Transgender issues today are rooted in a decades-long struggle for inclusion.

The transgender community’s fight for rights took shape in the 1960s, and included a little-known uprising at Gene Compton’s all-night cafeteria in San Francisco, then continued in New York City, thanks to the determined activism of Sylvia Rivera and others, in the wake of the riot at the Stonewall Inn.

Transgender people continue their struggle for rights today. Sasha Alexander Perez, 29, and Olympia Perez Alexander, 24, who are married and living in Bedford–Stuyvesant Brooklyn, run Black Trans Media, an organization dedicated to uniting the black trans community against oppression in their everyday lives.