05/08/2026
In honor of Trans+ History Week, we wanted to highlight a few trans icons whose lives and courage helped shape history:
🌟 Marsha P. Johnson — a Black trans activist and key figure in the fight for LGBTQ+ liberation. Her advocacy for homeless LGBTQ+ youth and marginalized q***r communities changed lives.
🌟 Sylvia Rivera — a Latina trans activist who fought fiercely for transgender rights, housing, and dignity for people often pushed to the margins.
🌟 Christine Jorgensen — one of the first Americans widely known for transitioning publicly, helping bring visibility to transgender people in the 1950s.
🌟 Lou Sullivan — a pioneering trans man who challenged harmful assumptions about gender and sexuality while creating community for future generations.
🌟 Miss Major Griffin-Gracy — a longtime activist and survivor who spent decades advocating for incarcerated trans women and trans people of color.
🌟 Pauli Murray — a groundbreaking civil rights lawyer, Episcopal priest, and writer whose work influenced both racial justice and gender equality movements. Many historians and LGBTQ+ scholars recognize Murray’s writings about gender identity and lived experience as deeply connected to trans and nonbinary history.
🌟 Lili Elbe — one of the earliest known recipients of gender-affirming surgeries in the 1930s.
And these are only a few names among countless others whose stories were erased, hidden, ignored, or never fully recorded.
Trans history is human history.
And understanding that history matters — especially at a time when transgender people are so often misunderstood, politicized, or targeted.
Because when we learn history honestly, we begin to understand something important:
Trans people are not new.
Trans people are not “confused.”
Trans people have always been here.
And they always will be. 🏳️⚧️