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This year’s Pride Month comes at an arduous time for many people, as restrictions on drag performances, transgender health care and other LGBTQ rights take center stage in many states.
Still, the month is a time for celebration and, of course, pride. To commemorate the month, CNN is highlighting five major LGBTQ elders – some who have passed on, and some who haven’t – highlighting their achievements.
From a drag king who fought discrimination on the streets of New York to a famous mathematician who stood up to adversity despite legal limitations, here are five LGBTQ figures to know.
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was instrumental in the civil rights movement, leading and organizing many protests. But Rustin wasn’t only a leader in the movement – he was also someone who helped push Martin Luther King Jr. toward nonviolent ideas and tactics.
Rustin studied in India for seven weeks to learn Gandhian philosophies in 1948, and he passed those teachings down to King. Following the success of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, Rustin became a close confidant of the iconic reverend, and later organized the March on Washington in 1963.
Rustin also played a significant role in the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, also known as SCLC. Still, though Rustin was an out gay man, some believed his sexuality would undermine the movement. In 1953, Rustin was arrested for having sex with another man in a parked car, landing him on the sex offender registry.
The charge was used against him – most notably by former Sen. Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, who read his arrest record on the Senate floor and used it to delegitimize the civil rights movement. Almost 70 years later, Rustin was pardoned by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Larry Kramer
When playwright and activist Larry Kramer published his essay “1,112 and Counting” in 1983, AIDS was a highly stigmatized, little understood disease primarily affecting gay men.
“Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of this earth is at stake,” he wrote.
