Lesbian doctor Marie Equi was best known for her radical feminist and labor activism, but was also lauded for her humanitarian work.

Equi was born April 7, 1872, in New Bedford, Mass. One of 10 children of working-class immigrant parents, she spent some time in Italy with her father’s relatives. As a teenager, she dropped out of high school to work in a local textile mill, but she later attended a year of preparatory school. In 1892, she left home to follow her school friend, Bessie Holcomb, who had taken a teaching job in The Dalles, Oregon, where the two women established a "Boston marriage."

Equi first made the newspapers in July 1893, when she horsewhipped Holcomb’s employer, the Rev. Orson Taylor, after he refused to pay Holcomb the salary he had promised. According to one account, Equi pursued Taylor until she was apprehended by the local sheriff, but the townspeople sympathized with her grievance and charges against her were dismissed. While one newspaper insinuated that the two women’s relationship was less than wholesome, a reporter at a competing paper defended them. "The ladies are not desirous of being made subjects of public criticism," the story read. "They are ladies in the fullest sense of the term...they desire to be left alone in their isolated home...and will remain in the future indissoluble friends which nothing can separate."

A few years later, Equi and Holcomb moved to San Francisco. Equi started her medical studies there, but in 1901 she returned alone to Oregon and transferred to the University of Oregon Medical School. She graduated two years later and set up a practice in Portland, where she was among the few doctors in town who provided abortions. In April 1906, Equi joined a relief mission of Oregon doctors and nurses in the wake of the great San Francisco earthquake and the fires that subsequently devastated the city. According to Michael Helquist, who is writing a biography of Equi, she supervised nurses at the U.S. Army Hospital in the Presidio and rescued 26 mothers and their newborn infants from a raging blaze, earning widespread acclaim.

After returning to Portland, Equi began a relationship with Harriet Speckart, whom she had hired as a medical assistant. Speckart’s uncle, a brewing magnate, engaged a private investigator to spy on Equi and threatened to cut off Speckart’s inheritance. In 1915 the two women adopted a baby girl, who referred to Harriet as "Ma" and Equi as "Da."

Equi was an outspoken proponent of workers’ rights, women’s suffrage, and birth control. During a 1913 strike, while treating an injured worker, she was trampled by a mounted police officer—an incident she later said turned her toward anarchism. Though she supported the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), she was not eligible to join due to her profession. Three years later, Equi was arrested with Margaret Sanger at a birth control rally in Portland, engendering a long-term friendship. "I love you with an ecstasy and understanding of spirit that you alone have imparted to me thru the very brightness and flow of your intellect," Equi wrote in a letter to Sanger. "I kiss your sweet mouth in absolute surrender." Sanger later remembered Equi as "a rebellious soul, generous, kind, brave, but so radical in her thinking that she was almost an outcast." Equi was acquainted with many of the foremost radicals of her day, including Emma Goldman, and reportedly had an affair with Irish nationalist Kathleen O’Brennan.

Like many leftists, Equi opposed U.S. participation in World War I. At one rally, she sparked a riot when she unfurled a banner reading, "Prepare to Die Workingmen, J.P. Morgan & Co. Want Preparedness for Profit." She was tried under the newly revised Espionage and Sedition Acts, which banned "any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" against the U.S. government or its armed forces. During her trial, a Department of Justice agent accused her of being "an anarchist, a degenerate, and an abortionist," while the U.S. prosecutor called her an "unsexed woman." Equi was convicted in 1918 and sentenced to three years in prison. Although the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal, President Woodrow Wilson reduced her sentence; she served 11 months at San Quentin.

As Equi’s politics became more radical, she and Speckart grew apart. Though they wrote to each other frequently while Equi was in prison, they never again lived together. After Speckart’s death in 1927, their daughter Mary moved in with Equi. At about the same time, Equi took in Elizabeth Gurley Flynn—an IWW organizer memorialized as folksinger Joe Hill’s "Rebel Girl"—after Flynn fell ill during a speaking tour on behalf of accused anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Flynn lived with Equi for a decade, in turn helping care for her as the doctor’s health failed. Though homebound from the 1930s onward, Equi continued to support radical causes until her death at age 80 in July 1952.