Vivienne Armstrong and Louise Young

LGBTQ+ political and business leaders

Dallas, TX

Vivienne ‘Viv’ Armstrong was born on April 12, 1947, in Knoxville, Tennessee. While attending nursing school in San Francisco, she became active with the Daughters...
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Marci Bowers

first trans surgeon to perform gender-affirming surgeries

Burlingame, CA

Dr. Marci Bowers was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1958. At age four, Marci and her family moved to Oconomowoc, a small town in...
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Gwenn Craig

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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Luigi Ferrer

bisexual activist, HIV community activist

Miami, FL

Luigi Ferrer was born in 1958 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. During his childhood, he bounced between Puerto Rico and Columbia, South Carolina, then attended the...
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Phyllis Randolph Frye

first openly transgender judge in U.S.

Houston, TX

At her birth in 1948, Phyllis Randolph Frye was named Phillip. Growing up in Texas, Phillip became an Eagle Scout and was the commander of...
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Shirley Greenes

mother of coming-out visionary Rob Eichberg

Laguna Woods, CA

Shirley Greenes was born in 1921 in Brooklyn, NY. Growing up, her father taught her the values of equality, tolerance, and the inclusion of all....
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Michela Griffo

Gay Liberation Front radical; artist

New York, NY

Michela Griffo was born in 1949 in Rochester, New York, into a large, unruly family of Irish, Germans, Italians—what Michela calls the United Nations of...
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Mike Grossman

realtor; HRC humanitarian of the year

Dallas, TX

Mike Grossman was born in Minneapolis in 1941 into a traditional Jewish family. At the age of five, he contracted polio, which separated him from...
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Mel Heifetz

Philanthropist and gay nightlife figurehead

Philadelphia, PA

Mel Heifetz was born in Philadelphia on November 4, 1935, and raised in South Philadelphia. His parents could not afford to purchase property, and his...
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Ray Hill

organizer, radio host, prisoner rights activist

Houston, TX

Ray Hill was born in Houston, Texas, in 1940. His first career was as a teenage evangelist, but he gave that job up for more...
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Pat Hussain

Co-founder, Southerners On New Ground (SONG)

Decatur, GA

Pat Hussain was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1950. She attended segregated schools though high school. In 1963, Pat attended a civil rights sit-in at...
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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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Steve Pieters

pastor, HIV survivor, “Eyes of Tammy Faye” interviewee

Los Angeles, CA

Steve Pieters was born on August 2nd, 1952 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He grew up on the campus of Phillips Academy, Andover, where his father worked...
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Ruth Shack

early human rights activist and LGBTQ ally

Miami, FL

Ruth Shack was born in 1931, and grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1953, after dropping out of college – she told her...
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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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