Born on July 2, 1951, in the Bronx, New York, Rivera had a troubled childhood. Of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent, Rivera was abandoned by her father shortly after birth and orphaned as a toddler when her mother committed suicide.
Raised by her grandmother, Rivera was rejected and beaten for her effeminate behavior. By age 11, she ran away from home and became a child prostitute, working in the Times Square area. While living on the streets, Rivera met a group of drag queens who welcomed her into their fold, and it was with their support she became "Sylvia," and identified as a drag queen. Later in life, she would consider herself transgender, although she disliked labels.
With the surge of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Rights Movement and the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, Rivera's activism began to take shape. In 1969, at age 17, she took part in the famous Stonewall Riots in protest to a police raid of the gay bar the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan. The event was one of the major catalysts of the gay liberation movement, and to further push the agenda forward Rivera co-founded the group the Gay Liberation Front.
Along with the establishment of the Gay Liberation Front, Rivera teamed up with friend Marsha P. Johnson to co-found STAR in 1970 (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group that helped support and empower gay, trans, and gender-fluid youth.
Rivera had a diverse and complex background: She was poor, trans, a drag queen, a person of color, a former sex worker, and someone who also experienced drug addiction, incarceration and homelessness. For all of these reasons, Rivera fought for not only gay and trans rights but also racial, economic and criminal justice issues.
Initially in public support of the Gay Rights Bill, Rivera felt betrayed when the bill — which took 17 years to become New York law in 1986 — ultimately excluded the rights of the transgender community.
Feeling betrayed by the movement she had fought so long and hard for, Rivera left STAR and disappeared from activism for the next 20 years. She returned to fight for trans issues starting in the mid-1990s amid cultural conversations around issues like gay marriage and the LGBTQ community serving in the military.
In 1994, on the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Rivera participated in New York City's pride parade.
On February 19, 2002, Rivera died from liver cancer at Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in New York, NY.
Source: https://www.biography.com/activist/sylvia-rivera