Without Black transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, many individuals would not feel comfortable in their identities today.
Johnson moved to Greenwich Village in New York with the sole purpose to find herself. In doing so, Johnson was able to find the nightlife scene and to begin doing drag on Christopher Street, home to the Stonewall Inn.
After changing her name, Johnson joked that the P in her name stands for “pay it no mind” in regards to gender, relating to her story as a Black trans woman.
“How many years has it taken people to realize that we are all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race?”
Marsha P. Johnson
On June 28, 1969, Stonewall Inn, the gay bar that is now recognized as a National Historic Landmark was the site of violence against LGBTQ+ members from the New York Police Department’s sixth precinct.
The Stonewall Inn itself was such an important landmark within New York City. It served as a home to runaways, gay youths, homeless gays and drag queens, who received backlash in a lot of other gay clubs and bars. The inn was also one of the very few who let dancing occur.
Also known as the Stonewall Uprising, the event led to roughly six days of protests outside of the bar as well as the surrounding streets. The Stonewall Riots encouraged the gay rights movements in the United States as well as many places around the world.
Johnson’s dedication to speaking out on injustices as well as her leadership at Stonewall was crucial, as she then began to refer to herself as the “drag mother” to LGBTQ+ youth.
Police harassment still continued in places similar to Stonewall Inn: since gay marriage was not legalized, any behavior that was dancing, kissing or even hand-holding led to backlash within the community as well as law enforcement.
After the protests came to an end at Stonewall, Johnson and her friend Sylvia Rivera were able to create the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries or STAR for short. STAR was founded due to the two’s realization that within other gay groups, transgender youth was not being taken into consideration.
Johnson and Rivera then opened the STAR house, a trailer truck that was in Greenwich Village in New York. The truck acted as a shelter and safe space for transgender-identifying folks. When the two approached the truck and saw it in the process of being towed with around 20 people sleeping inside, they knew it was time to establish a more permanent location.
STAR was the first LGBTQ+ youth shelter in North America as well as the first organization that was led by transgender women of color.
Johnson dedicated her life to protecting trans youth who were living on the streets. She wanted to welcome them into a safe environment that allowed them to speak freely, love freely and fight for their rights as a community.
While her death is still a mystery, it is rumored by the police that Johnson likely committed suicide in 1992. Her friends and the members of the community all claimed that she had no suicidal tendencies.
There is still so much work to be done. In 2020 alone, Black and Latino members of the transgender community account for almost all of the deaths that are on record, on and before the COVID-19 pandemic. Black trans and queer-identifying individuals need their struggles to be heard and recognized.
This Black history month, we can honor the Black transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson for all of the work she put into structuring our future in the right direction.
Click here to donate to help support Black trans people across the country.