New Book Pride: The Story of the LGBTQ Equality Movement Marks Milestones Past — See the Moving Photos

The radical HIV/AIDS direct action group ACT UP began in New York in March 1987. They staged demonstrations across the country and the movement spread across the world. Here, protesters partake in a 1991 action march outside the White House, at which they chained themselves to the gates, and to each other, in protest against President Bush’s inaction during the crisis.

During a time of fear, homophobia and intense hysteria, people afflicted with HIV and AIDS were shunned and called “terrorists.” In April 1987, Princess Diana was the first global figure to publicly shake hands with a person with AIDS as she opened the London Middlesex Hospital’s HIV and AIDS wing. Her compassionate gesture challenged the widespread notion that HIV/AIDS could be passed through touch — and that people with the condition deserved kindness, not rejection.

In 1983, feminist, author and lesbian activist Audre Lorde led powerful lectures at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. A self-described "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” her work boldly confronted and explored issues of racism, sexism, classism and homophobia.

In this 1969 photo, journalist and book shop owner Craig Rodwell poses with a slogan popularized by Mattachine activist Frank Kameny. Rodwell is widely considered to be one of the many unsung heroes of the early gay rights movement: in 1967 he founded the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors in the United States, the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York. He also proposed the first-ever Pride parade in 1969, after participating in the Stonewall Riots.

The Stonewall Inn in New York was popular with a diverse crowd that included middle-class gay men but also marginalized figures such as people of color, the gender nonconforming, lesbians and street kids. The 1969 Stonewall riots in response to a police raid of the venue marked a critical point in the fight of LGBTQ equality in the United States. Many accounts suggested that those with less to lose fought hardest. This image is reportedly from the second night of rioting, the evening of June 28 and the early hours of June 29.

Singer Cyndi Lauper has been one of showbusiness’s biggest allies, starting her own True Colors foundation for homeless LGBTQ kids and writing the musical Kinky Boots. Here, she is pictured during the Closing Ceremony of the 2006 Gay Games VII in Chicago.

This 1969 photo shows the Gay Liberation Front, the first LGBT activist organization organized after the Stonewall riots, marching on Times Square in New York.

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