Meet GLF Member Susan Silverman
GLF Activist and Lifelong Community Organizer
Susan Silverman was a lesbian feminist, social worker, and pioneering gay liberation activist whose work spanned more than five decades. Born in Brooklyn in 1949 to a union family, she was radicalized by the civil rights and anti-war movements and came out shortly after the 1969 Stonewall uprising. Living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the time, she helped organize the early Gay Liberation Front, and was active in New York Radical Women, Gay Youth, the Lavender Menace, Radicalesbians. She also helped organize fundraising dances and meetings at Alternate U, one of the important community spaces of the early movement.
“I came out in a flurry of political activity with incredible support. It was an exciting, electric time,” Silverman told the Philadelphia Gay News about coming out at the age of 19 and the beginnings of her activism. “My generation really was committed to making change.”
Silverman participated in some of the foundational actions of second-wave feminism and gay liberation, including the 1968 protest of the Miss America Pageant and the 1970 Lavender Menace action challenging the exclusion of lesbians from the women’s movement. Fellow activist Flavia Rando remembered her as “always smiling, always welcoming her sisters and brothers,” and as someone who contributed to the “incredible celebratory atmosphere” that existed even amid political struggle and personal risk.
After earning her MSW from Fordham University, Silverman worked for many years as a social worker specializing in child abuse and bereavement issues, while continuing her involvement in LGBTQ activism and historical preservation. In 2014, she moved from New York to Philadelphia, becoming one of the original residents of the John C. Anderson Apartments, the LGBTQ-friendly senior residence developed by fellow GLF activist Mark Segal. She remained active in community life there and participated in Stonewall anniversary commemorations, including the 50th anniversary in 2019.
Mark Segal said that Silverman “helped shape LGBT identity and helped in creating LGBT community,” adding, “We’ve lost a great spirit and light of our movement.” She died in Philadelphia in 2022 at the age of 73.
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