10 Martyrs That Furthered The Civil Rights Cause

To say that Alan Turing improved the lives of many generations to come would be a grave understatement, for it is estimated that with his work on German naval cryptanalysis during WWII, he saved two million lives.

But the legacy of bringing down the Third Reich is not the only one he left behind. Like Harvey Milk and Freddie Mercury, Turing was famously gay and when in 1952 he was prosecuted for ‘homosexual acts’, he avoided prison by undertaking a chemical castration treatment that would push him to commit suicide and subsequently become a martyr.

Turing was never an activist or a campaigner of huge personality for the LGBT cause. However, his death came to give him all these qualities, making him a posthumous proponent of civil rights: in the world of technology, Apple Inc. famously adopted their name and logo from the cyanide-filled apple that Turing half-ate before committing suicide. It was a symbol of the new technological world order: one that didn’t discriminate based on sexuality.

In the social side of things, he also became an asset for the British LGBT cause, representing the epitome of a good citizen who had given his country everything but was repaid only with cruelty. Progress was made and in 2017, a law retroactively pardoning anyone who had been subject to historical anti-gay legislation was named the 'Alan Turing' law.

It is a tragedy that he had to die for all of this to happen.