The Movement That Pushed Her Out

On 28 June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York — a routine harassment of queer people that happened to go spectacularly wrong. Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender woman and street activist, was among those who fought back. Eyewitnesses place her at the front of the resistance, throwing a shot glass at a mirror in defiance — the 'shot glass heard round the world.' She became a tireless activist, co-founding STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera to house homeless queer youth. But as the gay rights movement became more respectable, it quietly pushed Marsha — Black, trans, poor, mentally ill — to the margins. She was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992. Police ruled it suicide; her community said otherwise. The investigation was reopened in 2012. History is finally putting her name back where it belongs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.