Lgbtq community history

Marsha P. Johnson was an African American transgender-rights activist, whose serve in the s and s had a huge impact on the LGBT community.

At this age, being gay was classified as a mental illness in the United States. Gay people were regularly threatened and beaten by police, and were shunned by many in society.

In June , when Marsha was 23 years aged, police raided a gay bar in New York called The Stonewall Inn. The police forced over people out of the prevent and onto the streets, and then used excessive hostility against them.

Marsha, who was living and working in Brand-new York at the time, was one of the key figures who stood up to the police during the raids.

Marsha resisted arrest, but in the following days, led a series of protests and riots demanding rights for gay people.

News of these protests spread around the world, inspiring others to unite protests and rights groups to brawl for equality.

Read more about Marsha P. Johnson here.

The s were perilous times for individuals who fell outside of society’s legally allowed norms relating to gender or sexuality. There were many names for these individuals, including the clinical “homosexual,” a term popularized by pioneering German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In the U.S., professionals often used the term “invert.” In the midth Century, many cities formed “vice squads” and police often labeled the people they arrested “sexual perverts.” The government’s preferred term was “deviant,” which came with legal consequences for anyone seeking a career in public service or the military. “Homophile” was the term preferred by some early activists, small networks of women and men who yearned for people and found creative ways to resist legal and societal persecution. 

With draft eligibility officially lowered from 21 to 18 in , World War II brought together millions of people from around the country–many of whom were vanishing their home states for the first time–to stuff the ranks of the military and t