On This Day in Herstory February 19th 2002, Sylvia Rivera, a Latinx American gay liberation and transgender activist, significant person in LGBTQ history, and co-founder of STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens and trans women of color, died in New York City; she was only 50 years old.
Formidable Female Fact: She became involved in activism during Civil Rights Movement and continued through the movement against the Vietnam war and second-wave feminist movements. She was also involved in Puerto Rican and African American youth activism, and worked with groups like the Young Lords and Black Panthers. Throughout her life, she battled with substance abuse, and as a result lived on the streets more than a few times; because of her experiences, she became an even bigger advocate for people she saw as being left behind by mainstream society and the assimilationist sectors of the LGBTQ communities. She fought for inclusion of herself, and for people like her: people of color and low-income queer and trans people. She struggled for acceptance within the marginalised groups she was a part of; the triumvirate of her being LGBTQ, a person of color, and poor, meant she was never fully accepted by any one of those communities. To this day, mainstream, LGBTQ groups dismiss her Latinx identity, while Latinx groups do not acknowledge her contributions towards civil rights.