This year, in addition to being able to see the many beautiful faces of queer and trans people of color listed in our annual Pride in Color list, we wanted to go further and start building our Pride in Color Hall of Fame. The stories and photos in the Hall of Fame represent just a few of the many people across Wisconsin’s history whose legacies, life work, existence, and relationships have played pivotal roles in shaping Wisconsin’s LGBTQ+ community and cultural landscape. 

The list includes artists, politicians, activists, leaders, caregivers, and community members. If not for their love and bravery in the face of oppression, hatred, bigotry, and fear, we wouldn’t be here with the freedom to write, publish, and connect with all of you the way we are today. May their stories serve as inspiration for everyone fighting for equality and acceptance now and in the future.

Ralph Kerwineo, April 1876 – 1932

Ralph Kerwineo is a notable figure in the nation’s LGBGTQ+ history. His name became well known after a 1914 incident in which his then-wife “outed” him to local authorities, reporting that while he lived as an upstanding and well-dressed gentleman, he was, in fact, female.

Kerwineo, born of mixed ancestry (Black, white, and Native American), spent his early years in Indiana before moving to Chicago, and then settling with his partner, Mamie White, in Milwaukee, where they presented to the world as husband and wife, though they were only informally married.

In time, White learned about an affair between her husband and Dorothy Kleinowsk, which culminated in Kerwineo’s and Kleinowski’s legal marriage. This prompted White to ultimately call the authorities on Kerwineo. The police arrested him for disorderly conduct, and the story of the “Girl-Man of Milwaukee” made international headlines. However, rather than vilifying Kerwineo, the public began to sympathize with him. Kerwineo’s story gained him influence and cemented his place in history as an early trans pioneer and unlikely LGBTQ+ hero.

His legacy was remembered in a 2022 play entitled Ralph Kerwineo and the Refining Influence of Skirts, written by Chris Holoyda and produced by Emerald Condor Productions in West Allis.

George Poage, November 6, 1880 – April 11, 1962

George Poage lived a life defined by “firsts,” which he accomplished despite unspeakable hardships. Born to former slaves in Missouri on November 6, 1880, Poage grew up in La Crosse, where he became the first African American to graduate from La Crosse High School, finishing second in his class.

His athletic career began when he was noticed by talent scouts, who convinced him to join the track team at UW-Madison, the first African American to do so. He was also the first African American to join the Milwaukee Athletic Club, win a Big Ten track championship, join the UW-Madison Philomathia Society, and to receive an Olympic medal, which he did in 1904 taking third place in the 400-meter hurdles, and third place in the 200-meter hurdles.

Following his victories, he pursued a career in education, accepting a principal position at a segregated high school in St. Louis, and then teaching at Charles Sumner, an all-Black high school. However, that appointment didn’t last long when Poage was the subject of rumors claiming that he was engaging secretly with two other unmarried male teachers in ragtime cafes.

Poage largely disappeared after this, and not much is known about the last decades of his life. He passed away on April 11, 1962, in relative anonymity, but his legacy was acknowledged in 2016 when a local park in La Crosse was rededicated in his name.

Ted Pierce, March 18, 1907 – January 2, 1999

A member of a prominent middle-class African American family in Madison, Theodore “Ted” Pierce is most known for his curation of the “Theodore Pierce Papers.” Having served as a messenger to several Wisconsin governors (as did his uncle before him), and having developed a strong interest in art and dance, Pierce was well-situated to become a prominent member of Madison’s gay community.

The Theodore Papers consist mainly of correspondences, photos, and clippings collected by Pierce between 1925 and 1998, which document his family’s history and relationships within the gay community, both locally and nationally. Pierce’s own personal correspondences detail the arts communities in New York City in the early 1940s, and include notable names like David Zellmer, Merce Cunningham, and Eric Hawkins. His collection includes correspondences with Gordon Boardman, Donald Pryse Jones, and Harold Lindemann. The photos chronicle the daily lives of Madison’s Black and gay communities from the 1920s to the 1960s, and include friends and well-known celebrities whom Pierce knew, or who came through town and met Pierce through varied connections. They include names such as Walter S. Goodland, Canada Lee, Ruth Page, Richard Chamberlain, Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, and Ted Shawn.

Pierce was hired by the Acquisitions Department of Memorial Library at UW-Madison in 1956, where he worked until his retirement in 1972.

Lorraine Hansberry, May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965

Known widely as an acclaimed playwright during the 1950s, Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago and attended UW-Madison, where she became politically involved with Communist Party USA. Her activism led her to join the staff of the Black newspaper Freedom, where she worked with W.E.B. DuBois.

Her father, Carl Hansberry, was a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP, which gave Lorraine the opportunity to grow up around prominent members of the Black community, including Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and Jesse Owens.

These influences, along with her admiration for many artists of the Harlem Renaissance, led Hansberry to pursue a career as a writer in New York City, where she penned A Raisin in the Sun, which tells the story of a Black family living in Chicago during segregation. She was the first African-American female author to have work presented on Broadway, and at 29, became the first African-American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

Many of Hansberry’s works explored African Americans’ struggle for equality, her lesbian identity, and the hardships faced by gay people. Her impact and reach are especially significant in light of the fact that she passed away at the age of 34 from pancreatic cancer.

Joseph L. “Josie” Carter, January 16, 1938 – May 29, 2014

Most people remember the Stonewall Riots in New York City as a turning point that led to greater LGBTQ+ awareness. However, leading up to that event, gay people across the country were resisting oppression in lesser-known incidents, including Joseph L. “Josie” Carter, who played a pivotal role in the Black Nite Brawl of 1961, Wisconsin’s first LGBTQ+ uprising.

Josie Carter was an early drag performer in Milwaukee. Josie began going out in drag as a teen, citing in an interview with the Milwaukee Transgender Oral History Project that, “We went out and just loved fooling people.”

In 1961, a group of sailors were dared to walk into the Black Nite, a gay bar in Milwaukee. They refused to show ID, and got into an altercation with the bouncer. Carter, who was preparing to perform, rushed out to defend her boyfriend and ended up giving one of the sailors a concussion and scaring off the rest.

Later that night, the sailors returned to find a bar full of 75 queens, lesbians, and gay men ready to defend their place, a fight later coined “The Black Nite Brawl.” Josie Carter will always be remembered as one of the state’s early gay rights activists.

Donna Burkett, March 22, 1946 – present

Born in Milwaukee, Donna Burkett made a huge splash in the world when she and her partner at the time went to the office of the Milwaukee County Clerk to obtain a marriage license on October 1, 1971.

After spending time in the U.S. Army, Burkett became an activist in Milwaukee, where she marched with Father James Groppi to advocate for an open housing ordinance, and attended Gay People’s Union meetings. After meeting her then-partner, Manonia Evans, the two decided they wanted to be married. As Burkett put it, “I didn’t think a thing of it. I just thought that was what you do when you love someone.”

When the County Clerk refused them a license, the two filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, arguing that the refusal denied them equal protection and due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. A year later, she went on to use the same argument in a federal lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed, but her argument was used 40 years later when Wisconsin overturned its ban on same-sex marriage in 2014.

Burkett and Evans were later married in front of 250 of their friends in a Christmas Day ceremony in 1971. And though the relationship did not last, Burkett became known as a pioneer in the movement for marriage equality, which ultimately led to same-sex marriage becoming legal in the United States 44 years later with the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision.

Ricardo González, 1946 – present

Originally born in Cuba in 1946, Ricardo González is honored here for founding and owning The Cardinal Bar in Madison, for his years of advocacy work, and his civil service as the first openly gay Latino elected to public office in the United States. However, as González recounted in a feature for Our Lives in 2015, the story of his life so far is a fascinating tapestry of location, nationality, politics, and identity.

After being sent away from his conservative neighborhood in Cuba following the Revolution, González spent time living in Miami, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin, all the while maintaining the guise of the straight “Latino Lover.” 

After landing in Madison, he was finally able to explore his sexuality and began frequenting gay bars. During this time, he realized a longstanding dream to open his own nightclub overlooking the lake. After its opening in 1975, The Cardinal Bar became the city’s foremost gay and dance bar, and would go on to earn the titles of Madison’s longest-operating LGBTQ+ destination and longest-running Latino-owned business. 

In addition to his work as a business owner, González was an affirmative action officer with the State of Wisconsin, and served on the board of The United, as well as a counselor at the Gay Center in Madison. In 1989, he was elected to the Madison Common City Council, and played a pivotal role creating the Monona Terrace Convention Center. His legacy is cemented in a statue alongside Tammy Baldwin in a permanent installation on display in front of Stonewall National Monument.

Rita Adair, 1955 – present

Community mom, social worker, and business owner, Rita Adair, is honored here for her vast contributions to the lives of those around her, and for overcoming staggering personal hardships to go on to create equitable change for communities of color.

The child of one of Madison’s first interracial marriages, Adair grew up in a home steeped in the philosophies of civil liberties, justice, and equality. She became involved with activism during the Vietnam War, an experience that led her to become a social worker. She spent 15 years in the Dane County District Attorney’s Office, 14 with Dane County Human Services, and worked for a number of other social services and relief efforts around the city and country. She became the first African American to get an alcohol license in the Downtown Madison Entertainment District when she opened Adair’s Lounge (now Gamma Ray Bar), an upscale blues and jazz club in Madison, next door to LGBTQ+ Shamrock Bar.

Adair was the mother of three, and a foster mother to 23 adolescent foster girls. As she told Our Lives magazine in an interview in 2020, “It was an unending experience of offering my most and receiving my best. So much of what I have learned in life is because of them.” In 2009, she tragically lost her son and two granddaughters, but ever the fighting spirit, Adair went on to start volunteering, and then founded Adair Entertainment, a company that hosted monthly parties for lesbians of color in Chicago. She has since returned to Madison, and is now working hard on her book, helping host Dane Dances, offering public speaking engagements, and enjoying being involved with her family.

Lucía Nuñez, 1960 – 2024

Few people in the world leave a legacy as varied and altruistic as Lucía Nuñez, a Cuban American activist, educator, and community maker who lived in Madison from 1999 until her death in 2024.

Born in Caimanera, Cuba, Nuñez’s family left the country as refugees after the revolution. Having spent time in Spain, the U.S., and the Caribbean, Lucía ended up in Connecticut for college, and then served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras in 1985, where she met her partner, Heidi.

Nuñez believed that education was the key to building strong communities, a fact that is reflected in her long career in education and civil service. In 1999, she became the executive director of Centro Hispano of Dane County, where she helped facilitate educational and social programs for the county’s growing Latine population. In 2003, Governor Doyle appointed her as the Deputy Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and the Equal Rights Division Administrator for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. In 2006 she became the first director of the Department of Civil Rights for the city of Madison. She served in a number of other positions as well, eventually becoming the vice president of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement of Madison College.  

But more than any of that, Nuñez is remembered for her generous, intellectual spirit, her humility, and her ability to make positive change for the people in need around her.

Felicia Melton-Smyth, February 28, 1967 – May 26, 2008

Felicia Melton-Smyth was born in Dodgeville. Her legacy, while interwoven with her successful career and lifelong unapologetic embracing of her femininity despite being assigned male at birth, is most notable for her activism around AIDS, fundraising for the AIDS Network, and personal caretaking of people in her life dealing with AIDS.  

Melton-Smyth was just starting the process of coming out when the AIDS epidemic broke out. That time in her life was filled with fear, loss, and personal devastation when her two best friends, Gary Melton and Lyon Smith, were both diagnosed with the disease. From then, Felicia took on the role of caretaker for both of them until their deaths. Afterwards, she became a caretaker for three others who all succumbed to the illness in turn, at which point Melton-Smyth couldn’t take it anymore.

The immense pain of those losses led Felicia to the world of activism. She began spending her holidays with AIDS patients, biked the 300-mile ACT ride—which was Wisconsin’s HIV/AIDS awareness cycling event—and doing charity work and fundraising for the AIDS Network.

Eventually, Felicia took the names of her two friends and became Melton-Smyth, noting, “Every time you hear my name, every time I write on a check, I think of them.”

Angelica Ross, November 28, 1980 – present

Angelica Ross was born in Kenosha and raised in Racine. She is celebrated for having a multifaceted and successful career as an actress, businesswoman, computer programmer, founder of TransTech Social Enterprises—a company that helps trans people looking to break into the tech industry, and as a leader in the fight for human rights.

After spending six months in the U.S. Navy, Ross asked to be discharged under the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on the grounds that she had been harassed by a number of men. From there, she moved home and began her gender transition. Her life led her to Hollywood, where she began taking acting classes, and eventually made her debut in the web series Her Story in 2016, which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama, and has been featured on the FX drama Pose, and as Donna Chambers in American Horror Story: 1984. She also played the role of Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway in 2022, among many other credits.

Eventually, Ross moved to Chicago and began working at the Trans Life Center, and has since been an avid advocate for transgender rights and equality. Her commitment to uplifting Black, queer, and trans communities has recently led her to politics, where she hopes to use her activism as a basis for creating policy change.

Jaida Essence Hall, December 9, 1988 – present

Most known as the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12, Jaida Essence Hall was born Jared Johnson in Milwaukee. She has toured the world as the host of the “Werq the World” Tour, currently hosts We’re Here, and stars in RuPaul’s Drag Race LIVE.

Jaida didn’t originally set out to pursue drag as a career, but after entering a one-time contest that allowed her to try drag and possibly win $500, she discovered a new passion that would eventually become her career and ticket to fame.

Before shows like Drag Race helped make drag more accessible and mainstream, being a drag queen of color was often a struggle for Hall. But as she remembers it, “I think a lot of people of color are so used to being oppressed that we are used to always fighting for what we want…I wish it was not always that hard, but baby, it is about breaking down barriers and wanting so much for so many.”

Being a naturally shy and quiet person, Hall is proud of her role as a somebody that queer people of color can look to for inspiration. She prides herself on being authentically who she is, and not trying to be a different person than who she was growing up in Milwaukee, a city she loves and still lives in. Now, she uses her platform to advocate for positive change in her community.

Danez Smith, 1989 – present

Danez Smith is a contemporary poet born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Smith was a First Wave Scholar at UW-Madison, finishing with a BA in 2012.

As a writer, Smith is most known for their fantastical and imaginative style of writing that touches on topics that are topical, intersectional, and often difficult to express such as racism, historical violence, imagination, death, and their identity as a queer, Black person in America. As Smith noted in an interview with LitHub in 2017, “I am best able to witness and transcribe the world if I’m allowed to see what could be, to peer over the surreal edge at another version of us.”

The nonbinary and HIV-positive poet has been honored with many literary awards, including a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, an NEA Fellowship for Creative Writing, a Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry in 2017. They have received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Cave Canem, and Voices of our Nation (VONA), and have been honored individually and as part of a championship team in world poetry slam competitions. They are the author of [insert] Boy (2014), Don’t Call Us Dead (2017), Homie/My Nig (2020), and Bluff (2024).

Nominate a Hall of Famer!

We will be expanding our Pride in Color Hall of Fame every year! If there is someone you think should be on our list, please send their name and a little bit about them to [email protected].  We are specifically looking for LGBTQ+ people of color whose lives and legacies have had significant impacts on Wisconsin’s queer community, with preference for historical figures (though contemporary folks are welcome, too!).