Renee Imperato

Trans activist, cabbie, sex worker, mentor

New York, NY

Renee Imperato was born on May 8, 1948 in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City, where her mother worked making wigs and toupees...
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John Killacky

disabled writer, arts administrator, Vermont legislator

South Burlington, VT

John Killacky was born on June 24, 1952 in Chicago, and grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic family, the eldest son out of five...
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Dick Leitsch

president, NY Mattachine Society; sit-in organizer

New York, NY

Dick Leitsch was born in 1935 in Louisville, Kentucky. While in high school, he came out to his Catholic parents, who took his revelation in...
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Dale Guy Madison

Activist, artist, educator, writer, and QVC host

Inglewood, CA

Dale Guy Madison was born on March 22, 1958 at a naval base in Great Lakes, Illinois. His father was a naval officer who was...
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Lee Marquardt

late-blooming lesbian activist

Los Angeles, CA

Lee LeFaive Marquardt was born in 1942 in Jackson, Michigan. During World War II, Lee’s parents worked in factories to support their seven children. Afterwards,...
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Torie Osborn

Political and non-profit activist

Santa Monica, CA

Torie Osborn was born in 1950 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and moved with her family to Madrid, Spain at the age of five. In Madrid, Torie...
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Bradley Picklesimer

drag performer, nightclub proprietor

Meally, KY

Bradley Picklesimer was born on March 15, 1958, in Lexington, Kentucky. One of four children, Bradley had a happy early childhood with a father who...
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Valda Prout

transgender hairstylist, sex workers’ advocate

Washington D.C., DC

Valda Prout was born in 1935 in Boston. She was named Mallory at birth, and her life has been a long, eventful and colorful dance...
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Diana Rivers

LESBIAN ACTIVIST, AUTHOR, ARTIST, NATURALIST

Elkins, AR

Born in New York City on Oct 17, 1931, Diana Smith (later Diana Rivers) grew up near Morristown, New Jersey, within an artistic and literary...
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Alexei Romanoff

1967 Black cat protest organizer

Pasadena, CA

Alexei Romanoff was born in the Ukraine in 1936, fled with his family to the United States during World War II, and came of age...
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Mark Segal

Stonewall witness, publisher, Philadelphia Gay News

Philadelphia, PA

Mark Segal was born in Philadelphia, and raised in the only Jewish household in his public housing project. As a child, he learned of friends...
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Martha Shelley

Gay Liberation Front / Lavender Menace activist; writer

Portland, OR

Martha Altman (later Shelley) was born on December 27th, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents of Russian and Polish descent.  At 17, she...
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Kim Stacy

rural woodworker and home builder

Willisburg, KY

Kim Stacy was born in 1957 in Hyden, Kentucky. Her birth was attended to by caregivers from the Frontier Nurse program, who for more than...
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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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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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