20 Historical Figures Who Were Pioneers in the LGBTQ+ Community

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was one of the first public advocates for gay rights when he began publishing his writings on same-sex love in the 1860s. As you can probably imagine, stories like these didn’t exactly go unnoticed, but Ulrichs didn’t care, and in 1867, he even spoke before the Congress of German Jurists in Munich to oppose laws criminalizing sexual relations between men. The crowd, however, booed him before he could finish his speech. 

Magnus Hirschfeld helped turn gay rights into a structured political and scientific campaign when he co-founded the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee in Germany in 1897. The group worked for decades to repeal Paragraph 175, a German law that criminalized sexual relations between men. Hirschfeld did not stop there: he also opened the Institute for Sexology in Berlin in 1919, before the Nazis targeted it in 1933, destroying its library and archives.

After serving in the U.S. Army in postwar Europe, Henry Gerber brought back to the United States ideas from the early days of the German gay rights movement. In 1924, he founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago, which became the first registered gay rights organization in the country. Although this seems perfectly normal to us today, the group immediately faced fierce opposition in the 1920s and was quickly dismantled following police arrests.

Harry Hay helped found the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles in 1950. The event had far greater significance than it might seem: this organization was founded at a time when gay people were subjected to arrests and public denunciations of all kinds, but Hay argued that they constituted an oppressed minority sharing a common social identity. Fortunately, the Mattachine Society became one of the first gay rights organizations to establish a lasting presence in the United States.

Del Martin co-founded the “Daughters of Bilitis” in San Francisco in 1955, helping to establish the first major lesbian rights organization in the United States. She later served as editor-in-chief of The Ladder, the group’s national magazine, and used it to publish essays and personal testimonies for lesbians who, at the time, often had no other source of safe community support. 

Phyllis Lyon was one of the founders of the “Daughters of Bilitis” in 1955 and became the first editor-in-chief of The Ladder in 1956. Her editorial work was one of the pillars that enabled lesbian readers across the country to find a sense of community through the written word. What is even more remarkable is that, decades later, Lyon and Del Martin became leading advocates for marriage equality when they were married in San Francisco in 2004, and again in 2008.

Barbara Gittings began her activism in 1958 by founding the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis. From 1963 to 1966, she also served as editor-in-chief of The Ladder and made more forceful public arguments in favor of lesbian visibility. She also joined Frank Kameny on the picket lines in the 1960s and helped challenge the American Psychiatric Association, which ultimately removed homosexuality from its list of “mental disorders” in 1973.

Frank Kameny had built a solid career as an astronomer in the federal government before being fired in 1957 because of his sexual orientation. However, this injustice sparked a lifelong fight for civil rights. In 1961, he filed a discrimination complaint based on sexual orientation with the U.S. Supreme Court and co-founded the Mattachine Society of Washington. By 1965, he was helping organize picket lines outside the White House.

Before Gay Pride became a familiar concept, José Sarria used every means at his disposal—from the stage to the political arena—to foster a sense of gay pride in San Francisco. In 1961, he ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and became the first openly gay candidate to seek elected office in the United States. He may not have won the seat, but it showed politicians that gay voters could make their voices heard.

Bayard Rustin was a gay civil rights strategist whose work left its mark on some of the most significant campaigns of the 20th century. In 1963, he served as the chief organizer of the March on Washington, even as brutal homophobia forced him to work under a level of pressure that many other leaders had never had to face. Nevertheless, he never stopped openly advocating for gay rights throughout his career.

Christine Jorgensen made international headlines in 1952. Newspapers reported on her gender reassignment surgeries after she returned to the United States from Denmark, where she was among the first transgender women to gain prominence in American public life. Far from letting intrusive questions get her down, she embarked on a career as a public speaker, helping to bring the issue of transgender identity into the public discourse during the 1950s and 1960s.

Marsha P. Johnson became one of the best-known figures associated with the 1969 Stonewall riots and the movement that followed. After Stonewall, she joined the Gay Liberation Front and then, in 1970, co-founded the organization Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries—known as STAR—with Sylvia Rivera. Johnson’s activism also focused on all kinds of communities facing discrimination, including homeless queer youth, transgender people, and people of color living in precarious circumstances.

Sylvia Rivera also fought for the liberation of gay and transgender people following the Stonewall riots of 1969, although she is best known for insisting that the movement include its most vulnerable members. In 1970, she co-founded STAR with Johnson to provide support for homeless youth and gender-nonconforming people in New York. Her iconic 1973 speech, delivered at a gay rights rally, remains very popular to this day. 

The next time you think about Pride, be sure to pay a well-deserved tribute to Brenda Howard. It is thanks to her that the memory of Stonewall has become the annual public tradition we all celebrate today. In 1970, she helped coordinate the Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York, organized to mark the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots. A bisexual woman, Howard also remained active in groups such as the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activists Alliance, ACT UP, and Queer Nation.

Harvey Milk became one of the most prominent openly gay elected officials in U.S. history when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. During his term, he campaigned for the protection of gay rights and even helped defeat the 1978 Briggs Initiative in California, a barbaric proposal that sought to prevent gay men and lesbians from teaching in public schools. His legacy, however, ended in tragedy, as he was assassinated on November 27, 1978, alongside Mayor George Moscone.

It’s hard not to think of Gilbert Baker every time you see a rainbow. After all, he gave the gay community one of its most iconic public symbols by creating the rainbow flag in 1978! The first flags were hand-dyed and sewn by Baker and volunteers in preparation for Gay Freedom Day in San Francisco in June of that year. 

Larry Kramer was one of the figures who pushed the United States to address the issue of AIDS, particularly at a time when the government and the media preferred to turn a blind eye. In 1982, he co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York, which quickly became a source of support and services during the epidemic. He also helped found ACT UP in 1987.

Audre Lorde placed Black lesbian identity at the heart of her poetry, essays, and public speeches throughout the 1970s and 1980s. She explored themes of family, race, and self-discovery with a candor that was quite direct for the time, which gave the activists who followed her the words to wage similar struggles.

James Baldwin was much more than a writer of nearly flawless talent: his career also established him as an indispensable voice on issues of race, sexuality, and identity. That said, it was his work that introduced homosexual desire and moral conflict into American literature with Giovanni’s Room, a novel published in 1956. The novel told the story of an American in Paris grappling with his relationships with men, and it was published at a time when many publishers and readers still considered homosexuality too dangerous a subject to address openly. 

Jeanne Manford made history in the fight for gay rights by bringing parental support into the public eye. In 1972, she marched alongside her gay son, Morty, in the Christopher Street Liberation Day march in New York, after he had been assaulted during a previous demonstration. In 1973, she helped organize the first official meeting of what would become PFLAG, thereby offering families a way to support gay and lesbian people rather than mistreating or ignoring them.