A true LGBTQ+ hero, Jackie Forster was a woman who always advocated for the community and a lesbian activist who deserves recognition.
Born Jacqueline MacKenzie in 1926, Jackie Forster lived in India for most of her life until she was sent to boarding school in Scotland in 1936. There, she developed her hockey and lacrosse skills, which enabled her to attend college. After graduating, she became an actor in Edinburgh and moved to London in the 1950s.
In her career as an actor, Jackie landed several prestigious roles, including one in a West End production in London. She has also had roles in films, was very well-received as a TV presenter, and became a news reporter, where she found her love for journalism.
During this time, she met writer Peter Forster, whom she married. However, during their one-year marriage, Jackie met a woman whom she fell in love with and soon after divorced him.
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From 1962 to 1964, she lived in Canada and moved back to England to work on Border television. At the time, she moved in with her girlfriend and her children. During this decade, Jackie Forster joined the Minorities Research Group and wrote for the UK’s first lesbian publication, Arena 3. In 1969, two years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, she came out publicly at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park screaming, “You are looking at a roaring dyke.”
Forster founded the Gay Liberation Front in 1970. After coming out, she joined a campaign for Homosexual Equality and marched in the first London Pride in 1971. Jackie set up Sappho magazine and a social group in 1972, but the magazine closed in 1981. She also became a member of the Greater London Council’s women’s committee.
She was an active member of the Lesbian Archive from 1992, and she also set up Daytime Dykes. At 71, she passed away from emphysema. In 2017, Google Doodle commemorated her 91st birthday. She received the Rainbow Plaque for her memory in February 2025, at her former home in London on Warwick Avenue.
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The Brighton Ourstory newsletter from 1998 describes her with the following words: “Entertaining, energetic, humorous and lively, with an actress’s delight in the power of language, and curious about human behaviour in all its wonderful diversity, Jackie did as much to challenge existing stereotypes of lesbians, as she did to save women’s lives by ending their isolation from each other.”
Jackie Forster is an icon who deserves to be remembered for her heroism and advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community. If you want to learn about another lesbian hero, you can find that here.
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