Barbra Casbar Siperstein

Siperstein was born November 20, 1942 to Morris and Mildred (Yanover) Siperstein Siperstein told her wife that she was transgender in the late 1980s. For most of her life Siperstein denied to herself that she was transgender, until she eventually came out to her wife who was very supportive. Carol encouraged her to be openly outwardly female, and Barbra began to transition in small steps. Carol died in 2001. Barbra has said that she channeled her grief about her wife's death into her activist work. Eight years after Carol's death, Barbra changed her Hebrew name officially to a female name after a teshuva on the status of transgender people in the Jewish faith allowed her to do so. Siperstein started her activism fully after her daughter took over her family business. ==Career and activism==

Prior to transitioning, Siperstein served in the Army and was a small-business owner. Siperstein was President and a board member of the New Jersey Stonewall Democrats until its closure in 2013. She was also Vice President of Garden State Equality and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee Eastern Caucus. Through those organizations, she advocated for gender inclusion in discrimination and hate crime laws in New Jersey. She was also appointed to the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission. In 2009, Siperstein became the first openly transgender member of the DNC, where she was appointed by then-chairman Tim Kaine. She was appointed to the Democratic National Committee's Executive Committee in 2011, where she served until October 2017, when she and several other DNC officials were demoted or removed. In the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Siperstein was a superdelegate for Hillary Clinton. As of 2016, she was one of 28 openly transgender delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Siperstein contributed to the Huffington Post. == Death and tributes ==

Siperstein died of cancer on February 3, 2019, in New Brunswick, New Jersey at age 76. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy ordered that flags be lowered to half staff in honor of her death. In June 2019, Siperstein was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City’s Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall’s unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. == See also ==