From Josephine Baker to Marsha P. Johnson, these women made history
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGES BY FLICKR AND WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Whether you loved history or hated it, we can all agree our history lessons would have been better if they had focused on queer women. For centuries, sapphics have been at the heart of key events and helped change the world as we know it.
Ahead of International Women’s Day, here are six women who changed the world.
Josephine Baker
This French-American actor, singer, activist and everything in between was one of the most influential voices of the 20th century. Music-wise, she was one of the most celebrated musicians of the first half of the 1900s. Her fashion sense helped define the Roaring ‘20s. And to cap it all off, she was the first black woman to appear in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren Of The Tropics.
All of this doesn’t even touch the incredible work she did for civil rights. Josephine was awarded both the Resistance Medal and the Croix de Guerre for her contribution to the French Resistance movement during the Second World War. She also refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. In 1963, she was the only woman to speak at the March on Washington by the side of Martin Luther King Jr.
Marsha P. Johnson
This American activist was central to improving the rights of the LGBTQIA community everywhere. She was a prominent figure in the Stonewall Uprising, one of the key turning points to gaining rights for queer people in America. She joined the Gay Liberation Front in 1970 and marched in the first Gay Pride Rally that year. On top of this, she was an AIDS activist and, with close friend Sylvia Rivera, set up STAR, a foundation to help house homeless LGBTQIA youth and sex workers.
Sally Ride
Did you know the first American woman in space (third woman overall) was a queer woman? Women are often forgotten about in the sciences and are still a hugely underrepresented group. But in 1983 and 1984, Sally proved what we all know – women are just as good as men when it comes to physics and every other science.
Dr Margaret Chung
Speaking of science, Margaret was the first known Chinese-American female doctor. She graduated from the University of Southern California Medical School in 1916 and went on to establish one of the first Western medical clinics in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 1920s. This is what she is best known for, but she was also a queer woman who attracted a clientele of lesbian couples and women seeking birth control.
Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway. Aged 29, she won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the youngest playwright to do so. As well as writing about racial segregation in America, Lorraine also wrote about being a lesbian and the oppression of gay people.
Winaretta Singer
This patron of the arts hosted a salon in Paris from the late 1800s to 1939. The salon hosted artists including Claude Debussy, Isadora Duncan, Colette, and Claude Monet. She was beyond influential within the French arts, donating to the Paris opera and symphony. Alongside that, Winaretta helped Marie Curie send mobile radiology units (in limousines, of course) to the front during the First World War.
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