Pride Month: LGBTQIA+ icons, trailblazers you need to know

June is Pride Month and we're here with a few LGBTQIA+ community icons that have paved the way for this pride movement.

Let's take a look:

Marsha P Johnson, also known as Malcolm Michaels Jr., was a self-described drag queen and American gay liberation activist.

She immediately established herself as a famous figure in the LGBTQ community, acting as a "drag mother" to homeless and underprivileged LGBTQ youngsters while also travelling the world as a popular drag queen.

Marsha used to say that the "P" stood for "Pay it no mind," a slogan many from the community employ today when people make harsh comments about their appearance or lifestyle choices.

Jóhanna Sigurardóttir, Iceland's first female Prime Minister, served from 2009 to 2013, and was the world's first openly gay head of a country's government.

James Baldwin was instrumental in the LGBTQ movement. A minority within a minority, one of the most influential writers in history, Baldwin throughout his career wrote many novels that ha characters who were not only gay but also African Ameican.

A trailblazer in the sports fraternity, Billie a tennis player was outed as lesbian in 1981. She then went on to become the first openly homosexual athlete.

From 1966 through 1975, she won 39 Grand Slam titles. In the famed "Battle of the Sexes," she also defeated Bobby Riggs. When King was outed as a lesbian her publicists advised her to dispute the claim. Instead, she came out as a lesbian and made history as the first openly homosexual athlete.

Gay-rights activist Edith Windsor, historic case led the Supreme Court to award same-sex married couples federal recognition and access to a slew of federal benefits previously only available to married heterosexual couples.

Ms. Windsor and Thea Spyer, a psychologist, married lawfully in Canada in 2007 after 40 years of living together. Ms. Windsor received Dr. Spyer's estate when she died in 2009. However, the IRS denied her the unlimited spousal exemption from federal estate taxes that married heterosexuals are entitled to, and she was forced to pay $363,053 in taxes.

She sued, saying that the law unconstitutionally singled out same-sex marriage partners for "differential treatment" by recognising only marriages between men and women. Her case was successful, clearing the path for same-sex marriage to become legal.

Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBTQ+ campaigner who made history by becoming the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy Award in any acting category.

Cox became the first openly transgender woman to receive a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word in 2015.

Laverne Cox also achieved another significant goal: she became a Barbie doll. Included in the Laverne Tribute Collection, she inspired the first transgender Barbie doll.

Sally Ride was a NASA astronaut and physicist who became the first American woman in space in 1983 after joining the agency in 1978. After USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1964), she was the third woman in space overall (1982). Ride, who was 32 at the time, is also the youngest American astronaut to have travelled to space.

Sally is also the first gay person to have travelled to space.

Although she kept her private life secret, her obituary stated that her 27-year companion was Tam O'Shaughnessy, a professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University.