The Rainbow Honor Walk, which posthumously recognizes LGBTQ history-making pioneers, has announced its third class of inductees who will receive sidewalk tributes in San Francisco's LGBTQ Castro neighborhood.They include Bob Ross, the co-founder and publisher of the Bay Area Reporter; jazz great Billie Holiday; trans leader Marsha P.
Johnson; and marriage equality advocate Edie Windsor.The project, which started in 2014, now has 36 plaques installed throughout the Castro, according to a news release from the all-volunteer board, with another eight scheduled for placement this spring.
In 2021, the board unanimously selected San Francisco lesbian trailblazer Phyllis Lyon, who died in 2020.Lyon and her partner, the late Del Martin, were the first same-sex couple to wed in San Francisco — twice, in 2004, which was voided, then in 2008 shortly before Martin died.
The women co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis and published the Ladder, the first monthly lesbian publication focused on politics, fiction, poetry and connecting lesbians across the country. (Martin was already inducted in the honor walk in the first class.)The board recently finalized the other 23 people who will make up the new class of honorees.