Buz Hermes

AIDS activist; creator, “Aging Gayfully”

Sonoma, CA

Gary “Buz” Hermes was born on January 11, 1939 in Napa, California – not the global wine destination of today, but a small, conservative farming...
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Michael Hickerson

carnival krewe performer, social worker

Slidell, LA

Michael Hickerson was born in New Orleans in 1955. His dad was a longshoreman, and his mom ran the cafeteria at New Orleans City Hall....
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Kathie Hiers

FOUNDER / CEO, AIDS ALABAMA

Birmingham, AL

Kathie Hiers was born on October 5th, 1954 in Mobile, Alabama. She might have been born in Joliet, Illinois, where her family lived at the...
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Alice Hom

Non-profit manager, Queer Asian-American RIghts Activist

Oakland, CA

Alice Hom (she/they) was born on March 6, 1967 in Los Angeles, California and grew up in a working class Chinese American family. Their father...
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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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Louis Jacinto

PHOTOGRAPHER, ART MAGAZINE FOUNDER

Los Angeles, CA

Louis Jacinto was born on November 13, 1955 in Bakersfield, California. His father was a railroad worker and his mother stayed home to raise the...
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Karla Jay

Lavender Menace activist, author, educator

New York, NY

Karla Jay was born February 22, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York. Her primary school mistook her vision problem as a sign of intellectual inability and...
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Lorri L. Jean

Former CEO of Los Angeles LGBT Center

Los Angeles, CA

Lorri L. Jean was born on March 7th, 1957 in Boise, Idaho. She was the eldest child on the family farm, and she was handed...
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Phyllis Jenkins

Award-winning nurse, great-great-grandmother, and healthcare envoy to Africa

New York, NY

Legacy of Voices is an oral history project created in 2008 by Lara Spotts and Brian O’Donnell, inspired by their realization that to better understand...
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Fenton Johnson

kentucky-born author and educator

Tucson, AZ

Fenton Johnson was born in Kentucky in 1953, the youngest of nine children in a bourbon-making family. His parents named him after a monk at...
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Janetta Johnson

ED of TGI Justice Project, mentored by Miss Major

San Francisco, CA

Janetta Johnson was born on November 12, 1964 in Tampa, Florida. Assigned male at birth, she was bullied and reprimanded growing up for presenting more...
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Omi Osun Joni L. Jones

Artist, Scholar, and Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies

Los Angeles, CA

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones was born on October 25th, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois. Around 1960, her family moved to a new development in the...
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ABilly S. Jones-Hennin

organizer, 1979 March on washington; bisexual activist

Washington D.C., DC

ABilly Jones-Hennin was born in 1942 on St. John’s, Antigua and adopted at age three by civil rights activists with nine other adopted kids.  After...
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Lani Ka’ahumanu

bisexual/feminist activist and author

Cazadero, CA

Lani Ka’ahumanu was born in Edmonton, Alberta and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lani is known today as one of the major...
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Jax Kelly

HIV rights activist, Mr. Palm Springs Leather

Palm Springs, CA

David “Jax” Kelly was born on May 10, 1962 in Jamaica, Queens, New York to a white mother from Peoria, Illinois and a Black father...
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BobBI Keppel

Retired social worker, bisexual pioneer, community activist

Portland, ME

BobBI (Barbara) Keppel was born on December 6, 1932 in Washington, DC. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1955, but spent a year abroad at...
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