January 8th

01-09-1941 Joan Baez – Born in Staten Island, New York City, New York. She is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician, and prominent human rights, LGBT, and peace activist. She declared herself to be bisexual to a reporter in the 1970s. She had one affair with a woman in 1962, and that had been her only “conscience” desire for such a relationship, still she regarded herself as bisexual, given that the relationship played such an important part in her life (as stated in her 1987 memoir, And a Voice to Sing With). She has been a prominent advocate in the struggle for LGBT rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative (anti-gay measure on the California ballot). Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassination of San Francisco City supervisor, Harvey Milk. In the 1990’s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization. Her song Alter Boy and the Thief from the album Blowin’ Away (1977) was written as a dedication to her gay fan base.

01-09-1908 – 04-14-1986 Simone de Beauvoir – Born in Paris, France. She was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. De Beauvoir had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. She is known for her 1949 treatise, The Second Sex, a detailed analysis on women’s oppression. It served as a foundation for contemporary feminism. Her novels include She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. She is also known for her open relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir is known to have had a number of female lovers, including some of her students. In 1943, de Beauvoir was suspended from her teaching job after she was accused of seducing her 17-year old student Natalie Sorokin. Sorokin’s parents filed formal charges against de Beauvoir for debauching a minor. It resulted in her teaching license to be permanently revoked. In the early 1960s, Beauvoir began a relationship with Sylvie le Bon which lasted to the end of Beauvoir’s life.

01-09-1859 – 03-09-1947 Carrie Chapman Catt – Born in Ripon, Wisconsin. She was an American women’s suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave American women the right to vote in 1920. Catt was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. For over twenty years she lived with fellow suffragist, Mary Garrett Hay. On March 9, 1947, Catt died of a heart attack in her home in New Rochelle, New York. She was buried alongside her longtime partner, Hay, at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

01-09-1959 Linda Villarosa – Place of birth unknown. She is an American writer, editor, and author. In the early 1990s, while a senior editor at Essence, she wrote Coming Out. The article was written by she and her mother, from their own perspectives, what it felt like to be a lesbian and what it felt like to have a lesbian daughter. She is also the co-author of Body & Soul: The Black Woman’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-being. Her novel, Passing for Black (2008) was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. She has trained journalists from around the world to better understand and  cover the international HIV/AIDS epidemic. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her partner and their two children.