Sylvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera (July 2,1951 – February 19, 2002) was orphaned at the age of three. Raised by her grandmother, Sylvia started wearing make-up in the fourth grade. She ran away in her early teens, and survived as a sex worker. She hung out on 42 Street with a protective group of drag queens and street hustlers which included Marsha P. Johnson. In the wake of the Stonewall Uprising, Sylvia Rivera became an activist, working with the Drag Queen Caucus of the Gay Liberation Front, and later the Gay Activists Alliance. With Marsha P. Johnson, she co-founded the S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) House. After a vituperative Gay Power speech at the 1974 Pride Parade, Sylvia was booed off the stage, felt abandoned by the gay movement and moved to Tarrytown and ran a catering business with her lover, returning to New York in for the last few years of her life.