Activist

Composer & Suffragette

b. April 22, 1858
d. May 8, 1944

“I feel I must fight for [my music], because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs; not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.”

Ethel Mary Smyth was a pioneering British composer who helped popularize opera in the United Kingdom. She became a fervent champion of women’s rights and the first woman composer to be awarded damehood.

Smyth was born the fourth of eight children in Sidcup, Kent, outside of London. Her father, a major general in the Royal Artillery, opposed her musical aspirations. Smyth defiantly persevered, learning from esteemed tutors. She studied composition at Leipzig Conservatory in Germany and received encouragement from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák and Johannes Brahms. 

Along with operas, Smyth wrote choral arrangements, symphonies and chamber music. She first captured attention for her “Mass in D” (1892). Her 1902 opera, “Der Wald,” broke attendance records in London. It became the only opera composed by a woman ever produced by the New York Metropolitan Opera. This held true for well over a century, until 2016.

Smyth composed her most famous work, “The Wreckers,” in 1906. Critics extoled it as one of the most important English operas. 

By 1910 Smyth had established herself as a leading member of the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. She took time off from composing to join the Women’s Social and Political Union. She participated in marches and protests for women’s rights and full equality. During this period, she was incarcerated for two months after the authorities arrested her and more than 100 other suffragettes for breaking the windows of their political opponents. In 1911 Smyth composed “The March of Women,” which became the anthem for England’s women’s movement.

Smyth was public about her nonconformist sexual identity. Many of her romantic partners were famous women, including the French Empress Eugénie and the English modernist writer Virginia Woolf. 

Smyth wrote 10 books and many have been written about her. She openly discussed her experiences in several autobiographies. She once wrote, “I wonder why it is so much easier for me to love my own sex more passionately than yours.”  

In 1922 Smyth was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her accomplishments as a composer. In 1926 Oxford University presented her with an honorary doctorate. Despite the fanfare, as a woman she struggled to get her music performed. 

For her 75th birthday, Smyth was honored with a festival in Royal Albert Hall celebrating her lifetime achievements. She began to lose her hearing at age 54 and went completely deaf before the end of her life. She died at age 86. 

Transgender State Legislator

b. September 30, 1984

“What I hope people across the country are able to see in [our victories] is that transgender people can be really good at doing their jobs in elected office; we can make really good legislators.”

Danica Roem is a journalist and the first openly transgender person in the United States to win a seat in a state legislature. On November 7, 2017, she was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. 

Roem was born male and raised in Manassas, Virginia. Her father committed suicide when she was 3, and her maternal grandfather, Anthony Oliveto, helped raise her. Oliveto instilled in Roem a passion for reading newspapers, which influenced her interest in journalism. 

In 2006 Roem graduated with a degree in journalism from St. Bonaventure University in New York. Her college professors described her as a student who worked for those whose voices were ignored. Her interest in politics was sparked initially in 2004 when President George W. Bush proposed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. 

Roem secured her first job after college at the Gainesville Times in Virginia. She worked for the paper for nine years as a lead reporter and also wrote for the Prince William Times in Manassas, Virginia. The Virginia Press Association honored her with seven awards. 

In 2012, 28-year-old Roem began the transition to female—from Dan to Danica. Three years later, she became a news editor at the Montgomery County Sentinel in Rockville, Maryland. She left the paper in 2016 to pursue a career in politics.

Rip Sullivan, state delegate and recruiting chair of the Virginia House Democratic Caucus, reached out to Roem to run for state delegate. She accepted the challenge and successfully defeated Republican incumbent Bob Marshall, who had represented the district for 13 years. As the state’s self-described “chief homophobe,” Marshall sponsored Virginia's “bathroom bill,” designed to restrict the use of public restrooms by transgender people, along with a bill to end same-sex marriage. 

Progressives endorsed Roem, including former Vice President Joe Biden and groups such as the Victory Fund, EMILY’s List, the Human Rights Campaign and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Roem’s campaign raised over $500,000—three times more than her opponent. She received more than a thousand donations under $100, the second highest number of any Virginia delegate candidate. 

Roem defeated Marshall by approximately eight percentage points. Her victory was hailed nationally as a milestone for transgender rights. In January 2018 she and other newly elected female politicians appeared on the cover of TIME magazine.

Pioneering AIDS Activist & Journalist

b. April 29, 1948

“As a teenager I didn't see any positive gay images. … And they certainly weren't in my high school curriculum. But I remember getting excited by characters in books who were marginally alluded to as gay.”

Ann Northrop is a pioneering journalist and news producer who spearheaded media strategy for ACT UP and AIDS awareness during the height of the epidemic. She has been arrested roughly two dozen times for her activism. 

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Northrop was raised with conservative Republican values. She 
entered Vassar College in 1966, where she embraced politically progressive views. 

Northrop began her journalism career immediately after graduation, reporting for a year and a half on the federal government at The National Journal in Washington, D.C. She moved to New York City to work for “Woman,” a morning talk show on the WCBS-TV network. During that time, she became a feminist activist and Vietnam War protester.

Over the next several years, Northrop held a variety of jobs in television and wrote for publications such as Ms. magazine and Ladies’ Home Journal. While writing for Ms., she fell in love with a woman and came out as a lesbian. The two remained a couple for 17 years. 

In the early ’80s, Northrop worked as a writer and producer for ABC’s “Good Morning America,” a talk show covering topics from politics to entertainment. For five years thereafter, she produced the “CBS Morning News.” 

In 1987, during the early part of the AIDS crisis, Northrop placed her media career on hold to teach students about HIV/AIDS and LGBT issues at the Hetrick-Martin Institute for lesbian and gay youth in New York. The following year she joined the AIDS advocacy organization ACT UP. In 1989 she helped ACT UP organize a national media event, “Stop the Church,” in which 4,500 activists protested at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. The protest challenged the Catholic Church's opposition to condom use and sex education. The story captured major news coverage.

Northrop served as the only LGBT delegate from New York at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. She was an active board member of the 1994 Gay Games in New York City.

In 1996 Northrop returned to television to co-host and co-executive produce “Gay USA.” The one-hour weekly news show airs on national cable channels and covers national and international LGBT topics. 

Northrop was a founding member of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, a think tank now known as the Williams Institute, and she helped found the Lesbian and Gay Alumnae Association of Vassar College. She has trained countless activists in dealing with the media and has spoken at many high-profile LGBT events. Northrop has appeared in several documentaries, including two in 2012: “How to Survive a Plague” and “United in Anger: A History of ACT UP.”

Gay Pioneer

b. October 17, 1917
d. May 11, 2000

“I was one of the founders of the first homosexual organizations in U.S. history. …Our basic argument was that changes in sex laws would not benefit us alone but everyone.”

William Dale Jennings was a gay pioneer who cofounded two early gay organizations and one of the first gay magazines in America. He was dubbed the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement when he successfully challenged his arrest on homosexuality charges.

Jennings grew up in Denver, Colorado, where he studied piano and dance. He was performing by the age of 12 and traveled with the Lester Horton Dance Group. He moved to Los Angeles in his early 20s, after training in theater direction. Jennings established his own theater company and wrote and produced more than 50 short plays. 

Jennings served in World War II and received several military honors, including a Victory Medal. After an honorable discharge in 1946, he studied cinema for two years at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 

In 1950 the U.S. Senate declared homosexuals a national threat. That year, Harry Hay, Jennings and four other gay activists cofounded the Mattachine Society—an underground gay community network and one of the first gay civil liberties organizations in the United States. 

During this time, vice detectives posing as homosexuals commonly entrapped gay men and charged them with solicitation. Most men pled guilty for fear of public exposure. When Jennings was arrested for soliciting in 1950, he fought back. He was the first openly gay man known to have done so. During his 10-day trial in 1952, Jennings disclosed his homosexuality but denied the charge. The jury deadlocked one vote shy of acquittal, and the judge dismissed the case. Publicity surrounding the trial exposed the issue of entrapment and made Jennings an gay hero.

Later the same year, with a group Mattachine members, Jennings cofounded ONE, Inc., to develop a publication specifically for homosexuals. With Jennings as its editor, the first issue of ONE Magazine was published in 1953. It became the first widely distributed gay magazine in the United States. 

In 1954 the Los Angeles postmaster cited the publication for obscenity and refused to deliver it. A legal battle ensued, and after several lower court rulings in favor of the post office, the United States Supreme Court ruled for the magazine. A first-of-its-kind victory, the decision in ONE vs. Olesen is celebrated as a legal landmark, making the mail circulation of gay periodicals possible.

In addition to ONE Magazine, Jennings wrote for other publications and published three novels. His California gold-rush-era coming-of-age story, “The Cowboys,” was made into a movie, starring the Academy Award-winning actor John Wayne. Jennings co-wrote the screenplay. 

Jennings died in Los Angeles at the age of 82. The New York Times published his obituary.

Teen Transgender Activist 

b. May 4, 1999

“I’m just Gavin. I have frustrations, stress, hopes, and dreams like millions of other young people in America. And like everyone else, sometimes I have to use the restroom. It’s not political. It’s just life.”  

Gavin Grimm was thrust into the national spotlight in 2014 as a transgender high school student, when he sued for the right to use the boys’ restroom in his Virginia public high school.

Born female, Grimm struggled with his sexual identity from an early age. At 15, he was diagnosed with severe gender dysphoria and began medical treatment. With his high school’s permission, he began using the boys’ restroom in his sophomore year. He told The Washington Post, “It just seemed like the natural progression of things.” 

Grimm used the boys’ restroom without issue for nearly two months. Then, following transphobic complaints from parents and residents, the high school and the Gloucester County School Board voted to ban Grimm from using the bathroom matching his gender identity. 

At a subsequent school board meeting, Grimm endured insults, threats and inflammatory rhetoric. The board voted to segregate him by relegating his bathroom use to the nurse’s restroom or to a makeshift restroom meant only for him.

After learning of Grimm’s plight, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal lawsuit on his behalf, contending that the school board’s restriction of his bathroom use was unconstitutional. They argued that the school’s policy violated Title IX laws prohibiting sex discrimination under the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972.

The lower courts dismissed the case. In 2016 the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the lower courts’ decision in Grimm’s favor. The Gloucester County School Board then petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The request was rejected. 

Throughout the appeals and during his graduation from Gloucester High School in June 2017, Grimm remained barred from the boys’ restroom. In 2018 the U.S. District Court declared that the school violated the rights of transgender students by excluding them from the bathroom consistent with their gender identity.

Grimm has received numerous awards. In 2017 TIME magazine honored him on its list of “100 Most Influential People.” Major news outlets, including as The New York Times and The Washington Post, have reported his story.

Grimm is working toward his college degree and advocates for transgender equality.

Grammy-Winning Singer

b. September 23, 1970

“We so often fall in that trap of trying to convince somebody they're wrong, when really it's just go find the good people doing the good work and help them out.”

Angela Maria “Ani” DiFranco is a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, musician and progressive social activist. Her unique musical style and lyrics combine elements of folk, alternative rock, funk and other influences.

Born in Buffalo, New York, DiFranco was playing guitar and singing Beatles covers at local venues by the age of 9. At 14 she was writing and performing her own songs at bars and coffee houses. She graduated from the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts at 16 and became an emancipated minor. 

At the age of 19, DiFranco started her own record label, Righteous Babe Records. She released her self-titled first album—and more than 20 subsequent studio albums—on the label. DiFranco openly identified as bisexual in the early ’90s. During that decade, she toured nationally and internationally. She addressed her love for men and women in several of her songs and became a pioneering voice for the LGBTQ community. 

As DiFranco’s fame and visibility increased, she appeared on music television programs such as MTV and VH1 and in cover stories for Spin, Ms. magazine and other popular publications. In 1995 she performed as part of a concert at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her cover of “Wishin’ and Hopin’” appeared in the opening credits of the 1997 film “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

In 1999 Righteous Babe Records began releasing albums by other artists. The label also created the Righteous Babe Foundation through which DiFranco has supported grassroots initiatives to advance abortion rights, LGBT rights and other issues. 

DiFranco has performed at benefit concerts and spoken at feminist rallies. She headlined the LEAF and Clearwater festivals in support of environmental protection. In 2004, along with celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg and Margaret Cho, she led the March for Women’s Lives on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. For her 2017 “Rise Up” concert tour, she partnered with Emily’s List, a leading Democratic organization aimed at electing pro-choice female politicians.

DiFranco has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards. Her 12th album, “Evolve,” earned the 2004 Grammy for Best Recording Package. In 2006 the National Organization for Women honored DiFranco with the “Woman of Courage Award.” In 2009 she received the prestigious Woody Guthrie Award as a consistent advocate for social change. 

DiFranco married her sound engineer, Andrew Gilchrist, in 1998 and divorced five years later. She married Mike Napolitano in 2009. They have two children.

Taiwanese Gay Pioneer

b. October 12, 1958

“This should certainly offer some encouragement to different societies to consider following in Taiwan’s footsteps and giving gays and lesbians the right to marry.”

Chi Chia-wei is a pioneering Taiwanese gay rights activist and marriage equality champion. He helped make Taiwan the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. 

Chi was raised by open-minded parents who were supportive of his homosexuality. He came out in high school and his classmates were overwhelmingly accepting. 

Chi began his LGBT activism in his 20s, when there were virtually no other visible gay rights activists. Today, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese support or have joined the LGBT rights movement. 

For some time, Chi was Taiwan’s only AIDS activist. He operated a halfway house for HIV/AIDS patients and created awareness campaigns to promote safe sex among the country’s LGBT citizens. 

In 1986 the 28-year-old Chi organized an international press conference to announce his sexual orientation and bring attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis. In doing so, he became the first person in Taiwan to come out on national television. Media outlets such as the Associated Press and Reuters covered the event. 

Chi’s quest to bring same-sex unions to Taiwan also began in 1986, when he applied for a marriage license. His request was denied by the Taipei District Court Notary Office as well as the Legislative Appeals Court. Later that year, he was detained by police and served a 162-day sentence. Such imprisonment was common during Taiwan’s White Terror, a period of oppression during which the government imprisoned political dissidents. 

Chi unsuccessfully applied for a same-sex marriage license again in 1994, 1998 and 2000. In 2013, when he applied and was denied once more, Chi appealed the decision to the Taipei city government’s Department of Civil Affairs, who referred the issue to the Constitutional Court. 

Chi and the Taipei city government petitioned the court to examine the constitutionality of the same-sex marriage prohibition. On May 24, 2017, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court struck down the previous classification of marriage and ruled that same-sex couples could marry, beginning in May 2019. A celebration erupted outside the court and Chi announced, “Today’s victory is for everybody!” The decision marked the culmination of Chi’s 30 years of activism. 

In October 2016, Queermosa, a leading Taiwanese LGBT organization, presented Chi with its first Queer Pioneer Award. Chi has a longtime romantic partner whose identity he keeps private.

Movement Leader

b. May 12, 1955 

“The call is to each of us to now take responsibility for the conferring of all rights to all people.” 

Richard D. Burns is a longtime LGBT community leader and organizer. He served for 22 years as executive director of New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center (The Center) and has held leadership roles at numerous human rights organizations, including the Arcus Foundation, GLAD and Lambda Legal. 

Burns graduated from Hamilton College in 1977 and earned his law degree from Northeastern University. In 1978 he cofounded Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) and served as its president until 1986. He became managing editor of Gay Community News in 1978, the only national lesbian and gay newsweekly at the time, and later became president of its board. 

In February 1979, Burns and three other Boston representatives participated in the Philadelphia Conference, a meeting of LGBT leaders from across the nation to organize the historic October 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. 

From 1980 to 1983, Burns served on the first national board of the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund. In 1985 he cofounded and led the board of the Massachusetts LGBTQ Bar Association. 

Burns became the first executive director of The Center in 1986, at the height of the AIDS crisis, and served until 2009. The second largest multiservice center of its kind in the world, The Center offers health and social services as well as cultural and recreational activities to the NYC LGBT community. 

In 1994, while serving at The Center, Burns cofounded CenterLink, an organization serving over 200 LGBT community centers across the United States. That same year, he cofounded the New York State LGBT Health and Human Services Network. 

Since 2009 Burns has led prominent nonprofit organizations. He was the Chief Operating Officer of the Arcus Foundation, one of the largest international funders of LGBT initiatives. He has acted as interim executive director of organizations such as the Stonewall Community Foundation, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, PENCIL, the North Star Fund, the Funding Exchange and the Johnson Family Foundation. Currently, he serves at the interim CEO of Lambda Legal.
 
Burns is a member of the board of directors for the Proteus Fund, a social justice grantmaker; the New York City AIDS Memorial Park; the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee; and the Center for HIV Law and Policy. He is a past member of the selection committee of the New York Community Trust Nonprofit Excellence Awards.

Burns has received several awards for his vision and service. In 2008 the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) named him to the Public Interest Hall of Fame for Outstanding Leadership and Commitment to Social Justice. 

Pioneering Activist

b. March 4, 1948
d. June 4, 2005

“I wanted to do something special, to have an impact on the world.”

Jean O’Leary was a pioneering LGBT activist who founded Lesbian Feminist Liberation, one of the first gay women’s rights groups in the United States. She also organized the first National Coming Out Day in 1987 with Rich Eichberg.

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, O’Leary joined the Sisters of Holy Humility of Mary after graduating from high school. She left the convent after earning a degree in psychology from Cleveland State University and moved to New York City to pursue a doctorate at Yeshiva University. In New York she became involved in the budding gay rights movement. 

O’Leary was an early member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Gay Activists Alliance. She created Lesbian Feminist Liberation to draw attention to gay issues related to women. In 1977 O’Leary organized the first meeting of gay rights activists in the White House with the help of Midge Costanza, an out lesbian on the president’s staff. During the event, O’Leary said, “This is the first time … a president has seen fit to acknowledge the rights and needs of some 20 million Americans.”

Her involvement in politics led O’Leary to become one of only three openly gay delegates to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She served on the Democratic National Committee for 12 years and was the chair of the committee’s Gay and Lesbian Caucus from 1992 to 2002. 

During the 1980s, O’Leary was active with National Gay Rights Advocates, the largest nationwide LGBT group in America. It was among the first groups to publicly respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis, advocating for access to legal support and treatment. Sean Strub, founder of POZ magazine, said O’Leary’s early AIDS activism, “particularly in expediting access to new treatments, saved many lives.”

O’Leary and other gay and lesbian activists of the era have been criticized for not including transgender issues in their fight for equality. O’Leary later apologized, saying, “How could I work to exclude transvestites and at the same time criticize the feminists who were doing their best back in those days to exclude lesbians?”

O’Leary died of lung cancer at age 57, leaving behind a partner, a son and a daughter. The longtime AIDS activist Bob Hattoy said, “Jean taught gay men about feminism, she taught lesbians about AIDS, she taught feminists about gay and lesbian issues, and she taught Democrats about everything.” 

Transgender Activist and Author

b. March 10, 1983

“My genital reconstructive surgery did not make me a girl. I was always a girl.”

Janet Mock is a New York Times best-selling author, television host and transgender advocate. She hosts a weekly online series on MSNBC.com called “So POPular” and is the founder of #GirlsLikeUs, a social media project created to empower transgender women around the world. She came out publicly as transgender in 2011 and was featured in Marie Claire magazine. 

One of five children born to an African-American father and a native Hawaiian mother, Mock spent much of her childhood in Honolulu before moving to California and Texas. She began her gender transition in high school. During her freshman year in college, she traveled to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery. The first person in her family to go to college, Mock attended the University of Hawaii and New York University, where she earned a master’s degree in journalism. She began her career as a staff editor for People.com.

Mock has been a contributing editor for Marie Claire and a special correspondent for “Entertainment Tonight.” She has contributed to The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Salon and Slate.

In 2014 Mock’s book, “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More,” became a best seller; it traces her life growing up as a boy and transitioning into a woman. She also has written about her experience for The Huffington Post, Elle and The Advocate. 

Mock has used her experience as a transgender black woman to help advocate for the LGBT community, women’s issues and multicultural awareness. She serves on the board of the Arcus Foundation, which is dedicated to LGBT and environmental advocacy. 

Mock was featured in the HBO documentary “The Out List“ and in the documentary “Dressed” and has appeared on television shows such as “Real Time with Bill Maher” and “The Colbert Report.” In 2015 Oprah Winfrey invited her as a guest on “SuperSoul Sunday.”  

Among other recognition, Out Magazine named Mock to its list of Out 100 and TIME named her one of the 12 new faces of black leadership and one of the most influential people online. She has also earned awards from Planned Parenthood, the Feminist Press and others.

Mock lives in New York City with her husband, the photographer and filmmaker Aaron Tredwell.