March 19th

03-19-1894 – 05-23-1975 Jackie “Moms” Mabley – Born in Brevard, North Carolina. She was an American standup comedian. A veteran of the Chitlin’ circuit of African-American vaudeville, she later appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. She came out as lesbian at the age of 27. During the 1920s and 1930s she appeared in androgynous clothing (as she did in the film version The Emperor Jones with Paul Robeson) and recorded several of her early “lesbian stand-up” routines. Mabley was one of the top women doing stand-up in her heyday, eventually recording more than 20 albums. In a documentary film, Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley, she was said to be known to those who worked with her as “Mr. Moms.” The documentary film first aired on HBO on November 18, 2013. It’s well worth seeing.

03-19-1953 – 10-12-1985 Ricky Wilson – Born in Athens, Georgia. He was an American musician and singer-songwriter best known as the original guitarist and founding member of the rock bank the B-52’s. At the age of 32, Wilson died from AIDS following the recording of the band’s fourth studio album, Bounding off the Satellites.

03-19-1962 Gary Cloutier – Place of birth unknown. He grew up in Rhode Island. Cloutier is a gay civil rights lawyer. He was the first openly gay person to run for the mayor of Vallejo, California. He is the former law partner of pioneering gay civil rights lawyer Paul Wotman. Wotman and Cloutier were among the first lawyers in California to make new law under the American with Disabilities Act for same-sex and opposite-sex couples who had been discriminated against in seeking life insurance due to the HIV status of one partner. The United States Supreme Court ruled that people with asymptomatic HIV are protected by the disability law. In a San Francisco Superior Court case Gohstand v. Leibert, he obtained a large and highly publicized settlement on behalf of a straight man who was beaten outside a gay bar by two students from UC Berkeley who believed the victim was gay.

03-19-1985 Caroline Seger – Born in Heisingborg, Sweden. She is a Swedish soccer player. In 2009 she was appointed captain of the Swedish team. Seger played at the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. She is an out lesbian, telling QX magazine in December 2013, that she was proud of her girlfriend. In previous years Seger had concealed her orientation, but decided to come out to be a role model for others. She was one of 49 out LGBT athletes to participate in thee 2016 Summer Olympic Games at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.