When U.S. forces liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, some of those interned for homosexuality were not freed but rather were required to serve out the full term of the sentences they had received under the homophobic Nazi penal code.
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The Mattachine Society was founded in Los Angeles by a group of leftist gay men and acted primarily as a social group in which members could discuss the discrimination and antigay violence they experienced.
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Gay and lesbian activists on the east coast protested in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia to demand equitable treatment and respect.
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Lifelong gay rights and anti-war activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya held a demonstration while in college against the use of napalm in Vietnam by announcing that a dog would be burned alive with napalm in front of the university library.
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Police arrived at the Stonewall Inn and arrested anyone found to be cross-dressing, resulting in mayhem and what are now referred to as the Stonewall Riots. This was a milestone in a long history of LGBTQ+ activism.
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A group of gay men and lesbians who were tired of police abuse and frustrated with the Mattachine Society’s tactics formed the Gay Liberation Front.
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LGBTQ+ activists organized an occupation of NYU’s Weinstein Hall to protest the university’s discriminatory conduct against LGBTQ+ students and the local community.
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Joy Polley was a 27 year old Southside Chicago resident and teacher who challenged Chicago’s infamous dress restriction law, which was used to target trans and queer people, Black women, drag queens and kings, and unhoused people.
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The largest LGBTQ massacre in U.S. history (until the Orlando Massacre) occurred at the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans.
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Spurred by the sharp increase in violence against the LGBTQ+ community, the Lavender Panthers formed as a group of armed street vigilantes who patrolled San Francisco to defend the gay community.
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The CDC published a medical study about five gay men, plagued by a mysterious autoimmune disease (AIDS), in June 1981.
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ACT UP New York organized a national action to “Storm the NIH” demanding that the National Institutes of Health do more to support those suffering from HIV and AIDS.
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Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, robbed, and left to die.
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Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is a commemoration that has been honored annually since 1999 to raise awareness of continued violence to the transgender community and the many lives cut short.
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CeCe McDonald, a Black trans woman, was imprisoned following an act of white supremacist and transphobic violence in which McDonald defended herself and, in the process, her assailant was killed.
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During a “Latin Night” at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, a gunman shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at the time.
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Environmental and animal rights political prisoner Marius Mason was released from federal prison after serving seventeen years for acts of property damage carried out in defense of the planet.
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