San Francisco

Rock Star

b. January 19, 1943
d. October 4, 1970

“Don’t compromise yourself. It’s all you’ve got.”

Janis Joplin was a trailblazing 1960s blues-rock singer and songwriter. Celebrated for her raw, powerful vocals and electric stage presence, she became known as “the first queen of rock and roll.”

Janis Lyn Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, to conservative, college-educated parents. She gained weight and developed acne as an adolescent, and in high school, boys bullied her mercilessly.

Rebellious, and convinced she would never be one of the “pretty girls,” she rejected mainstream fashion in favor of men’s shirts and tight skirts.

She befriended a group of male outcasts who shared her interest in music and the Beat movement. By her senior year, she had earned a reputation for tough-talking and hard-partying.

After graduating from high school in 1960, Joplin studied art at the University of Texas at Austin. She began performing there and joined a folk band. When a fraternity voted her the “ugliest man on campus,” she was devastated.

Joplin dropped out of college in 1963 and hitchhiked to San Francisco. She developed a following for her music, and she and a boyfriend started shooting methedrine. Troubled by her addiction, a group of friends sent her back to Texas to clean up. Though still a heavy drinker, she largely succeeded and returned to San Francisco’s music scene.

Joplin’s big break came when she joined the rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. With Joplin fronting, their popularity exploded after a historic performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Their second album, “Cheap Thrills” (1968), featuring hits like “Summertime” and “Piece of My Heart,” reached No. 1.

Joplin’s preeminence soon created friction, and she left Big Brother for a solo career. Backed by a new group, she performed in 1969 at Woodstock, high on heroin. Her first solo album debuted a month later, peaking at No. 5.

In 1970, after forming another band, Joplin died alone in a hotel room of an accidental overdose. She was 27. Released posthumously, “Pearl” (1971) became her best-selling album, and “Me and My Bobby McGee” became her only No. 1 single.

Drive and insecurity dominated Joplin’s life. In a letter to her parents, she described ambition as “the need to be loved.” Absent any labels, she freely maintained sexual relationships with men and women, including her best friend.

After her death, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Oscar-Winning Director

b. April 6, 1955

“[Filmmaking] gave me the opportunity to speak to the world.”

Rob Epstein is an American film director, writer and producer, and the cofounder of the production company Telling Pictures. Best known for his groundbreaking feature-length documentaries, he is the first openly gay director to win an Oscar for an LGBT-themed film.

Epstein was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. At age 19, he moved to San Francisco. He started his career as one of the six-member Mariposa Film Group. Mariposa created “Word Is Out: Stories From Some of Our Lives” (1977), the first feature-length documentary by and for LGBT Americans. The pioneering film aired nationally in theaters and on primetime public television, increasing visibility for the gay community during a transformative period in the LGBT rights movement.

Epstein conceived, directed and co-produced his next project, “The Times of Harvey Milk" (1985), about the slain gay San Francisco board supervisor. Premiering at the Telluride and New York film festivals, the film touched audiences worldwide. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, along with Peabody, Emmy and Sundance Awards. It made Epstein the first openly gay director to win an Oscar for an LGBT-themed movie. In 2013 the Library of Congress selected “The Times of Harvey Milk” for the National Film Registry. The prestigious Criterion Collection also includes it in their catalog.

In 1987 Epstein and his husband, Jeffrey Friedman, founded Telling Pictures, a San Francisco-based production company. Together they produced “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt” (1985), an HBO documentary about the AIDS epidemic, for which Epstein won a Peabody and his second Academy Award. Their box-office hit, “The Celluloid Closet” (1995), a retrospective of LGBT images in Hollywood, featuring interviews with luminaries such as Tom Hanks and Whoopie Goldberg, won a Peabody and an Emmy Award. Other acclaimed films by Epstein and Friedman include “End Game” (2018), “State of Pride” (2019) and “Paragraph 175” (2000). Shifting from documentary to biopic, the duo also collaborated on “Lovelace” (2013), starring Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard and Sharon Stone, about the porn star Linda Lovelace, and “HOWL” (2015), starring James Franco as the famous gay poet Allen Ginsberg.

In addition to filmmaking, Epstein is a professor and co-chair of the film program at California College of the Arts. He has served on the Sundance Institute's board of trustees and on the board of the governors of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2008 he received the Pioneer Award for distinguished lifetime achievement from the International Documentary Association.

Transgender Activist

b. July 23, 1946
d. May 15, 2021

“I am your history. You can never change that no matter what you do to me.”

Felicia Elizondo is a self-described “Mexican spitfire, screaming queen, pioneer, legend, icon, diva, 29-year survivor of AIDS and Vietnam veteran.” Her activism has been crucial in raising public awareness of transgender rights and history.

Elizondo was born in San Angelo, Texas. Assigned male at birth, she knew she was “feminine” from the age of 5. Due to the lack of awareness of transgender people, Elizondo grew up believing she was gay. She was sexually assaulted by an older man and suffered bullying and name calling from her peers.

At age 14, Elizondo moved with her family to San Jose, California. Around the age of 16, she found refuge at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where she became a regular. It was one of the few places in the city where drag queens and transgender women could congregate publicly. In 1966, three years before Stonewall, it became the site of one of the first LGBT riots in U.S. history. The Compton’s Cafeteria riot was led by a group of transgender women against police harassment.

Elizondo joined the Navy at age 18 and volunteered to serve in Vietnam. She decided, “If the military couldn’t make me a man, nothing would.” While serving, she realized she would always be attracted to men and told her commanding officer that she was gay. Consequently, she was interrogated by the FBI and the CIA, and the Navy dismissed her with an undesirable discharge. Later, she successfully petitioned to have her discharge reclassified as honorable.

After seeing “The Christine Jorgensen Story,” a film about the first nationally known transgender American woman, Elizondo came to understand her own identity. She completed gender confirmation surgery in 1973.

In 1987, during the AIDS epidemic, Elizondo tested positive for HIV. She returned to San Francisco and began working with community organizations seeking to improve quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS. She became a trans drag queen and organized drag shows to raise funds for numerous HIV/AIDS nonprofits.

Elizondo has worked extensively to bring public attention to transgender history. In 2006, due largely to her efforts, the city of San Francisco renamed the 100 block of Taylor Street as Gene Compton's Cafeteria Way. In 2014 Elizondo successfully worked with San Francisco city supervisors to rename the 100 block of Turk Street in honor of her late friend Vicki Marlane, a transgender icon.

Elizondo appeared in the documentary “Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria” (2005). In 2015 she served as the lifetime achievement grand marshal of the San Francisco Pride Parade. She died in San Francisco in 2021.

Architect

b. January 20, 1872
d. February 2, 1957

“My buildings will be my legacy … they will speak for me long after I’m gone.”

Julia Morgan is recognized as the first truly independent female architect in America and the first female architect licensed by the state of California. She designed nearly 800 projects in California and Hawaii, including the famous Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, California, Morgan graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in civil engineering. She was the only female engineer in her class. After Morgan received her bachelor’s degree, an instructor encouraged her to pursue architectural studies at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The school, which had never admitted a woman, initially refused her application. She was accepted eventually after reapplying and became the first female to graduate with a certificate in architecture.

Upon graduation, Morgan returned to San Francisco and began working for John Galen Howard, a successful architect, on the University of California’s master plan. Morgan worked on designs for several buildings on the Berkeley campus and served as the primary designer of Berkley’s Hearst Greek Theater.

In 1904 Morgan became the first woman to obtain an architecture license from the state of California and opened her own firm. She completed many notable commissions, including Phoebe Hearst’s Hacienda del Pozo de Verona in Pleasanton, California, and multiple buildings on the campus of Mills College.

After the 1906 earthquake, Morgan was hired to repair the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Her innovative use of reinforced concrete was expected to help the building survive future earthquakes. She also oversaw construction of a series of YWCAs in California, Hawaii and Utah. Her California vernacular style included distinctive elements such as exposed support beams, horizontal lines that blend with the landscape, shingles, local redwood and earth tones.

In 1919 the newspaper publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst hired Morgan to design a main building and guest houses for his ranch in San Simeon, later known as Hearst Castle. Over the course of 28 years, Morgan designed most of the structures, grounds, pools, animal shelters, and workers’ camps and supervised nearly every aspect of construction. The finished property included a total of 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms and 127 acres of gardens. It remains an iconic landmark and tourist attraction.

Morgan received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from UC Berkeley in 1929. She was inducted posthumously into the California Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2014, 57 years after her death, she became the first woman to receive the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal.

Rainbow Flag Designer

b. June 2, 1951
d. March 31, 2017

“I love going to cities around the world and seeing the rainbow flag.”

Gilbert Baker was an American artist and LGBT activist best known for creating the rainbow flag. The flag provided a defining symbol for the LGBT civil rights movement and is considered the first and most widely recognized gay symbol today.

Growing up gay in the small rural town of Chanute, Kansas, Baker felt like an outcast. After spending a year in college, he was drafted into the army and served as a medic. He was stationed in San Francisco, where he remained for most of his life.

Baker became friends with Harvey Milk, a gay rights leader and among the first openly gay politicians elected to public office. A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Milk asked Baker to create a symbol for the gay rights movement. Baker flew his first rainbow flag at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978, where roughly a quarter of a million marchers participated. Milk was assassinated in November of that year. Following Milk’s death, demand for Baker’s flag increased dramatically.

With the help of volunteers using trash cans of dye, Baker made his first flag in the attic of the Gay Community Center of San Francisco. The original design included eight stripes: pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for peace and purple for the human spirit.

Many years and flags later, the self-described “gay Betsy Ross” spent months creating a 30-foot wide, mile-long flag featuring just six colors of the rainbow. Commissioned in 1994 for the 25^thanniversary of the Stonewall riots, it was hoisted by thousands of New York City marchers. The Guinness Book of World Records officially declared it the largest flag in the world.

In 2003 Baker was the subject of a feature-length documentary, “Rainbow Pride.” He was interviewed for the DVD of the 2008 Academy Award-winning film “Milk,” and he was featured in Dustin Lance Black’s 2017 documentary series about LGBT rights, “When We Rise.”

In 2015 the Museum of Modern Art listed the rainbow flag as one of the most important symbols globally. It continues to fly at gay marches and events around the world.

Baker died at age 65. The New York Times published his obituary.

Journalist and LGBT Historian

b. August 19, 1923
d. November 15, 1997

“I always had an innate sense that what I was doing was important.”

Jim Kepner was a pioneering journalist who helped chronicle the modern American gay rights movement. His research led to the creation of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the oldest LGBT history collection in the United States. 

Kepner was abandoned as an infant in Galveston, Texas, and reportedly found under a bush, then adopted. By the time he was a teenager, he was already researching homosexuality, often mail-ordering gay publications and literature. A voracious reader, he studied the lives of famous gay men like Michelangelo and Walt Whitman. 

In the 1940s, along with other artists and writers, Kepner joined the Communist Party. He wrote a column for the Communist newspaper, The Daily Worker, but was expelled from the party because of his homosexuality. Kepner went on to open Books on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. 

Kepner later joined the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the country. He also began writing for One, the first gay magazine with regular circulation published in the United States. When a Los Angeles postmaster refused to deliver the magazine by mail, the case went to the Supreme Court. The magazine won its case and continued publishing to a growing base of subscribers. The ruling also opened opportunities for other LGBT publications to enter the marketplace. 

Kepner was an important force behind One, as both a writer and an organizer. He created a research journal and events related to the magazine, turning him into one of the leading chroniclers of the modern gay rights movement. In 1956 he established the One Institute, which researched gay culture through the ages and around the world. 

In 1966 Kepner launched Pursuit & Symposium, a homophile magazine. He also contributed to The Los Angeles Advocate, which later became The Advocate, the leading national LGBT magazine. 

Throughout his life, Kepner collected records, souvenirs and other materials related to LGBT history. His collection, eventually the largest compendium of LGBT-related materials in the world, is housed at the University of Southern California; it contains more than two million artifacts and reference materials. 

Kepner died at 74 from complications after surgery. 

Immigration Activist 

b. February 3, 1981 

“I am an American. I just don’t have the right papers.”

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a filmmaker and an immigration rights activist. He founded Define American, a nonprofit organization dedicated to immigration and citizenship issues, and launched #EmergingUS, a digital platform that focuses on race, immigration and identity. 

Born in the Philippines, Vargas came to the United States when he was 12. He revealed his status as an undocumented immigrant in a 2011 essay in The New York Times Magazine in an effort to promote dialog about the U.S. immigration system and to advocate for the DREAM act. 

Vargas took an interest in journalism in high school. Before college he worked as a copy boy for The San Francisco Chronicle, eventually earning a private scholarship after being turned down for financial aid because he was undocumented. He graduated from San Francisco State and for years kept his status secret for fear of being deported. 

Vargas came out in high school after seeing a documentary about Harvey Milk, the assassinated openly gay San Francisco politician. He later described the disclosure as “less daunting than coming out about my legal status.” 

Vargas’s public immigration advocacy began with his revelatory 2011 essay. The following year, he wrote a cover story on his experience for TIME. He went on to direct a documentary called “Documented,” which premiered at the AFI Docs film festival in 2013. It was released in theaters and broadcast on CNN in 2014. The same year, Vargas was arrested in the border town of McAllen, Texas, after 21 years in the United States. He was questioned for hours, but then released.

In 2015 “Documented” earned an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary and Vargas produced a television special, as part of MTV’s “Look Different” campaign, called “White People. The program examined what it means to be young and white in America.

Vargas has written extensively for publications such as Rolling Stone and The New Yorker and was a senior contributing editor at the Huffington Post. As a Washington Post staffer, his 2006 series on HIV/AIDS in Washington, D.C., inspired the documentary film, “The Other City,” which he wrote and co-produced. It premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on Showtime. Vargas was also part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech. 

Vargas has discussed his experiences as a gay undocumented immigrant on such diverse television shows as “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Real Time with Bill Maher.” He has received numerous honors, including the Freedom to Write Award from the PEN Center.

Singer

b. September 6, 1947, Los Angeles, California

d. December 16, 1988, San Francisco, California

"My mother said, “You’re very strange,” and I said, “That’s OK.”

Before he became “Sylvester” and before he was crowned the “Queen of Disco,” Sylvester James Jr. was a member of a group of transvestites known as the Disquotays. While many Disquotays explored their identities as trans women in a cross-dressing party circuit, Sylvester identified as male.

After the dissolution of the Disquotays, Sylvester joined the Cockettes, a San Francisco drag theater troupe. While Sylvester appreciated the open lifestyle of the Cockettes, he maintained a distance from their psychedelic performances.

After the Cockettes, Sylvester—known by his first name only—struck out on a solo career. Songs like “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat)” made it to the top of the pop music charts. Sylvester became renowned for his exquisite falsetto and soulful showmanship.

When Joan Rivers called him a drag queen, a peeved Sylvester corrected her, declaring, “I’m Sylvester!” A critic of conformity, Sylvester decried Castro clones—gay men who idealized masculine attire and scorned flamboyance.

Sylvester was vocal about LGBT issues, especially AIDS awareness and prevention. He wrote songs about AIDS and held AIDS benefit concerts. At age 41, he died from complications of AIDS.

Transgender Activist

b. June 16, 1951, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

d. March 2, 1991, San Francisco, California

“My problem is that I can’t accept life for what it is. I feel that there is something deep and wonderful underneath it.”

Born Sheila in a Midwestern Catholic household, Sullivan recorded in a childhood diary the joy of “playing boys.” As a teenager, Sullivan was fascinated by male homosexuality. “I want to look like what I am, but I don’t know what someone like me looks like,” she recalled. When Sullivan began to identify as a transgender gay man, the prospects were daunting: “What can become of a girl whose real desire and passion is with male homosexuals?”

Standing at the threshold of an uncertain new world, Sullivan took the first step by adopting the identity of a female transvestite. After moving to San Francisco, Sullivan took the first name Lou, lived as a gay man, identified as a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual and medically transitioned to a gender-confirming male body.

When Sullivan was initially denied transition surgery due to his homosexual orientation, he publicly advocated for homosexuality to be removed from the list of contraindications. The successful campaign provided a breakthrough in widespread acknowledgment of the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sullivan became a peer counselor for gender-questioning women and corresponded with FTMs nationwide. He helped create the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco and FTM, the first exclusively female-to-male organization.

Sullivan remained an outspoken transgender activist until his death from AIDS at age 39.

Author

b. May 13, 1944, Washington, D.C.

“Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility.”

Armistead Maupin ranks among the most celebrated authors of the LGBT experience.

To many in Maupin’s hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina—including Maupin’s one-time employer, the segregationist Senator Jesse Helms—homosexuality was even more  blasphemous than racial integration. Maupin recounted about Helms, “Homosexuality, he told me, was the most heinous sin a man could commit. I nodded dutifully and kept my mouth shut.”

San Francisco, however, was a very different story. The city inspired Maupin to give voice to the unspeakable. In 1974 he debuted the first chapter of his seminal work, “Tales of the City.” Originally published serially in a neighborhood newspaper, “Tales of the City” was picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle, where it was syndicated and gained an avid nationwide following.

Maupin was among the first to feature open LGBT literary characters in affirming roles. “Tales of the City” revolves around a group of tenants of 28 Barbary Lane. The tenants strive to forge a family in spite of rejection, loneliness and confusion. As the AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, Maupin introduced one of the first HIV-positive characters who had an otherwise full life.

Despite his watershed inclusion of LGBT personalities, Maupin feels conflicted about being labeled a gay writer. His goal has been to include LGBT characters and their humanity in the broader framework of society. Because he dared to speak the unspeakable, his fictional family provided a voice and inspiration to those who never thought they would belong.