- Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury was a British musician and songwriter, best known as the frontman and pianist of the rock band Queen. He is remembered for his vocal abilities and charisma as a live performer. As a songwriter, he composed many international hits, including "Killer Queen", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love", "We Are the Champions" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". In 1991, Mercury died of bronchial pneumonia brought on by AIDS, … - Ryan White
Ryan Wayne White was a young man with AIDS from Kokomo, Indiana. In the 1980s, he drew national and worldwide attention due to his infection. White became infected with HIV from a blood product known as Factor VIII, as part of his treatment for hemophilia given to him on a regular basis. He was diagnosed with AIDS (as transmitted by casual contact) on December 17, 1984, by a doctor performing a partial lung removal. - Makgatho Mandela
Makgatho Lewanika Mandela (June 26 1950-January 6 2005) was the son of former South African president and Nobel Prize winner Nelson Mandela and his first wife Evelyn Ntoko Mase. He was an attorney, widowed with four sons. He died of AIDS on 6 January, 2005 in Johannesburg. His second wife, Zondi Mandela, died on 13 July, 2003 at age 46. At first, her cause of death was given as pneumonia; after Makgatho's death, … - Rock Hudson
Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 - October 2, 1985) was a popular American film and television actor, noted for his splendid, virile looks and most remembered as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s. Hudson was voted "Star of the Year," "Favorite Leading Man," or any number of similar titles by numerous movie magazines and was unquestionably one of the most popular and well-known movie stars of the time. - Eazy-E
Eric Lynn Wright (September 7 1963-March 26 1995), better known by the stage name Eazy-E, was an American rapper, producer, and record executive from Compton, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. He was a Kelly Park Compton Crip from the early teenage years until his death, mentioned in the song 'Any Last Werdz?'. He was the son of Richard and Kathie Wright. - Nkosi Johnson
Nkosi Johnson (February 4, 1989 - June 1, 2001) was a South African child victim of HIV/AIDS, who made a powerful impact on public perceptions of the pandemic and its effects before his death at the age of 12. He was 5th in SABC3's Great South Africans. Nkosi, whose birth name was Xolani Nkosi, was born to Nonthlanthla Daphne Nkosi in a township east of Johannesburg in 1989. He never knew his father. - Gibson Kente
Gibson Kente (1932 - November 7, 2004) was a South African playwright based in Soweto. He was known as the "Father of Black Theatre" in South Africa, and was one of the first writers to deal with life in the South African black townships. He produced 23 plays and television dramas between 1963 and 1992. He is also responsible for producing some of South Africa's leading musicians. And many past and present prominent artists, including Brenda Fassie, … - Klaus Nomi
Klaus Nomi (January 24, 1944 - August 6, 1983) was a German countertenor noted for remarkable vocal performances and an unusual, elfin stage persona. Nomi is remembered for bizarrely theatrical live performances, heavy make-up, unusual costumes, and a highly stylized signature hairdo which flaunted a receding hairline. - Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 - June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. He held a chair at the Collège de France, giving it the title "History of Systems of Thought," and taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Michel Foucault is best known for his critical studies of various social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as his work on the history of sexuality. - Arthur Russell
Charles Arthur Russell Jr. (1952 - April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, singer, and disco artist. While he found the most success as a dance music artist, Russell's career bridged New York's downtown, rock, and dance music scenes; his collaborators ranged from Philip Glass to David Byrne to Nicky Siano. Relatively unknown during his life, a series of reissues and posthumous releases has raised his profile in recent years. - Arthur Ashe
Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. (July 10, 1943 - February 6, 1993) was a prominent African American tennis player who was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. During his playing career, he won three Grand Slam titles. Ashe is also remembered for his efforts to further social causes. - Fela Kuti
Fela Anikulapo Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, October 15 1938 - August 2 1997), or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick. - David Wojnarowicz
David Wojnarowicz (September 14, 1954 - July 22, 1992) was a gay painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s. He was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of Performing Arts for a brief period. From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, … - Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Nureyev, a Tatar ballet dancer, is regarded as one of the greatest male dancers of the 20th century, alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov. - Elizabeth Glaser
Elizabeth Glaser, born Elizabeth Meyer, (November 11 1947 - December 3, 1994), was a major American AIDS activist and child advocate married to actor and director Paul Michael Glaser. She contracted HIV very early in the modern AIDS epidemic after receiving an HIV-contaminated blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth. Like other HIV-infected mothers, Glaser unknowingly passed the virus to her infant daughter, Ariel, through breastfeeding. - Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black & white portraits, photos of flowers and male nudes. The frank, erotic nature of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks. - Willi Ninja
Willi Ninja (12 April, 1961 - 2 September, 2006) was a gay African-American dancer and choreographer best known for his appearance in the documentary film "Paris is Burning". Ninja for years was a fixture of ball culture at Harlem's drag balls who took inspiration from sources as far-flung as Fred Astaire and the world of haute couture to develop a unique style of dance and movement. He caught the attention of "Paris is Burning" director Jennie Livingston, … - Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, artist, and writer. - Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey, Jr. (January 5, 1931 - December 1, 1989) was an African American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He died of AIDS, at the age of 58. Ailey was born to his 17-year-old mother, Lula Cooper, in Rogers, Texas. Alvin developed an early interest in dance. In 1943 he and his mother moved to Los Angeles. Initially, he took dance classes from choreographer Katherine Dunham, and later studied under Los Angeles, … - Keith Haring
Keith Haring was a pre-eminent artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York street culture of the 1980s. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania but grew up in Kutztown and was interested in art from an early age. From 1976 to 1978 he studied graphic design at The Ivy School of Professional Art, a commercial and fine art school in Pittsburgh. Keith moved to New York City where he was greatly inspired by the graffiti art, … - Robert Reed
Robert Reed was an American stage and television actor. Born in Highland Park, Illinois, and christened John Robert Rietz, Jr., Reed spent much of his childhood in Oklahoma and later studied Shakespeare in college, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. - John Holmes
John Curtis Holmes better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd (after the lead character in a series of related films), was one of the most famous male adult film stars of all time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and porno feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s, including at least one gay feature film and a handful of gay loops. He was best known for his exceptionally large penis, … - Leigh Bowery
Leigh Bowery (March 26, 1961, in Sunshine, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia – December 31, 1994, in London, United Kingdom) was a performance artist, club creature, and clothing designer. He died of AIDS and one of his last requests after his 5 week sickness was for nobody to ever know his middlename. - Max Robinson
Max Robinson was a television journalist and was the Chicago based co-anchor of ABC News "World News Tonight" from 1978-1983 in the United States, and is best known for being the first African American broadcast network news anchor in the United States. He was also a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists. Robinson influenced many African American journalists who have since had high-profile anchor positions on national news broadcasts, … - Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 - September 12, 1992) was an Academy Award-nominated American stage and screen actor known for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". - Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloom (14 September, 1930 in Indianapolis, Indiana - 7 October, 1992 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American philosopher, essayist and academic. Bloom championed the idea of 'Great Books' education, as did his mentor Leo Strauss, and became famous for criticism of contemporary American higher education in his bestselling 1987 book, "The Closing of the American Mind". In 2000, years after Bloom's passing, Saul Bellow, … - Perry Ellis
Perry Ellis (March 3, 1940 - May 30, 1986) was an American fashion designer who founded a sportswear house in the mid-1970s. - Michael Jeter
Michael Jeter (August 26, 1952 - March 30, 2003) was an American actor. Jeter was born in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, son of William (March 4,1922 - June 19,2007) and Virginia Jeter (July 16,1928). He was a student at Memphis State University when his interests changed from medicine to acting. He pursued his initial stage career in Baltimore, Maryland, as he had heard it was hard to get work in New York without an equity card. - Essex Hemphill
Essex Hemphill was an American poet and activist - Ofra Haza
Ofra Haza November 19 1957 - February 23 2000) was a popular Israeli singer, actress and international recording artist. Of Yemenite Jewish ancestry, Haza was born the youngest of nine children in the poor Tel Aviv neighborhood of Hatikvah. She became an instant local and then national success story, the subject of great pride for many Israelis of Yemenite origin. Her voice has been described as mezzo-soprano, of near-flawless tonal quality, … - Paul Monette
Paul Monette (October 16, 1945, Lawrence, Massachusetts - February 10, 1995, Los Angeles, California) was an American author, poet, and activist best remembered for his essays about gay relationships and later, his battle with AIDS. Monette graduated from Phillips Academy in 1963 and later Yale University in 1967, conflicted about his sexual identity. He moved to Boston, where he taught writing and literature at Milton Academy for a number of years, … - Charles Ludlam
Charles Ludlam (April 12, 1943 in Floral Park, New York - May 28, 1987) was an American actor, director, and playwright. - Vito Russo
Vito Russo (1946 New York City - 7 November 1990 Los Angeles) was a gay activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book "The Celluloid Closet" (1981, revised edition 1987). Russo developed his material following screenings of camp films as fundraisers for the early gay rights organization Gay Activists Alliance. He traveled throughout the country from 1972 to 1982, … - Roy Cohn
Roy Marcus Cohn (February 20, 1927 - August 2, 1986) was an American lawyer who came to prominence during the investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy into alleged Communists in the U.S. government, especially during the Army-McCarthy Hearings. A highly controversial figure, he wielded tremendous political power at times. - Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Charles Chatwin (13 May 1940 - 18 January 1989) was a British novelist and travel writer. - Brad Davis
Robert Creel Davis (November 6, 1949 - September 8, 1991), better known as Brad Davis, was an American actor. He was perhaps best known for his role in the 1978 film, "Midnight Express" - Marlon Riggs
Marlon Riggs (3 February 1957 - 5 April 1994), an African-American poet, educator, filmmaker, and an outspoken gay rights activist. Riggs was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Hall of Fame in 2006. He produced many documentaries for public television, some of which were considered controversial by media watchdog groups, who protested the fact that Riggs' films were produced with money from the National Endowment for the Arts. - Peter Hujar
Peter Hujar (1934-1987) was a master of black and white photography. He was born in Trenton, New Jersey and later moved to Manhattan to work for magazines, advertising, and the fashion industry. Mainly a portrait photographer, his subjects also consisted of farm animals and nudes. His most famous photograph is possibly, "Candy Darling on Her Deathbed". One time partner of artist David Wojnarowicz, Hujar died of AIDS complications on November 26, 1987. - John Sex
John Sex was a cabaret singer and performance artist in New York from the late 1970s until his death from AIDS in 1989. Born on April 8th, 1956, his name at birth was John MacLaughlin, but singer Joey Arias gave him the last name of Sex because of an activity John enjoyed very, very much. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He performed at such legendary New York clubs as Club 57, the Pyramid Club, Danceteria, The Palladium, … - Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts (August 8 1951 - February 17 1994) was a highly acclaimed, pioneering gay American journalist and author. He worked as a reporter for both "The Advocate" and the "San Francisco Chronicle", as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations.
|
| |