1910: Emma Goldman begins speaking publicly
A contemporary of Magnus Hirschfeld’s, Emma Goldman was an American feminist and anarchist who served as an early ally to gay rights activism. The Russian-born Jew, who emigrated to America as a teenager, was heterosexual but spent much of her life championing various minority causes. In a letter to Hirschfeld, she said: “It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.”