The Enduring Legacy of Marsha P. Johnson
Hello! I hope you’re having a good week, and that you started your lenten season on a humble and penitent note. I want to end my series on Black queer history this week by talking about a pioneer in the LGBTQ civil rights movement, and how her work and legacy is indicative of the overall struggle that queer people of color have had to and continue to endure in this country. I want to highlight the life and work of Marsha P. Johnson, the gender non-conforming gay drag queen who was a pivotal figure in the Stonewall riots.
Johnson was born with the name Malcolm Michaels, Jr. on August 24, 1945 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He started wearing dresses when he was around 5, but stopped until he was an adult after being harassed by boys his age. Johnson was devoutly religious her entire life, and was more private in her faith, possibly for fear of being ostracized or shunned by the Church. She was raised in an African Methodist Episcopal church, and was extremely influenced by Catholicism too.
He described growing up and being gay, saying, “ I always thought gayness was some sort of dream, something people talked about but never did.” I empathize and know exactly how she felt. When I was growing up, especially in high school and college, I never thought it was going to be possible for me to live openly as a gay man. My world around me told me that it was not possible. Granted, Marsha had a different viewpoint than I did growing up in the 1990s and 2000s. Marsha’s mother told her that being homosexual was like “being lower than a dog”. My response to that?
When Johnson left for New York after graduating from high school, he encountered the LGBT community for the first time while waiting tables in Greenwich village. Seeing the visibility of the community allowed Johnson to come out of the closet and embrace her gender non-conforming lifestyle. Johnson came up with her name by taking her last name from the Howard Johnson’s restaurant on 42nd Street, and the P standing for “Pay it No Mind”, saying that when people asked about her gender.
Johnson was one of the first drag queens to patronize the Stonewall Inn, because it has previously only been open to gay men. While she was not there at the first night of the Stonewall riots, many accounts say that she was there on the second night. That night, Johnson dropped a bag with a brick in it from atop a lamppost onto a cop car, shattering its windshield. In the wake of the Stonewall riots, Johnson formed S.T.A.R., or Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, with trans woman Sylvia Rivera in 1970. Out of STAR, the two of them formed STAR House, a shelter for gay and trans street kids that was paid for through Johnson’s and Rivera’s sex work. Johnson would continue her activism throughout the rest of her life, through protests and performances. She was an activist in the late 1980s and early 1990s with ACT-UP, a grassroots group started by Larry Kramer to end the AIDS epidemic.
Unfortunately, Johnson passed away in the way that so many other queer people of color do. Johnson’s body was found in the Hudson River near the Christopher Street docks. She died on July 6, 1992. Initially her death was ruled as a suicide, many of Johnson’s friends claimed that Johnson was not suicidal and that her death was suspicious. In fact, Johnson’s death was recently changed from “suicide” to “undetermined”, and her case has been reopened. However, no person has been investigated into her alleged killing.
Johnson’s death and legacy is indicative of so many other queer people of color. Johnson recalls being forced out of the NYC Pride parade just four years after Stonewall because the group in charge of the parade didn’t want drag queens associated with them. The woman proclaimed, “The Mayor of Christopher Street”, the street where the Stonewall riots took place, was being barred from the parade because she didn’t conform to “normal” society standards of what gay or queer people should look like. Black queer people, and other queer people of color are constantly shifted to the side of the public view, and are shown to be less than in this country. It’s especially true for trans and gender non-conforming people of color.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, 26 trans or gender non-conforming people were fatally shot or killed in the United States and its territories last year. Those are only just the reported cases. 91 percent of them were black women, 81 percent were under the age of 30, and 68 percent of them lived in the South. This year alone, two trans people have been killed in the United States and Puerto Rico. Dustin Parker, a trans man, was shot and killed early New Year's Day in McAlester, OK. On February 24, Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, a trans woman, was shot and killed in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. Oftentimes these persons’ lives and tragic endings are incorrectly reported, rarely prosecuted, their names and identities misgendered, and their struggles silenced because of fear, ignorance, or plain discrimination.
I know that, either directly or indirectly, I am to blame for some of these problems. My innate privilege as a cisgender white man is incalculable in American society. In fact, I am able to hide, out of safety or convenience, my one characteristic that categorizes me as a minority if I so choose. People of color cannot, even if they’re straight or cisgender.
Most oftentimes, I feel helpless as to what I can do to help out. However, I have learned that the best thing to do is to just get the hell out of the way. There are scores of queer people of color who are smart, talented, strategic, and determined to make this country better. It’s up to people who have visibility and a societal leg up to prop up those who need the initial support, and then let them shine. It’s also up to me to educate myself on other people that don’t look like, love like, worship/pray like me, or act like me. It’s up to all of us to “draw the circle wide”, and give safety and agency to every person.
If you’d like to see more pictures of Marsha P. Johnson, please click here to access archival pictures.
