Remembering Victoria Cruz, Stonewall veteran and beloved trans activisthttps://www.washingtonblade.com/2026/07/21/remembering-victoria-cruz-stonewall-veteran-trans-activist/ 🔗By Margaret Heatherman (21 July 2026)
Victoria Cruz, a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising and unwavering advocate for survivors of violence, died on June 25 from liver cancer. Fierce, generous, and unyielding, Cruz emerged from Stonewall as a witness to history who would spend more than five decades helping to shape it. She became a fixture of New York LGBTQ+ activism and in time, one of the community's most beloved elders and mentors.
One of 11 children, Cruz arrived with her family in Red Hook, Brooklyn from Guánica, Puerto Rico as a young child. She occasionally quipped that she was "never in the closet" but "in the armoire," and knew from an early age that she was a girl at a time when there was little language to describe her experience. She studied cosmetology and hairdressing at Metropolitan Vocational High School, before attending Brooklyn College where she earned a theater degree in 1982. She supported herself through beauty work, as a stripper, sex worker, and entertainer in the New York City nightlife scene, giving her first drag performance at the Grapevine in 1973 to a Billie Holiday song.
