Stonewall Uprising Guide
Illustration by Joshua Osborn
This year’s World Pride Event marked the 50th Anniversary of The Stonewall Uprising… but what were they and who were the major players?
What it was:
Few public establishments welcomed visibly queer people in the 1960s, and those that did were often bars. The now most famous of these are the Stonewall Inn, which was known as a refuge for the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ community. It was frequented by trans women and men, sex workers, effeminate gay men, butch lesbians, and impoverished homeless queer youth. Laws regarding gender presentation and deviance were commonly used as an excuse by the police to continuously raid Stonewall and other similar establishment in order to arrest and violently harass its patrons. While the Stonewall uprising have commonly been referred to as the result of these supposed ‘tensions’ between the police and the inhabitants of the Greenwich gay village, it is important to remember that they were an act of resistance against decades of violent repression and harassment. According to the Stonewall Veteran Association the first night of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion was on the 27th of June, the second (and most commemorated) was on Saturday the 28th of June, and then it lasted until the fifth and final night of the uprising which was on the 3rd of July. The inherent radical nature of this rebellion has been often been downplayed alongside the importance of the racialized nature of the police raids.
These uprisings were a watershed movement in LGBTQ history, and has been believed to spark the modern queer rights movement in the United States. What happened at Stonewall led to the formation of radical activist groups such as the Gay Liberation Front, who engaged with the radical politics of the New Left and was inspired by the Black Panther Party.
Some of the key figures:
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P Johnson by Andy Warhol
One of the most prominent figures of the Stonewall uprising, Marsha P. Johnson was an activist, self-identified drag queen, performer, and co founded the organization S.T.A.R (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera. Marsha was known as a prominent activist throughout her life, and was a popular figure in the New York queer scene, and she modelled for Andy Warhol and performed onstage with the drag performance troupe, Hot Peaches. She left her childhood home in New Jersey in 1963 for New York with 15$ and a bag of clothes. Marsha initially went by the name “Black Marsha,” but eventually decided on “Marsha P. Johnson.” She said that the P stood for “pay it no mind.” Marsha has been names by a number of her fellow Stonewall veterans as being someone known to have “been in the vanguard.” Following the Stonewall uprising, she joined the GLF and was involved in multiple direct actions. Together with Rivera, Marsha established a shelter for gay and trans street kids in 1972 called STAR House. The two women paid the rent for the house themselves with the money they made doing sex work. In the 1980s, she continued her activist work with ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), which is a direct action advocacy group.
Learn more about Marsha here:
Making gay history podcast on Marsha’s approach to activism and legacy within the LGBTQ movement
Happy Birthday Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson (Article)
Miss Major
Miss Major
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is an activist and community leader for trans rights, with a particular focus on women of colour. She serves as the Executive Director for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which aims to assist trans people who are disproportionately incarcerated under the prison-industrial complex. Major moved from Chicago to New York after having been kicked out of two colleges for her outward expression of her identity. She quickly established herself within the queer community associated with the Stonewall Inn, and has recounted that “we could go to Stonewall and everything would be fine, we didn’t have to explain ourselves.” Major was at Stonewall when the bar raid that initiated the uprising occurred. She was a leader of the uprising, but was struck on her head by a cop and was taken into custody. Both outside and as part of her role as the director of TGIJP, she has fought against police brutality and criminalization. Major now lives in the Bay Area and is seen as its trans formative matriarch, extending support and care to her trans family.
Learn more about Miss Major here:
Stormé DeLarverie
Stormé DeLarverie is known as “the Rosa Parks of the gay community.” She was a butch lesbian, and her scuffle with the police was according to herself and many eyewitnesses one of the sparks that ignited the Stonewall uprising because it stirred the crowd into action. While these events have commonly been referred to as “the Stonewall riots” Stormé has made it very clear that she finds it a misleading description as it “was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was civil disobedience – it wasn’t no damn riot.” After the uprising, Stormé remained active in the gay liberation movement, and worked as a bouncer for several lesbian bars. She was known as the “guardian if lesbians in the Village.” Stormé also organized and performed at benefits for battered women and children. She lived with her partner, a dancer named Diana, for 25 years until Diana died in the 1970s. Stormé carried Diana’s photograph with her at all times.
Learn more about Stormé here:
Queer as Fact: a Queer History Podcast episode about Stormé
Stormé DeLarverie: In a Storm of Indifference, She’s Still a Jewel (Article)
Sylvia Rivera was a gay liberation and trans rights activist, and some claim that she was one of the founding members of the Gay Liberation Front. She co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Marsha P. Johnson. Sylvia was born and raised in New York and was orphaned at 3 years old. She ended up living on the streets at age 11, and was taken in by the local community of drag queens, who gave her the name Sylvia. She was involved with a number of activist movements throughout her life. It began with the Civil Rights Movement and continued through the movement against the Vietnam war, and did also become involved in Puerto Rican and African American youth activism, particularly with the Young Lords and Black Panthers. While the exact number of nights have been disputed, Sylvia was present during the Stonewall rebellion and a central figure. Sylvia struggled with substance abuse and lived in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks at a number of different times through her life. Her activist work has largely been focused on advocacy for those who mainstream society and assimilationist sectors of the LGBTQ community were leaving behind. Much of her work has therefore focused on fighting for the rights of people of colour and low-income queer people who suffers from systematic poverty. She amplified the voices of trans people and others who fell outside of or transgressed the gender binary, homeless youth, and queer incarcerated people. In the last years of her life, Sylvia renewed her political activity and gave many speeches about the Stonewall rebellion and the importance for trans and gender non-conforming people to fight for their legacy at the forefront of the LGBTQ movement.
Learn more about Sylvia here:
Making gay history podcast two-part episode about Sylvia’s life and activism
Ten Posts for Sylvia Rivera’s Ten Year Memorial (Article)
The next generation of activists:
50 years after Stonewall there has been much progress in regard to legal recognition and queer visibility. However, there is still much work that remain to be done, and the main issues of systematic oppression, especially toward trans women of colour, are still present. Luckily there are tons of young queer activists continuing the legacy of the Stonewall Veterans. The activist, filmmaker and writer Tourmaline. She is most notable for her work with trans activism, prison abolition and economic justice, through her work with the Sylvia Rivera Law project, Critical Resistance and Queers for Economic Justice. Tourmaline has also worked to amplify the voices of the poc trans women that were at the centre of the Stonewall Rebellion, and has made films about Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major.
The work of artist Fatima Jamal centres her own body in opposition to cis, white and straight size ideas of beauty and desirability. As a fat, black, femme, trans woman, Fatima’s work visualises the complexities of queer identity while exploring what it means not only to survive but thrive in a world that others you. Similarly, Indya Moore’s work as an actor and model while actively being open about their experiences with bullying and transphobia has helped to make these issues more visible. Indya is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, and is the first ever trans person to be featured on the cover of the U.S. version of Elle magazine. An advocate for LGBTQ+ and disability rights, model Aaron Philip has made history as the first black, transgender, wheelchair-using model to be signed by Elite Model Management. Her goal is to normalise the presence of disabled people, women/femmes who are trans and gender nonconforming trans people.
Joshua Osborn is a London-based artist specialising in line drawing. Osborn began his career at drawing at London Fashion Week where his continued interest in illustrated reportage lead him to regularly contribute to online and print publications, including The-Out-Net. Using few marks on the page Osborn continues to balance form and energy to entertain the model of beauty.
