April 6th

04-06-1931 – 12-22-2019   Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) – Born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was an American spiritual teacher, psychologist, and author. His best known book, Be Here Now, helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga. Over four decades he co-authored twelve more books on spirituality. Dass was personally and professionally associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 196os. Dass was born to a Jewish family, but considered himself an atheist during his early life. He described himself as, “inured to religion. I didn’t have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics.” In the 1990s, Ram Dass discussed his bisexuality. He stated, “I’ve started to talk more about being bisexual, being involved with men as well as women.”

Ram Dass quote: Treat everyone you meet as if they are God in drag.

04-06-1989 LE1F (Khalif Diouf) – Born in Manhattan, New York City, New York. He is an American musician/rapper and producer. He is well known for his unorthodox production styles and for being an out gay rapper.  Diouf studied ballet and modern dance, attended the Concord Academy, and earned his degree in dance from Wesleyan University before returning to the city to become a rapper. He was on Out’s 3rd Annual 100 Most Eligible Bachelors (2013). His debut studio album Riot Boi was released in November 2015.

04-06-1882 – 08-11-1972 Rose Schneiderman – Born in Sawin, Congress Poland (Part of the Russian Empire) to a religious Jewish family. In 1890, her family migrated to New York City’s Lower East Side. In 1898, to earn money, she worked as a lining stitcher in a cap factory. 1902, she and the rest of her family moved briefly to Montreal, Canada, where she developed an interest in politics and trade unions. In 1903, she returned to New York. She and another worker organized the women in her factory and achieved the first women’s local of the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers Union. She quickly became a prominent member of the New York Women’s Trade Union League and was a participant in the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York City, also known as the Uprising of 20,000, led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in 1909. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, in which 146 (123 women and 23 men) died, dramatized the conditions that Schneiderman, the WTUL, and the union movement were fighting. Schneiderman was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, she was involved in efforts to rescue European Jews. Albert Einstein wrote her: “It must be a source of deep gratification to you to be making so important a contribution to rescuing our persecuted fellow Jews from their calamitous peril and leading them toward a better future.” She was also a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and helped pass the New York state referendum in 1917 that gave women the right to vote. Schneiderman had a long-term relationship with Maud Farrell Swartz (b.1879), another working class women active in the WTUL, until Swartz’ death in 1937. In 1949, Schneiderman retired from public life and wrote her memoirs, All for One (1967). She died in New York City at the age of ninety. Her obituary in The New York Times stated that she had done “more to upgrade the dignity and living standards of working women than any other American.”

04-06-1954   Monika Treut – Born in Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She is a German lesbian filmmaker. Famous for her queer films, Treut also makes documentaries. Her independent films have won numerous awards, including the 2017 Teddy Award for lifetime achievement at the Berlin Film Festival and the 2017 Honorary Award for lifetime achievement at the Tel Aviv LBGT Film Festival. Treut’s filmmaking includes her acting, directing, producing, writing, filming, and editing. She has made over 20 films, both in German and in English. Since 1990, Treut has been teaching and lecturing at colleges across the United States, including Vassar, Dartmouth, University of Chicago, UC San Diego, and Cornell University.

04-06-1983   Rick Cosnett – Born in Chegutu, Zimbabwe. He is a Zimbabwean-Australian actor. Known for his roles in The Vampire Diaries, Quantico, and The Flash. He is a cousin of Hugh Grant. On February 13, 2020, Cosnett came out as gay on his Instagram account.

04-06-1941 Ed Schrock – Born in Middletown, Ohio. He is a retired naval officer (1964-1988) and a Republican politician from the state of Virginia. He was outed by Michael Rogers after he was caught on tape soliciting sex from a male prostitute. Politically he had opposed various gay-rights issues, including same-sex marriage and gays serving in the military. He was briefly covered in the 2009 documentary Outrage, which profiles closeted gay public officials who have endorsed anti-gay legislation.