Happy Monday y’all.

Last month, we told you about two historic Tony nominations: Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee were the first non-binary actors nominated for theatre’s highest honor. Well, last night they won! Congrats to both of them!

Today, we’re hopping in the Wayback Machine for a better understanding of the history of Pride in the United States.

In 1977, Lea Hopkins took a risk. The 33-year-old lesbian had already made her mark as Kansas City’s first Black Playboy Bunny. In the early 70s, she didn’t feel safe coming out in the Midwest and briefly lived in New York where she felt like she could really be herself. But she moved back to KC with a commitment to activism. She found—and built—community and helped organize the city’s first Pride parade. The event started small, just a few dozen people, but the annual event continued through to today and is now one of the longest running Pride events in the Midwest. In 2022, Hopkins was named the Grand Marshal of the parade and honored as her full self by the city she calls home.

You can learn more about Lea Hopkins and the history of Kansas City Pride here.

Forty years ago, Democrat Gerry Studds helped pave the way for this historic representation by becoming the first member of Congress to come out as gay while in office. He went on to win re-election in his Massachusetts district for more than a decade after despite a sexual scandal forcing him out of the closet. On July 14, 1983, he gave a speech on the House floor making his sexual orientation clear: “All Members of Congress must cope with the challenge of initiating and maintaining a career in public office without destroying entirely the ability to lead a meaningful and emotionally fulfilling private life. It is not a simple task for any of us to meet adequately the obligations of either public or private life, let alone both. But these challenges are made substantially more complex when one is, as am I, both an elected public official and gay.”

As Pride Month begins this June, the LGBTQ community can count among its achievements that the U.S. Congress has more openly gay members than ever before. Thirteen members of the 118th Congress identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, including Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat who became the first openly gay U.S. Senator in 2013, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent who is the first openly bisexual individual to serve in a chamber of Congress.

Read more about Congressman Gerry Studds and his career in this TIME Magazine profile.

Reckon Firsts is a group project of the Reckon team, but the newsletter is written and compiled by Aria Velasquez, Reckon’s Newsletter Strategist and chief writer behind the weekly Reckon Report. Our goal with this newsletter is to introduce you to new people who are powering change in our communities.

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