Who threw the first brick in support of the LGBTQ community during the infamous Stonewall riots?

     On June 28, 1969 the police conducted a raid on a popular gay bar in New York City’s  Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn. Tensions had been rising for weeks leading up to this historic event because the police had been raiding any spaces labeled as being a safe space for LGBTQ people. At this point in time there were still laws in New York state which led to the frequent arrest of gay people and the criminalization of their public presence. Since it was a known gay bar, the Stonewall Inn was a common target. However, the patrons of the bar as well as the surrounding community in the streets formed together that night to fight against the discrimination. One particular figure who was amongst those in the frontlines of the riots was Marsha P. Johnson. She is most famously credited for throwing the first brick at the police who raided Stonewall; a moment which is often regarded as the initial signal of resistance towards the government's brutality of the LGBTQ community.

     Marsha P. Johnson was born on August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Assigned male at birth, Johnson was the fifth child born into her large family. Both her parents were working-class African Americans who raised their children with Christian values, regularly attending the Mount Teman African Methodist Episcopal Church. Starting at the age of five years old, Johnson would oftentimes prefer to wear dresses and other clothing designed for women, but she did not always feel safe doing so in the area where she was raised. This is why, immediately after graduating high school, Johnson moved for a fresh start in New York City with only $15 in her pocket and one bag of clothes. Once in the city she began dressing in women's clothing full time and adopted the name Marsha P. Johnson. When people asked her what the ‘P’ meant, she would reply that it stood for “Pay it no mind”, a phrase that eventually became her motto. Throughout her life Johnson used she/her pronouns and often described herself as a gay person, a transvestite, or a drag queen (the term “transgender” was not commonly used until after her death). 

Although Johnson was now in the big city...

A place where she could live fully as a woman, this was still not something that was acceptable in mainstream culture and she instead had to find ways to exist within the margins. She had not come with hardly anything to her name which made it even more difficult to survive for a transwoman of color. Unfortunately, Johnson did not really have a stable home or income to rely on and most often made money through sex work. She was regularly put in dangerous situations and arrested, all of which took a toll on her mental health. However, she would soon find community and a newfound purpose when she discovered her love for being a drag queen performer. 

     Despite the various hardships working against her, Johnson was very creative with a particular talent for making beautiful floral headpieces. In many photographs Johnson has a joyful smile on her face and is wearing one of her hand-made flower crowns. She is perhaps most well-known for these crowns that she “...constructed with discarded flowers from her makeshift dwellings in Manhattan’s Flower District” (Mission Magazine). Johnson allegedly used to sleep underneath a table used for flower sorting, and she would gather the fallen flowers to create her headpieces. Her vibrant colored outfits were usually made in a similar way, from piecing together masculine and feminine clothing that she had thrifted or found in various places. Johnson’s ability to create something beautiful from things that were considered discarded is an excellent reminder of how, regardless of the challenges we may face in life, there are still ways to be happy and to share that happiness with others. Marsha P. Johnson is the embodiment of perseverance and what it means to live as your truest self. Johnson quickly rose to the forefront of the LGBTQ movement and will forever be remembered for her impact on the infamous Stonewall riots. 

     In the wake of the riots, changes slowly began to take effect to protect the community. Along with her close friend and fellow activist, Sylvia Rivera, the women worked together to establish the S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolution) house, a true safe haven for homeless LGBTQ youth in lower Manhattan that provided comfort, support, and counsel. Johnson remained an advocate for LGBTQ rights throughout her life and also spoke out against the HIV/AIDS crisis when she was diagnosed with HIV in 1990. Two years later, at only 46 years old, Johnson’s body was discovered in the Hudson River in July, 1992. Her death was initially ruled a suicide by the police, however, after significant pushback from family, friends, and the community they reclassified the case as a drowning from an indeterminate cause. This change only angered people more since the police refused to investigate this as a possible homicide, despite 1992 being the worst year on record at the time for anti-LGBTQ violence. However, Johnson’s impact was so major that hundreds of people showed up at the church for her funeral, and in fact, it was so crowded that some even stood on the street. 

     It was not until 2012 when the NYPD finally reopened her case to look into the circumstances regarding her unfortunate death. Today, Marsha P. Johnson is known as one of the most prominent figures in LGBTQ+ history, both for her unapologetic identity of being a black transgender woman in the 20th century, and for her courage to resist and fight back against police brutality.