Namesey

Russia, 1991

click on images for translations

🏳️‍🌈 Ruth Ellis (1899 - 2000) was the daughter of former slaves. She came out as a lesbian when she was 16-years-old to the complete acceptance of her family. In 1937, Ruth and her longtime partner moved to Detroit from their hometown of Springfield, Illinois for the promise of higher wages. There, she became the first woman in Michigan to run her own printing business. She printed fliers, posters, and stationary in the front room of her home, which also quickly became a hotspot for Black LGBTQ social life. Before long, Ruth was helping those who came around in any way she could, including by paying for college tuitions. After the Stonewall uprising, 70-year-old Ruth began giving speeches in support of gay and lesbian rights all across the country. She remained an activist for the rest of her long life and even spent her 100th birthday leading the San Francisco Dyke March. At the time of her death at 101, she was recognized as the oldest out lesbian in the US. She is the subject of the documentary "Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100" and is the namesake of the Ruth Ellis Center, a shelter for homeless and at-risk LGBTQ youth in Detroit.

Celebrate Ruth Ellis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ellis_(activist)

On October 23, 1915, twenty-thousand suffragists marched on Fifth Avenue in New York City demanding the right to vote.

In the photo there is Komako Kimura (1887-1980), a prominent Japanese suffragist, who arrived from Japan to help out her sisters in America and joined in the parade.

Kimura came from a traditional Japanese family, who had arranged a marriage for her when she was 14 years old to a man she had never seen. Like many women in Japan during that time, she was expected to obey the traditional customs. She was expected to be obedient, she was expected to follow the same traditions that generations of her forebears had followed before her.

But, on the way to the marriage ceremony, Kimura had other thoughts. She would slip out of the carriage and go into hiding. She sold her wedding finery and bought a ticket to another city. There, she would make a name for herself as a dancer.

She then again defied Japanese convention by eloping with a young doctor. She would become a writer, publishing a novel, then edited a woman's magazine in Tokyo, called Shin Shin Fujin, the first publication in Japan of its kind asserting women's rights. It would be so controversial that the magazine would be suppressed.

The conservative government of Japan then started watching her and would refuse her to hold suffrage meetings in the streets of Tokyo.

She would also become a well-known actress in her country who would take on daring roles. Again, the government would step in, telling her that she needed to stick with nice and mild roles befitting of women at that time.

This good boy so happy when he gets in his wheelchair to go for a walkie