A New Jersey police lieutenant, Hester died in 2006 at age 49 after a prolonged battle with lung cancer. At the same time, she had been battling another force: the Ocean County freeholders, who held Hester’s pension in their hands, and were refusing to allow her domestic partner, Stacie Andree, to receive those benefits when Hester inevitably succumbed to her cancer.
Tahltan elder Lillian Moyer was 67 when she was arrested in 2006 in northern British Columbia and a First Nations blockade that had been preventing a mining company from exploring the Todagin Plateau for copper and gold.
1800s Jamaican nurse and businesswoman
American dance educator, choreographer, dramaturg, and scholar, and an activist working to deconstruct the hierarchies of dance.
Edie Windsor was in her 80s when she sued the U.S. government. Her wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. The following year, Windsor received a $363,000 tax bill—estate taxes that, had the government recognized their marriage, would have been nonexistent.
Mexican educator, writer and feminist Rita Cetina y Gutierrez advocated for women’s education in Mérida, Yucatán.
German primatologist
American civil rights activist
In 2012, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse filed a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s ban that prevented same-sex couples like DeBoer and Rowse from jointly adopting their children.
1800s Irish-American philanthropist