Sylvia Rivera is an influential Hispanic American and also an icon for the gay and transgender rights movements. In 2001, she was marching in New York City Pride Parades and living in Transy House. Silvia Rivera died of liver cancer in St. Vincent's Manhattan Hospital in 2002 at the age of 50. Her partner, Julia Murray, was with her at the time of her death.
In this image, Sylvia Rivera leads the ACT-UP march past New York's Madison Square Park, June 26, 1994.
She co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Marsha P. Johnson to provide support and a shelter for homeless transgender youth. This organization was one of the first of its kind and paved the way for later groups that address LGBTQ+ homelessness
At just 17 years old, Sylvia Rivera was a key participant in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, an event widely considered the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. She was one of the many drag queens and transgender people of color who resisted the police raid at the Stonewall Inn, fighting back against police brutality and sparking six days of protests. Her friend Marsha P. Johnson and Rivera are often cited as being at the forefront of the resistance, with Rivera famously saying she wasn't going to "miss a minute of this" revolution.
Rivera's most enduring legacy may be her insistence on an inclusive and intersectional approach to activism. She fiercely criticized the mainstream gay rights movement for focusing primarily on issues that benefited white, middle-class gay men (such as military inclusion and marriage equality) while ignoring the systemic issues facing low-income people of color, transgender individuals, sex workers, and the homeless. Her famous 1973 "Y'all Better Quiet Down" speech at a rally in Washington Square Park was a powerful demand for the movement to acknowledge all members of the community.
Though she passed away in 2002, her dedication to her community lives on through the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), an organization founded in her honor. The SRLP provides legal services, health advocacy, and social services for low-income transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming people of color, empowering them to advocate for themselves and build leadership skills.