Some were on those front lines because they could not pass as straight.

“The idea of choosing to come out is a luxury for some people,” said Mason Funk, founder of the Outwords Archive, an effort to collect videotaped interviews with L.G.B.T.Q. pioneers. Excerpts from the interviews were first published in May in “The Book of Pride.”

The L.G.B.T.Q. community owes “a huge debt of gratitude to the ones who really didn’t have that much of a choice, who were out there taking the beatings, and taking the verbal abuse,” Mr. Funk said. “They paved the way.”

But experts point out that even though transgender people and L.G.B.T.Q. racial minorities were often vanguards for equal rights, these same groups have lagged behind in gains.

For example, researchers say that while gay and bisexual men have experienced the same rates of poverty as heterosexual men, same-sex couples of color and transgender people have been three and four times more likely to live in poverty than their white and straight counterparts, citing United States census numbers and other research.

Transgender people and gay and lesbian minorities also experience higher levels of H.I.V. and sexual violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Transgender Survey.