5 events documented
On this day, Beauford Delaney was born. The gay African American modernist painter worked alongside the Harlem Renaissance before moving to Paris. The pressures of being Black and gay in a hostile society left him isolated, but his art endured.
On this day, the Association for Social Knowledge opened Canada's first community center serving the homosexual community in Vancouver, creating vital space for connection and organizing.
On this day in 1969, the gender-bending drag troupe The Cockettes premiered in San Francisco. Founded by Hibiscus out of a Haight-Ashbury commune, they put queer counterculture on stage before AIDS claimed their founder in 1982.
On this day in 1971, Life magazine published an 11-page spread called "Homosexuals in Revolt," discussing the post-Stonewall movement in a generally positive light for the first time in mainstream media.
On this day, Ian McKellen was knighted by the Queen, becoming the first openly gay man to receive the honor. The acclaimed actor had come out on BBC Radio just two years earlier and co-founded Stonewall, the UK's leading LGBT rights group.
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