Amazing Transgender Women
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| Sylvia Rivera: 1951-2002 |
Like Johnson, Sylvia Rivera was at the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 and credited with being one of the first to confront the police. She and Johnson later started STAR House to offer support and shelter to young, transgender and gender non-conforming people who were living on the streets.
"Marsha and I just decided it was time to help each other and help our other kids," Rivera told Leslie Feinberg for her 1998 book, Trans Liberation. "We fed people and clothed people. We kept the building going." She and Johnson funded Star House through sex work, and were able to keep it going for a few years before the landlord eventually threw them out.
After Star House fell, Rivera continued to be a strong voice for transgender people of color. She fought against transgender exclusion in New York's Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (and unfortunately lost — SONDA does not protect people based on gender identity), and she spoke out against systemic poverty, racism, homophobia, and gender discrimination.
Rivera died in 2002, but her legacy lives on in the work of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, an organization dedicated to "increasing the political voice and visibility of low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming."
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