The History Project, Boston’s LGBTQ community archives, will hold its annual HistoryMaker Awards event, featuring an in-person reception with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, November 4, at the St. Botolph Club in Boston. (A virtual option is available, too). This festive event is a chance to gather together and recognize community members and organizations who make history every day.
This year, John Ward, founder of GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders) will receive the 2021 HistoryMaker Award, and Tre’Andre Valentine, executive director or Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, will be honored with the Lavender Rhino Award.
John Ward became Boston’s first openly gay male attorney in 1977. In 1978, he founded GLAD – Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (now GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders) after undercover police targeted, entrapped, and arrested gay patrons of the Boston Public Library. In another first, in 1995, Ward was the first openly gay male lawyer to argue in front of the United States Supreme Court in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston. Ward has fought for LGBTQ rights throughout his career and GLAD brought marriage equality to Massachusetts in 2004 and the United States in 2015.
Tre’Andre Valentine is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition and formerly managed community engagement with The Network/La Red. Valentine’s impact on Boston’s queer and trans community is unsurpassed, from his efforts to organize trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people to empower and advocate for themselves through building trans leadership, to his advocacy for equity and equal access at all levels and all intersections of identity, especially for trans and queer people of color.
Named after one of the early symbols of the Gay Liberation movement, the Lavender Rhino Award is presented to an emerging activist or organization whose impact on the local LGBTQ community deserves recognition.
The HistoryMaker Award has been presented since 2009 to those whose lifetime achievements have had a significant and positive effect on Boston and Massachusetts’ LGBTQ communities.
For more on the 2021 HistoryMaker Awards, visit the event webpage on The History Project’s website.
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