Sylvia Rivera An orphan who started streetwalking in New York at age 11, Sylvia Rivera found a home among the city’s drag community, then found herself at the center of activism after playing a key role in the Stonewall riots. Along with close friend Marsha P. Johnson, she became an early activist with the Gay Liberation Front within weeks. A self-described radical and revolutionary, she later founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaires with Johnson, and she pushed for the mainstreaming of trans people.
Marsha P. Johnson
The uprising at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 launched the modern LGBT movement in America, and drag performer Marsha P. Johnson at age 23 played a critical role, according to an obituary in The New York Times printed years after her death. After Stonewall, Johnson — who identified as gay and a “transvestite” during her lifetime but is considered a mother of the trans rights movement — helped found the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries to advocate for trans people years before other organizations did. She passed away in 1992.
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