Black
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GAY MUSLIM IMAM
Chicago, IL
Imam Daayiee Abdullah was born Sidney Thompson in Detroit, Michigan on January 11th, 1954. From a very young age, Daayiee displayed an independent mind, becoming...
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pastor, HIV community activist
Charleston, SC
Robert Arrington was born February 1960 in Harlem, New York to. He grew up as one of three siblings with a strict father and a...
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Ifa Priestess, Author, Same Gender Loving (SGL) Activist
Palm Springs, CA
Love TaShia Asanti was born on September 23, 1961 in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up in Los Angeles, she was exposed to the area’s poverty and...
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Chef and Queer Rights Activist
La Quinta, CA
Betty C. Berrysmith was born on April 4, 1953 in Seattle, Washington and raised alongside her three siblings. Facing unjust working conditions and limitations due...
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Musician, Yoruba priest, AIDS activist
Oakland, CA
Blackberri was born in 1945 in Buffalo, New York, and named Charles Timothy Ashmore. From early on, he was comfortable with and even proud of...
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Playwright of ritual/jazz theatre
Los Angeles, CA
Born in Chicago to a single mother from Memphis in 1958, and raised in South Central Los Angeles, Sharon Bridgforth identifies as a child of...
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lawyer; founder, Trans People of Color Coalition
Washington D.C., DC
Kylar William Broadus was born on August 28, 1963 in Fayette, Missouri. His parents—William, a truck driver, and Fannie, a supervisor of housekeeping—instilled in their...
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HIV activist, community manager, women's advocate
Chalmette, LA
Gina Brown was born on January 15, 1966 in Pittsburgh, California. Up until age 4, her family lived happily in a middle class neighborhood. When...
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Black Trans Activist, Human Right's Advocate
Washington D.C., DC
Earline Budd was born on August 14, 1958 in Washington, DC, where she grew up in a very religious family. Assigned male at birth, Earline...
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Groundbreaking marriage equality activist
Milwaukee WI
Donna Burkett was born in 1946 at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Milwaukee with her family at age eight. Her grandfather...
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Public Speaker, Mentor, Trans Equality Advocate
North Garden, VA
Charley Burton was born on May 27, 1960 in Charlottesville, Virginia. The city was segregated in his early childhood, and his parents were vocal advocates...
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Nobel-nominated civil rights organizer
Durham, NC
Mandy Carter was born in 1948 in Albany, New York. Within a couple months of being born, Mandy and her two siblings were abandoned by...
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retail salesperson, Black community activist
Covina, CA
Rodney Church was born in South Central Los Angeles in August 1965, barely two weeks after the Watts Riots devastated the neighborhood and claimed 34...
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Medical care entrepreneur
Grand Prairie, TX
Emma Colquitt-Sayers was born in 1953 in Alabama, and grew up mostly in Hastings, Florida with her grandmother, a share cropper who taught her the...
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1st Black Trans Woman on Presidential HIV/AIDS Council
College Park, GA
Tori Cooper is a health and equity advocate, community organizer, author, and leading figure in the transgender and HIV communities. Tori was born on May...
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Mentee of Harvey Milk, activist for human rights and the Democratic Party
Daly City, CA
Gwenn Craig was born on April 14, 1951 in Atlanta, Georgia. She grew up on the Gammon Theological Seminary campus where her father worked as...
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