Storme delarverie stonewall4/6/2023 ![]() I walked down 58th Street, and the young ones were calling, ‘Sylvia, thank you, we know what you did.’ After that, I went back on the shelf. “The movement had put me on the shelf, but they took me down and dusted me off,” the Times quoted Rivera about the 25th anniversary of Stonewall in a 1995 interview. There was no obituary in the New York Times (until last year as part of that paper’s “Overlooked” feature that corrects the fact that, since 1851, the obituaries had been dominated by white men). Though she had a big wound on the back of her head and there were reports of her having been harassed by people using homophobic epithets the night before by the docks and another report of someone bragging in a bar a few days later about having killed a drag queen named Marsha, the death of one of the heroes of gay liberation, who was Black and non-binary, was ruled a suicide. Johnson’s body was found in the Hudson River a few days after the 23rd anniversary of what she did that night. Though Stonewall was one giant leap for the idea of gay, it was actually a pretty small step for people like the people who made it happen. By some metrics, it’s been the most successful rights struggle of the modern era.īut the story of what happened to Johnson, Rivera and DeLarverie is the Stonewall story we who have been the beneficiaries of their work don’t hear and the one that now, 50 years on, we have only just started paying attention to. Though the headline in the Times the next day only said “4 Policemen Hurt in ‘Village’ Raid,” it was an exciting night that turned into a two-day riot that turned into the global gay rights movement. Depending on whose story you listen to, one of them - possibly all of them - threw the bottle, brick or punch that got everyone suddenly thinking gay was okay and maybe the police - and everyone else - should just lay off. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Stormé DeLarverie. And for some reason - maybe it was because the spirit of the ’60s had finally made it to this darkened mob-run tavern or maybe because icon Judy Garland had just recently been buried - this time, they said no. Police raided New York’s Stonewall Inn, as they had before, to break up same-sex couples dancing, which was illegal, and to check that everyone was wearing at least three pieces of gender appropriate clothing, in accordance with another statute at the time. ![]() Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Stormé DeLarverie - three gay activists who all played their part in the night that started a movement.įifty years ago this summer, a bottle was thrown, a cop was punched and a movement was born. ![]() In remembrance of the Stonewall riots, which began on June 28, 1969, we look back at our feature about the uprising’s 50th anniversary in 2019 while paying tribute to Marsha P. ![]()
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