Criss Smith

Jamaican immigrant, Transgender Educator, Advocate

Jamaica, Queens, NY

Criss Smith was born on May 12, 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica. His father worked in business and his mother was a stay at home mom,...
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Penelope Starr

artist, bisexual lesbian

Tucson, AZ

Penelope Starr was born in 1945 in New York, NY. As the daughter of two eccentric artists – her mother a jeweler and her father...
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Alan Steinman

coast guard physician, anti-DADT activist

Olympia, WA

Alan Steinman was born in Newark, Ohio on February 7, 1945. He graduated from MIT in 1966 and went on to receive his M.D. from...
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Susan Stryker

trans academic, filmmaker, and artist

San Francisco, CA

Susan Stryker was born into a White working-class family in Fort Sill, Oklahoma on July 7, 1961. Her father was an army Sergeant, and his...
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Zeek Taylor

artist, storyteller; gay marriage trailblazer

Eureka Springs, AR

Zeek Taylor was born in the Arkansas Delta in 1946, and raised in the small town of Marmaduke, where his mother was a hairdresser and...
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Duncan Teague

Minister, artist, and HIV/AIDS advocate

Decatur, GA

Duncan Teague’s parents met at choir rehearsal at his local Baptist church, and his father was a retired Baptist minister. Duncan was born on January...
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Joey Terrill

Chicano artist, community activist

Glendale, CA

A second-generation Mexican-American, Joey Terrill was born on October 8, 1955, in Los Angeles. Joey’s father was an artist and furniture maker; his mother was...
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Jewel Thais-Williams

queer black dance club founder

Los Angeles, CA

Jewel Thais-Williams was born on May 9, 1939 in Gary, Indiana. The fifth of seven children, Jewel moved with her family to San Diego when...
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Ann Thomas

Founder of Transgender Talent

Anaheim, CA

Ann Thomas was born on October 14, 1962 in Seattle, Washington. At age 3, her family moved to Vashon Island in the middle of Puget...
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Jim Toy

Chinese-American university gay rights activist

Ann Arbor, MI

Jim Toy was born in 1930, in Manhattan, to a Scotch-Irish-American mother and Chinese-American father. After Jim’s mother passed away, his father moved the family...
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Jean-Nickolaus Tretter

LGBTQ historian

St Paul, MN

Jean Tretter was born in 1946, in Little Falls, Minnesota, into a German-Catholic family who had immigrated to the United States a century before. During...
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Morningstar Vancil

Indigenous Veteran, Artist, LGBT Community Activist

San Francisco, CA

Morningstar Vancil (she/they) was born in 1959 in Cavite City in the Philippines, raised first on a US military base and later in the City...
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Ruth Vanita

South Asian author, activist, and professor

Missoula, MT

Ruth Vanita was born on December 19, 1955 in Rangoon, Burma. She grew up in West Delhi, where she filled her days playing with neighborhood...
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Bruce Vilanch

Emmy-winning comedian

West Hollywood, CA

Bruce Vilanch was born in 1948 in New York City, and raised by his adoptive parents Jonas and Henne in Paterson, New Jersey. He developed...
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amina wadud

Award-winning Black Muslim feminist, theologian, "The Lady Imam"

Albany, CA

Dr. amina wadud (she/they), the “Lady Imam,” is a pioneering Muslim theologian and activist. Born in 1952, she grew up in the DC suburbs. Their...
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Dick Wagner

Wisconsin LGBTQ politician, historian

Madison, WI

Dick Wagner was born in 1943 in Dayton, Ohio into a traditional German Catholic family (his great grandparents ran a successful beer brewery). Dick attended...
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