#sapphicherstory — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sapphicherstory, aggregated by home.social.
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#SapphicSaturday is back this week!
Sally Ride was an astronaut & physicist. She joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman & the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 & Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32. And in death, she was acknowledged as the first known gay astronaut. Click the alt text on her photo for more!
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Sylvia Rivera was a Latina LGBT activist and drag queen known as a pioneer of the civil rights movement. She participated in the Stonewall Riots and co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which she led alongside Marsha P. Johnson. She played a pivotal role providing a space within the LGBT community for transgender & gender-nonconforming individuals, people of color, low income youth, & drag queens.
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Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), best known for her groundbreaking play “A Raisin in the Sun,” the first play to appear on Broadway written by an African American woman in March 1959. An activist, she participated in a lesbian rights group, contributing letters about feminism & homophobia to its magazine; she didn’t officially come out until after her death when her unsealed estate diaries revealed her sexuality in 2014.
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Today we’re celebrating the Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs: Gladys Bentley (1907-1960)!
Bentley was a successful African American pianist, blues singer, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career took off when she appeared at a gay club in NYC: Harry Hansberry's Clam House, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer backed by a chorus line of drag queens. Her signature outfit remains a tuxedo and top hat!