Black History Month Highlights Week Two: Honoring Giants

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1994) Johnson is commonly credited with throwing the first brick during the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 but her legacy extends far beyond that moment in time. She was an out-and-loud trans, queer activist; she lived in intersections and advocated for multidimensional social justice movements.

Johnson was poor, often homeless, and lived with mental health challenges but she was never a case of despair. She leveraged her circumstances to be a better advocate: founding an organization to support to trans youth, becoming an AIDS activist, and breaking down the stigma around mental health.

James Baldwin (1924-1987) Novelist, essayist, playwright—Baldwin utilized all avenues at his disposal to urgently confront white America with their complacency in a racist system.

He ardently advocated for national dialogue about race, proposed that sexuality and gender could be fluid constructs, and bravely explored interracial and homosexual relationships in his work.

Baldwin remains an influential figure in the American consciousness. His life and works have been memorialized in several films, a testament to his lasting impact.

Black History Month Highlights Week Two: Honoring Giants

Donald Galloway (1938-2011) Galloway, pictured with guide dog, is an unfortunately obscure figure to the public but he dedicated his life to advocating for the disabled community.

Notably, he was a social worker whose career included being the director of peer counseling at the Center for Independent Living in California and later Washington, Peace Corps director in Jamaica, and holding multiple advocacy positions in local and federal government.

It was also Galloway’s lawsuit in 1991 which resulted in the ruling that blind people could not be automatically excluded from a jury.

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) Lorde self-described as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” The daughter of West Indian immigrants, today she is well known in social justice circles for her many insightful works of poetry and prose which explore the intersections of identity.

While alive, Lorde was an influential member of many liberation movements including second-wave feminism, civil rights, and LGBTQ equality. When diagnosed with breast cancer in the late ‘70s, her activism evolved to include shedding light on the lived experiences of women and combatting the silence around the topic of illness.