Zazu Nova

Zazu Nova was a trans activist and sex worker who participated in the Stonewall Uprising, a dramatic, weeklong conflict between the LGBT community and police that erupted at the end of June 1969 in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The conflict was a flashpoint for the emerging LGBT movement, marking the point when LGBT civil rights groups transformed from small cadres of activists around the country into a mass political movement. Many eyewitnesses reported that Nova was on the front lines of the conflict at Stonewall. Afterward, Nova was active in many of the radical political groups that emerged, including the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Youth. Nova exemplified the transgender and gender nonconforming young people, many of them people of color, who were pivotal in radical LGBT street activism.