From a Wisconsin maintenance technician who became the Trans Handy Ma'am to a groundbreaking artist tracing Black and Queer resistance in the global evolution of vogue, here's what's streaming, what's premiering, our top Pride Passport pick and where to find PBS Wisconsin around the state this Pride month.
From a Wisconsin maintenance technician who became the Trans Handy Ma’am to a groundbreaking artist tracing Black and Queer resistance in the global evolution of vogue, here’s what’s streaming, what’s premiering, our top Pride Passport pick and where to find PBS Wisconsin around the state this Pride month.
Mercury Stardust was unhappy as a maintenance technician in a transphobic workplace, but a transformative moment arrived when she saw an overwhelmed mom crying on TikTok unable to fix something in her apartment. Mercury turned on a camera — and woke up the next morning with 100,000 followers. Now a #1 New York Times bestselling author and podcast host, she has raised $4.5 million for Point of Pride, a nonprofit providing gender-affirming care to people who can’t access it.
Watch her story on Wisconsin Life.
Artist Rashaad Newsome is building an exhibition at New York’s Park Avenue Armory that fuses vogue performance, artificial intelligence and dancers from around the world. Assembly – a film about Black and Queer culture, and what it looks like to imagine new futures out loud – premieres June 22 on Independent Lens.
Wisconsin’s LGBTQ+ history is long but, for the most part, has been structurally excluded from the stories the state tells about itself. Wisconsin Pride, PBS Wisconsin’s two-part documentary released in 2023 in collaboration with the Wisconsin Historical Society, works to correct this. It tells stories of Two-Spirit people of the Great Lakes first nations to the gay men who built Pendarvis, from the lesbian couple behind Milwaukee’s art education legacy to the students purged from UW-Madison in the 1950s and ’60s for their LGBTQ+ identity.
The documentary is one part of a larger digital resource. The Wisconsin Pride website offers companion content on subjects the doc introduces, spotlighting Wisconsin’s LGBTQ+ archives, the history of bi+ activism, queer athletics in the state, a 1970s public television program made by and for gay Wisconsinites, and two digital comic zines. A timeline traces the state’s LGBTQ+ history from the early 19th century to the present, and a resources section connects readers to archives, organizations and books for those who want to keep learning.
Watch both parts of Wisconsin Pride, then spend some time with everything the site has to offer.
Streaming through June 10, American Experience: Stonewall Uprising is an important document of the modern LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York. While the Stonewall Inn and its community had been subject to routine police violence, this raid sparked historic resistance in LGBTQ+ people and their allies to fight back in an uprising that lasted for three days.
Learn the story of the Stonewall Uprising from the people who were there, on American Experience.
For PBS Digital Studios, host Devin-Norelle (ze/zim) travels the country meeting LGBTQ+ people who have carved out places to be fully themselves. Encountering book clubs, sports leagues, congregations and Queer outdoor adventurists, each episode of Brave Spaces is a portrait of community formed in joy and in defiance of anti-LGBTQ+ exclusion.
Stream all episodes of Brave Spaces.
This American Masters portrait follows James Baldwin from a Harlem childhood through his years in Paris, Switzerland, Istanbul and the south of France, documenting the restless geography of a man who had to leave America repeatedly in order to write honestly about it. A film about one of the 20th century’s essential voices on race and power, it is also a film about a gay Black man who refused to hide either identity, who loved men and women, and whose 1956 Queer love story, Giovanni’s Room, his own publisher turned down out of fear.
Watch it with Passport | Get PBS Passport
Two events to attend in early June if you’re in Wisconsin:
Pridefest Milwaukee — June 5, 5:30–7 p.m.
Wisconsin Pride producer Andy Soth and project advisor Robyn Bayland will be at the festival’s History Exhibit at Henry Maier Festival Park, with clips and background on the documentary’s most compelling figures. Stop by anytime during the 90-minute session.
Tickets required for PrideFest.
Northwoods Pride, Rhinelander — June 6, 11 a.m.–2 p.m.
Carl the Collector will be at ArtStart for Northwoods Pride, alongside the PBS Wisconsin booth and resources from the Autism Society of Wisconsin and Children’s Resource Center North. Free festival, all ages welcome.
PBS Wisconsin is a service of the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. © 2026 All Rights Reserved.
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Sigrid Peterson