Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002)

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist and self-identified drag queen, born in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and Venezuelan mother. Active with the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance, she pushed the movement to include drag queens, trans people, and the poor. With her friend Marsha P. Johnson she co-founded STAR, the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which housed homeless queer and trans youth. Rivera spent decades challenging mainstream gay organizations that excluded transgender people from civil rights efforts. Her advocacy inspired the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which fights for gender self-determination, and she remains foundational to the transgender rights movement.