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Stonewall Moments: Honoring Icons in LGBTQ+ Activism
Meet six activists AARP is recognizing for Pride Month
AARP recognizes six LGBTQ+ icons. From left: Barbara Gittings, Edith Windsor, Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk, Sylvia Rivera and James Baldwin.
The world is different today because 55 years ago, a brave group of people at Stonewall Inn in New York City responded to violence by organizing the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ equality movement. This LGBTQ+ Pride Month, AARP has chosen to recognize six iconic individuals whose work has moved the needle toward justice and equality. We are highlighting their “Stonewall moments,” a term that, to us, means those times when individuals stood up on behalf of all of us to make the world a better place.
This mindset is at the heart of AARP’s mission. Our founder, Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, challenges us “to live up to our better selves, to believe well of our fellow men and perhaps by doing so to help create the good we believe in, to experiment, to explore, to change, and to grow.”
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These icons used their positions to challenge the status quo. Learn more about their Stonewall moments.
Harvey Milk (1930-1978)
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay politician in California. Elected to the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco in 1977, he led the fight for equality at the local level, including authoring a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment.
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)
Bayard Rustin was a leader in the civil rights movement and a principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Rustin was not involved in the LGBTQ+ rights movement until later in life but in the 1980s spoke forcefully about the need for society to change its treatment of the LGBTQ+ community.
Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002)
Sylvia Rivera was a strong advocate for the transgender community in which she lived, including fighting for a New York City-wide gay rights, antidiscrimination ordinance in the early 1970s. Rivera focused on intersections of discrimination in poverty, racism, and sexual orientation and gender identity.
Edith Windsor (1929-2017)
Edith (Edie) Windsor was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case in 2013 that overturned part of the Defense of Marriage Act banning federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Windsor and her first wife, Thea Spyer, were active in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights for decades, including the struggle for marriage equality.
Barbara Gittings (1932-2007)
Barbara Gittings was a founder of the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian rights organization, in the late 1950s. She was part of the fight to pressure the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality’s listing as a mental illness, succeeding in 1973. Gittings was involved directly in many of the earliest protest actions for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States, including the 1965 protests at the White House to object to the federal government’s policy against employing members of the LGBTQ+ community.
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
James Baldwin was an author and civil rights activist who used his pen to write numerous essays, plays, poems and novels such as Giovanni’s Room, Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time. Many of Baldwin’s works challenged the status quo on masculinity, sexuality, race and class. His writings continue to challenge and inspire artists and activists.
To learn more about these and other important figures in LGBTQ+ and American history, visit the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall Inn in New York City.
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