Marsha P. Johnson was born August 24, 1945 in Elizabeth, New Jersey as Malcolm Michaels Jr. She was the fifth of seven children to Malcolm Michaels Sr., a WWII veteran and assembly line worker for GM and Alberta Claiborne, a housekeeper. They were a family of faith and Marsha grew up in the Mount Teman African Methodist Episcopal Church. Her faith would be a big part of her life. She started keeping a saint altar at home, and always had one every place she lived for the rest of her life.

Marsha identified as female at a very young age, and started dressing in feminine attire by the time she was five. But, it was the 50s, and her parents were not happy about it. She stopped dressing in feminine clothing for a while because the boys next door used to, as she said, “get fresh” with her. She was sexually assaulted when she was twelve by one of those boys. After the incident, she claimed that she figured that was just how “life worked.” She said that being gay was like a dream rather than a reality. Her mother told her that being gay was like being “lower than a dog”.

 

 

She avoided sexual activities throughout her teen years as both a consequence of the rape and the religious objections that were imposed on her. However, Alberta also seemed to gradually accept Marsha’s sexual orientation of a kind by encouraging her to find a “billionaire” boyfriend or husband to take care of her. She made it through high school, and upon graduation from Edison High School in 1963, she left for New York City with just $15 and a bag of clothes to her name.

She was homeless and slept in movie theaters when she first arrived in the city. In 1966, she eventually got a job waiting tables. She began hanging out in Greenwich Village with sex workers and gender non-conforming people near the Howard Johnson’s steakhouse on 6^th Avenue and 8^th Street. At the time, terms such as ‘transvestite’ and ‘drag queen’ were self-identifiers. These labels resonated with Marsha, who was on a journey of self-discovery. Still going by Malcolm at the time, she began to start presenting as her authentic self. When she came out she said: “My life has been built around sex and gay liberation, being a drag queen” and sex work.

 

 

Marsha identified as gay, a transvestite and a queen – sometimes calling herself a drag queen or a street queen. This was the parlance of the time, up until very recently. When discussing her, these terms will come up used purely in context of the time. However, it is also worth noting that many of these terms should not be used in a modern context, unless otherwise specified as an individual identifier. Today, many find the term “transvestite” problematic as its original use was a psychiatric term for “cross-dressers” which was a term for heterosexual men who got a sexual thrill from dressing up in female clothing. Nowadays it’s considered outdated and derogatory.

Susan Stryker, professor of human gender and sexuality studies at the University of Arizona has said that Johnson’s gender expression could perhaps most accurately be called “gender non-conforming” as Johnson never self-identified as transgender, but the term wasn’t broadly used while she was alive. When referring to Marsha and her peers, you will find that I will refer to them as being trans or by the self-identifiers they used for themselves. In addition, the term ‘gay’ as it was used historically and as it is used in this space is used with the intent that it refers to the greater LGBTQIA+ community unless otherwise specified, and will be used synonymously with the word ‘queer’.

Initially, Marsha went by the name “Black Marsha”, later changing it to her “drag queen name” Marsha P. Johnson. She used Johnson in homage to the aforementioned Howard Johnson’s on 42rd Street, with the “P” standing for “pay it no mind,” a phrase she used sarcastically when she was questioned about her gender. Housing was precarious for Marsha, often times she was homeless, and her general means of financial income was through sex work.

She spent a lot of time on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Lots of queer street people hung out there. She often slept under tables in the flower district, and collected the cast off flowers to make into beautiful, ornate flower crowns, accented by strings of gems. Marsha was a tall, slim person and she loved to accentuate her height with her elaborate floral crowns. She often wore flowing gowns and anything shiny. Her regal presence on the scene was notable, and her effervescence made her shine. She was kind, sweet, witty and bright. It is worth searching out footage of her just to witness how brilliant she was with a turn-of-phrase as well as a natural passion for equality and human compassion. Her natural charisma, and caring nature attracted everyone to her. She had people around her all the time, whether they be other queens, trans women, runaway/throwaway street kids.

Marsha started performing as a drag queen. She never had money, and one of the reasons she didn’t pursue drag further was because of it. She said she never really took drag seriously because she “didn’t have the money to.” This is still a thing today when you hear about the price it costs to launch a career in drag and what queens on Drag Race have said before about the simple cost of getting on the show itself.

Christopher Street in the West Village was her stomping ground and home, it is and was also home to the Stonewall Inn. In the 1960s, members of the LGBTQIA+ community were not allowed to be served in bars. If a person came into a bar and were sized up as being queer, they were not served and usually treated with some form of scorn or violence. Underground gay bars were constantly raided because at that time being gay was illegal. You weren’t allowed to dance with members of the same sex in public, and this would lead to arrest. If someone was found to be wearing clothes of the opposite gender, they would face sexual deviancy charges. Many butch dykes and trans men of the time always kept at least three pieces of female attire on at all times in order to not be charged with this crime. Bars could be fined or completely shut down simply for serving a drink to a queer person.

 

The Mafia saw the need for the LGBTQIA+ community to congregate and saw the dollar signs. In the time leading up to the Stonewall Uprising, virtually all queer bars in the city were run by the Mafia. The Stonewall Inn was owned by the notorious Genovese family. It was a private club that gave you two drink tickets, and you signed a guest book to get in. This was all a mere formality, and it quickly became a popular gay spot. At that time, drag queens weren’t welcome at the bars. At the Stonewall, drag queens were allowed, albeit segregated.

 

While the Stonewall Inn did exceptionally allow drag queens (many of whom would by today’s parlance be considered trans), gender ambiguous and femme men – they were relegated to the back of the bar away from the dance floor which was predominantly gay men and a few lesbians. In fact, there was a limit of two queens at a time allowed in. It quickly became the big gay bar to go to. In many ways, the Stonewall Inn was was considered safe because the crooked cops would inform the mafia when the raids were going to take place, so they could plan accordingly and close the club on that night. Other times, they would flash the lights to notify patrons if there was a raid, and people would flee.

On June 28, 1969 police showed up unannounced. More raids had been happening all over the city. The city’s queer community had seen the closures of several popular bars, and was feeling hounded and completely fed up with the constant harassment by the cops. The police had stopped relying on tip-offs from the mafia. The mafia was now driven towards blackmailing wealthy closeted gays, which was more lucrative than the sales from the gay bars. Since the bond between the cops and the mob had been severed, the cops were drilling down on queer establishments across the city.

One factor that many say played into the civil disobedience that followed was the death of actress Judy Garland. Her funeral had taken place the day before, and the singer had long been and remains to be a queer icon. According to Olivia Waxman from her article in Time Magazine:

“Charles Kaiser’s 1997 book The Gay Metropolis has been credited as one source that popularized the theory that heightened emotions over Judy Garland may have contributed in a significant way to the outcry at Stonewall Inn hours later, “No one will ever know for sure which was the most important reason for what happened next: the freshness in their minds of Judy Garland’s funeral, or the example of all the previous rebellions of the sixties — the civil rights revolution, the sexual revolution, and the psychedelic revolution, each of which had punctured gaping holes in crumbling traditions of passivity, puritanism and bigotry,” he wrote. One of the several controversial aspects of the 2015 movie Stonewall was the fact that it promoted the idea that Garland’s funeral led to the Stonewall uprising. Even the 2017 Magnetic Fields song “69: Judy Garland” starts off, “The first brick the drag king threw / To draw blood from the boys in blue / Said ‘Here lies Judy Garland’ on it / It flew through historic air.”

But experts on LGBTQ history say there isn’t enough to prove that Judy Garland’s funeral specifically fueled the Stonewall uprising.”

In fact, this rumor may have started from a sarcastic opinion piece penned by a heterosexual man commenting on the events of Stonewall. Either way, that night was the breaking point and many contributing factors likely played a role beyond just feeling really fed the fuck up with being treated like second class citizens.

People were lined up and demanded to show their IDs. Those in drag, non-gender conforming attire or without IDs were the first to be arrested. Many weren’t out to their families and were terrified of being outed. The women who had male genitalia refused to go do a check of their genitals. People around the area and people who were at the bar started to fight back against the police. While people were waiting outside for a wagon to haul them away, those being held for arrest as well as others outside began to push back against the cops. Police became outnumbered. People started singing “We Shall Overcome” and “Gay Power!”.

Storme DeLaverie a biracial lesbian known as the Guardian of Lesbians in the Village was arrested. As they pushed her through the crowd, she fought back, got free several times, fought 4 cops swearing and shouting for over ten minutes. Bleeding from the head, she yelled to the crowd: “WHY DON’T YOU GUYS DO SOMETHING?!” The crowd surged, overpowering the police. Later, when interviewed about Stonewall, Storme said: “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience - it wasn’t no damn riot.”

 

Storme DeLaverie

The crowd started throwing pennies at the cops yelling “Pay them off!” in reference to their mob ties. The crowd overpowered the police, who ran for cover, taking shelter inside the Stonewall Inn. They overturn cop cars, throw bottles and someone tries to set the building on fire. No one knows if it was the police or the protesters who did it. Everyone survived. Near the Inn is a construction site with piles of bricks, which people then started hurling. No one knows “who threw the first brick”, but it seemed to be everyone at the same time. Everything had just come to a head.

23 year old Marsha hears what’s going on, then goes uptown to get her friend Sylvia Rivera. They arrive at the Stonewall around 2am, about an hour since the insurgence began. At that point, it was still on fire. The girls joined in. According to eyewitnesses, “flame (femme) queens, hustlers, and gay street kids were the instigators throwing projectiles because, frankly, they had nothing to lose.” Another said, “All I could see about who was fighting was that it was transvestites and they were fighting furiously.” It has been reported that the crowd formed a kick line with a group of queens singing, and kicking while keeping the police forces at bay. Let’s just say it’s true.

 

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha

 

13 people were arrested, some ended up being hospitalized as well as four cops. The bar was destroyed. Rumors start flying around about who started the fight. Some blame was bizarrely put on a student Democrat group and (not bizarrely) on the Black Panthers, because, you know, BLACK. But the word was out internationally on what had occurred that night in Greenwich Village, and more gay liberation actions began to pop up globally in the following year.

 

For 5 days following the resistance at Stonewall there were marches, gatherings and actions. Overnight, it had become that people who had to hide in the shadows were suddenly out. The LGBTQIA+ community has taken over Christopher Street. Marsha came back on the second night with friends Zazanova and Jackie Hormona. Marsha climbs a light post, dropping a bag full of bricks on top of a cop car window, smashing it. Marsha and her friends join the chorus line against the police once again. Not all of the community was into the Stonewall Uprising. The oldest gay group, the Mattachine Society openly criticized the violence as well as made classist arguments against the participants. The Village Voice viciously criticized the events with slurs.

Faces of the Stonewall Uprising

 

On June 28, 1970 – exactly a year after the uprising – the Christopher Street Liberation Day is held, marking the beginning of what we have globally known as Pride. There are marches in Los Angeles and Chicago. London, Paris and West Berlin events follow as Pride becomes a worldwide event. This time, the Village Voice writes glowingly about Gay Liberation.

23 year old Marsha and her friend Sylvia Rivera, another trans femme sex worker and passionate advocate for gay liberation – as it was called - were at the center of things. Many queer organizations blossomed after Stonewall. Marsha joined the Gay Liberation Front, and became active in the Drag Queen Caucus. She marched in the first Gay Pride Rally (then called the Christopher Street Day Liberation Rally) after the Stonewall Uprising. She participates in sit-ins and other actions with various groups. She decides to join Sylvia’s S.T.A.R. group, standing for “Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.” S.T.A.R. is active in various Gay Liberation events.

In 1973, the organizers of the Christopher Street Parade (the early name for Pride) didn’t want her and other trans women marching at the front – so they were relegated to the back of the parade. They stated that they didn’t want drag queens at their marches as they were “giving them a bad name.” Yet again, racism and classism shits on the parade. This, of course, was far from acceptable for the likes of Johnson and Rivera who made their way to the front of the parade front and center. The led the fucking parade.

Sylvia and Marsha decided to create S.T.A.R. House, a housing shelter for queer, trans street kids. They had no money, so they made a deal with a mafia guy – Michael Umbars – to get the place. This all goes to show just how much the gay community and the mob were connected. Trying to source housing through the conventional route just wasn’t an option for many queer people and the mob provided. He owned the dilapidated building. They got cheap rent in exchange for fixing up the building, which they renovated. At S.T.A.R. House, they were able for a time to house transgender youth, give them small amounts of money, advocate for their rights and feed them.

 

Marsha thought of herself as the assistant to Sylvia on the S.T.A.R. project and always made sure to credit Sylvia for it. Sylvia thought of Marsha as her mother, she was the first person to take her under her wing when she’d arrived on the streets of New York at eleven years old. Residents called Marsha the Queen Mother, and she becomes their “drag” mother, and referred to them as her children (don’t worry it’s just really sweet and not culty). This has since become parlance in queer spaces – particularly in the drag scene. Unfortunately, S.T.A.R. House was short-lived because Asshole Mike kicked them out for not being able to pay the rent, and the money Sylvia and Marsha made turning tricks wasn’t enough.

 

Marsha struggled with her mental health. She spent time in psychiatric hospitals. She was going through severe PTSD from all the activist work she’d been involved in over the years and the subsequent arrests and violent encounters with police and bigots. She said that at one point she’d stopped counting the number of times she was arrested. The activism, however, kept her going.

 

She joined Hot Peaches, a theater group focused on queer culture. They traveled doing these shows. She got to go to Europe and travel around. In 1975 she posed for Andy Warhol in a Polaroid-based series called Ladies & Gentlemen. However, she wasn’t particularly famous during her lifetime. She was a person about town. Once, she and a friend went to an art gallery so she could show a friend the picture and they were kicked out based on the fact that they were obviously trans street women.

 

In the 80s, Marsha is a living legend. She rode in the front car of the 1980 Pride parade. Between 1980 and the time of her death, she lived with her good friend Randy Wicker. When Randy’s partner David was dying from AIDS, Marsha became his primary caregiver. This led to her caring for various friends and victims of the virus. She continued to dive into work in grassroots organizations, especially to assist in the AIDS epidemic, continuing her care and advocacy for victims, as well as being involved in ACT UP!.

Marsha and Randy Wicker

 

In 1992, the year Marsha died, she confirmed that she also had the disease. According to Matt Foreman, former director of the Anti-Violence Project, “Anti-LGBT violence was at a peak. That year we had 1,300 reports of bias crime...and 18% of those were based on violence perpetrated by police.” The attacks were described as “unrelenting”, and various actions and marches demanding from the queer community were held. George Segal’s sculpture, Gay Liberation was moved to Christopher Park as part of the monument. Johnson said, “How many people have died for these two little statues to be put in the park to recognize gay people? How many years does it take for people to see that we’re all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race? I mean how many years does it take for people to see that we’re all in this rat race together.”

 

On July 6, 1992 her body was found floating in the Hudson River right off the Christopher Street Piers. She was 46 years old. Police instantly ruled it as a suicide, but all her friends and peers said that was impossible, and that Marsha had absolutely not been suicidal in the days and weeks leading up to her death. People tried to say that she had been giving all her things away, but that was what Marsha had always done. If someone complimented an article of clothing she was wearing she often times would give it to them. Police didn’t investigate the death as it should have been, and it’s safe to say that had Marsha not been a trans woman, the investigation would have been taken more seriously.

 

There are many conflicting stories leading up to the last time she was seen. The last time Randy Wicker saw her was July 2^nd. Others say they last saw her on July 4^th. There is an eye-witness account that Marsha was seen in the early morning hours of July 6^th that said she seemed scared and was running toward the West Village Piers while being followed by two men, where she was later found dead. Randy says he blames himself for Marsha’s death.

 

Randy was trying to gain control of the Christopher Street Festival committee. This committee ran a portion of events at all the gay pride events. Randy thought a lot of the people that ran the committee were embezzling a lot of money, and he even hired a PI. to investigate. He deduced that it was being run in a totally crooked manner and was directly tied to mob affiliations. Again, the mob had long been linked to the LGBTQIA+ community, and this was yet another example of that connection. He later learned that there’d been a threat made against him to leave two mobsters alone. In the documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, Randy finds out via Victoria Cruz – an elder trans rights advocate investigating Marsha’s case – that this message for him was never received. The message basically said, “Tell Randy what happened to Marsha will happen to him if he doesn’t leave Red and Jacques (the two mobsters) alone.”

 

The cause of Marsha’s death was changed from drowning to “undetermined causes.” They said that she was definitely alive when she entered the water. Based on the eyewitness testimony, it is highly plausible she was chased into the water. At the time, the docks were in a state of disrepair, with many loose boards scattered everywhere. The only mark on her body was an abrasion on her head that didn’t appear to be the main cause of death, however, that could have been caused by something say a slab of wood being used to keep her underwater until she drowned.

 

Marsha was cremated, and a long funeral procession through the streets of the West Village made its way to the piers, where her ashes were released to the water.

 

In 2012 the case was reopened. When Victoria Cruz was finally able to get the autopsy report (which she was met with a series of blockages) it wasn’t complete. She went over everything with Dr. Michael Boddenf you want to share this work, please credit the source by quoting it and providing a link to this post and website. Thank you for your support and for spreading the work around. We really appreciate it and you. . There was a lot of discoloration on her body, which points to a body laying in a certain position for an extended period of time. Water also speeds this up. There were hemorrhages in many areas of the brain. He says he doesn’t think it was a violent attack, because there were no defining marks to her body. However, this is based on if the autopsy had been handled correctly, which is hard to determine. Did she drown because she was being chased, or did she just want to complete suicide? A witness who saw the body said there was a hole in her head. Bodden explains that that could have been due to floating debris and faster deterioration due to the water being warmer due to the summer heat. This wasn’t noted in the autopsy. However, there is not a complete autopsy.

 

Friends said that leading up to her death, Marsha was becoming increasingly and nervous of the mob. One eye-witness close to the time of Marsha’s death described her getting into the car with three Italian men, which was one of the last eye-witness testimonies other than the other spotting her running toward the piers. There was equal speculation that it was members of the police themselves. Either way, it’s likely to speculate that both were connected.

 

Marsha’s legacy lives on today. She has become an icon for queer – especially trans – liberation. The latest generation has particularly raised the banner high on her behalf. The Marsha P. Johnson Institute that “protects and defends Black transgender people.” Her story matters, and it matters that we share it, no matter how many times that is. But no story really does justice to this larger-than-life beautiful soul who we as a community are privileged to count amongst us.

 

Any time respectability politics, racist injustice, homophobia and transphobia rears their heads, it’s up to us to tackle it head on – to channel that Marsha spirit. And if anyone has the nerve to relegate trans and queer people to the margins, it’s up to us to take our rightful place at the front and make our own damn parade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sources:

 

France, David. 2017. The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Public Square Films.

 

Kelley, A., A. Urquhart. 2020, June 28. Episode 152: The Life and Mysterious Death of Marsha P. Johnson. Morbid. Morbid Network.

 

Eagan, D. 2023, 22 June. S3 Ep. 10: Marsha P. Johnson: Hard Work Being Beautiful. Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Egan. Obsessed Network.

 

Marano, P. 2021, June 21. Stonewall & Marsha P. Johnson. True Gay Crime.

 

Village AIDS Memorial. 2021, April 18. Marsha P. Johnson’s Connection to the Village AIDS Memorial. Village AIDS Memorial. YouTube.

 

Waxman, Olivia. 2019, June 23. Some People Think Stonewall Was Triggered by Judy Garland’s Funeral. Here’s Why Many Experts Disagree. Time Magazine.

 

Iovannone, Jeffry J. 2017, October 8. Should Netflix Viewers Boycott The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson?. Medium.com

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