the Philippines, where she has championed legislation to ban anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and to legalize same-sex marriage.
Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera
Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) and Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) co-founded S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) to provide shelter for homeless transgender youth. Both played important roles at the Stonewall riots and in the early queer rights movement.
Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972) was an American lesbian poet and playwright who left the U.S. and moved to Paris, where she hosted a salon, frequented by prominent writers and artists, in her home. Eventually, her home became the center of a lesbian circle in Paris that was later fictionalized in Radcyffe Hall's classic novel The Well of Loneliness. She believed in polyamory long before the word was even coined. Her lovers included the poet Renée Vivien and the painter Romaine Brooks.
Edward Carpenter
Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), a British poet and philosopher, was one of the first LGBTQ+ activists. In 1908, he published The Intermediate Sex, which advocated for rights for gay men and lesbians. He argued that justice for queer people was inherently connected to rights for workers, women, and racial minorities. His long-term relationship with George Merrill inspired E.M. Forster’s classic gay novel Maurice.
We'Wha
We'Wha (1849-1896) was a Zuni weaver, potter, and fiber artist. We'Wa identified as a lhamana, a third gender in Zuni culture that corresponds to other two-spirit Native American traditions. In 1886, We'Wha traveled to Washington, DC, as an ambassador for Zuni people, where she met President Grover Cleveland.
Stormé DeLarverie
Stormé DeLarverie (1920-2014) was a singer and drag king, who, according to herself and many witnesses, was the “butch lesbian who threw the first punch” at Stonewall. Born in New Orleans to a Black mother and white father, she eventually made her way to New York, where she worked as a singer, a drag king, an MC, a bouncer, and a body guard. She volunteered to patrol the streets around queer bars to protect patrons. Because of her androgynous appearance, she was twice arrested for being a drag queen. She is sometimes called "the Rosa Parks of the gay community."
James Baldwin
James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a major American novelist and essayist and a prominent figure in both the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. He was born in Harlem, but he moved to France at the age of 24 to escape American racism and homophobia. His first gay-themed novel, Giovanni’s Room, sparked controversy when it was published in 1956, but today it is widely considered one of the most important works of LGBTQ fiction. His other books include Go Tell it on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, Another Country, and Just Above My Head.
Alan L. Hart
Alan L. Hart (1890-1962), one of the doctors who helped create X-ray technology, was a transgender man. His gender confirmation surgery, in 1917, is thought to have been the first in the U.S. for a trans man. He was the first doctor to use X-ray photography to detect tuberculosis, saving many lives by catching the disease early enough so that it could be treated. He also had a career as a fiction writer.
William Dorsey Swann
William Dorsey Swann (1858-1925) is sometimes credited with inventing the term "drag queen." Born into slavery in 1860, he organized drag balls in the 1880s and 1890s in Washington, DC, dubbing himself the “queen of drag." His home and the drag queens who gathered there were called the House of Swann. He was arrested at his home at his 30th birthday party while in drag. He resisted being arrested and later asked President Grover Cleveland for a pardon. It is said that he was the first person in U.S. history to legally challenge anti-queer persecution. We have no images of him, but many artists have found creative ways to pay tribute to him.
Chavela Vargas
Richard Frank Adams
Richard Adams (formerly Richard Frank Salanga; 1947-2012) was a Filipino-American same-sex marriage advocate. In 1975, he, together with his partner Anthony Sullivan, became one of the first gay couples to be legally married in the U.S. Later, when the U.S. government did not recognize their marriage, Adams filed the first federal lawsuit to seek recognition of same-sex marriages. Though he lost this lawsuit and another that followed, his decade’s worth of advocacy paved the way for the U.S. federal government to eventually recognize same-sex marriages.
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) was a gay African-American man who helped organize the freedom rides and the 1963 March on Washington. Later in the 1980s, he became a gay rights activist. Because of his sexuality, the outsized role he played in the civil rights movement has not been acknowledged until recently. In 2013, he was posthumously awarded the presidential medal of freedom by President Obama. A biopic about him (produced by Barack and Michelle Obama) will be coming out later this year.
Katharine Lee Bates
Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) was an author, poet, and scholar, best known for writing “America the Beautiful.” She was also an activist for labor rights and women's suffrage. A professor of English at Wellesley College, she had a long-term relationship with a fellow professor, the economist Katharine Coman. Their relationship was often described as a "Boston marriage," a term applied in that era to partnerships between women who lived together. Sometimes "Boston marriages" were platonic, but often they were lesbian relationships, and scholars believe that Bates's and Coman's letters to each other confirm that they were more than friends. After Coman’s death, Bates published Yellow Clover, a book of poems about her grief, in a limited edition. In one of the more famous poems from that collection, Bates wrote, "My love, my love, if you could come once more / From your high place,/ I would not question you for heavenly lore, / But, silent, take the comfort of your face. / I would not ask you if those golden spheres / In love rejoice,/ If only our stained star hath sin and tears,/ But fill my famished hearing with your voice./ One touch of you were worth a thousand creeds./ My wound is numb / Through toil-pressed day, but all night long it bleeds / In aching dreams, and still you cannot come."
Sappho
Sappho (630 B.C.E.-580 B.C.E.), often considered greatest of the Greek lyric poets, wrote passionate love poems addressed to women. She lived on the island of Lesbos, and it's because of her poetry that we used the word lesbian today.
Harvey Milk