The AHS Index is a new way to look at data that illuminates a snapshot of our world today. It is intended to highlight health inequities and spark conversation, debate, outrage, and wonder.
Year that Charley Parkhurst, a fearless stagecoach driver who shepherded gold between Oakland and San Jose on his six-horse stagecoach during the gold rush, died and was outed as transgender: 1879
Instances of “homosexual conduct” – including women kissing women, men “going steady,” and women dressed in men’s clothing – observed by a police officer in the late 1950s at Mary’s First and Last Chance Bar, an Oakland gay bar that was frequently targeted by police and later won a landmark anti-discrimination court victory: 7
Price of a cup of coffee in 1966 at Compton Cafeteria, the all-night gathering place for drag queens and transgender women in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, which became the site of one of the first-recorded protests for LGBTQIA+ rights after a transgender woman threw a cup of coffee at a police officer who was harassing her: $0.60
Length of time that Pat Parker, a Black lesbian feminist poet and activist with ties to the Black Panthers, worked to expand services at the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center, which provided culturally sensitive abortions and other affordable health care services before closing in 2009: 10 years
Length of time that gay rights activist Tom Brougham has lived with his partner, with whom he lobbied the Berkeley City Council to offer employees domestic partner benefits including health care, making Berkeley the first city in the United States to offer those benefits: 49 years
Number of peaceful AIDS demonstrators arrested during the 1989 Castro Sweep, which resulted in the demotion, resignation, or reassignment of many of the police officers involved: 53
Portion of the five volumes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that categorized homosexuality as a diagnosis, condition, or disorder: 3
Number of years that Lou Sullivan, a transgender activist and author who wrote vivid depictions of his experience as a gay trans man in San Francisco, begged his doctors for his first gender-affirming surgery: 10 years
Number of blocks encompassed by the Transgender District, founded in 2017 by three Black transgender women in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, making it the first transgender district in the world: 6