Sylvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera was a transgender Hispanic activist born in New York City in 1951. Rejected because of her expressed identity, she began living on the streets and hustling by age 11, where drag queens helped form her sense of family and community. She became involved in Puerto Rican and African American youth activism and later with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers. After the Stonewall Riots in 1969, she devoted herself to gay liberation work as an active member of the Gay Liberation Front and later the Gay Activists Alliance, New York’s primary gay rights group in the early 1970s working to secure an anti-discrimination ordinance. She was arrested for climbing the walls of City Hall in a dress and high heels to force her way into a closed-door meeting on the bill. As the Gay Activists Alliance grew more conservative and ignored transgender rights, Rivera sharply criticized the assimilationist focus of gay and lesbian groups and the resulting marginalization of transgender people. In 1970, with her close friend Marsha P. Johnson, she founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization committed to helping homeless transgender women by offering food, shelter, and safety while also fighting for the New York City Transgender Rights Bill and a transgender-inclusive New York State Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. An active member of the Metropolitan Community Church, she spent the last part of her life at Transy House, a direct descendent of the original STAR shelter. Rivera died on February 19, 2002, from complications due to liver cancer at age 50.

Chicago, Illinois · United States