Pride #Herstory Month
The women who continue to inspire and pave the way.
Written by platform Social Justice Curator Aisha Becker Burrowes
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson, a Black LGBTQ+ liberation activist and self identified drag queen from New Jersey, is a key figure in not only the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 but the rising tide of queer liberation that boomed in the 1960s. 🌈 We must remember her as a figure in queer history AND Black history.
The “P” in Masha P. Johnson stood for “Pay It No Mind,” which is what Marsha would say in response to questions about her gender. As language around gender evolves, it’s unclear whether Marsha would’ve identified as transgender. What we can say for certain is that she rejected the gender binary and used she/her pronouns. Today, she’s remembered and uplifted by many as a Black transgender woman.
In addition to being an activist, Johnson was a survivor, sex worker and an indelible part of street life in New York’s Greenwich Village for three decades. The “nobody, from Nowheresville” – as she described herself in an interview – moved to New York City from her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, with nothing but $15 in her pocket.
At 23, Johnson became a key figure in the events that followed the police raid on the Village gay bar the Stonewall Inn. Following these events Johnson collaborated with Sylvia Rivera, a Latina LGBTQ+ liberation activist to found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), to support young unhoused LGBTQ+ people.
Despite being invited to lead the annual Pride parades and dedicating her life to helping others she was often marginalized and excluded even within the LGBTQ+ community due to antiBlackness and bias against gender nonconforming people which persists today. She spent her life advocating tirelessly on behalf of sex workers, incarcerated folks and people with HIV/AIDS.
The @mpjinstitute exists in her honor. To support her legacy and protect the human rights of Black transgender people visit www.marshap.org
Edited by @blairimani
Credit: Modern Herstory @modernherstory by @BlairImani
“I am still fighting the good fight”–Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, often referred to as Miss Major, is a trans woman activist and community leader for transgender rights, with a particular focus on women of color.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
Stonewall Uprising veteran Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who goes by “Miss Major.”
Miss Major has spent her long life at the intersection of struggles around race, gender and sexuality in the U.S.and has confronted the institutionalization and imprisonment of transgender women. Born in 1940 in Chicago, Griffin-Gracy came out as transgender during the nascent LGBT rights movement in the late 1960s. Miss Major moved to NYC in the early 1960s and was a sex worker for years out of necessity. In New York, she met Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who played key roles in the Stonewall riots. But Miss Major wasn’t around for the years following the Stonewall riots; she was sentenced to five years in prison after an altercation with the police. She was incarcerated at Attica in 1971 when riots broke out and inmates demanded better living conditions. Those two seminal events inspired decades of activism. These days Miss Major is executive director of the Gender Variant Intersex Project, which works with imprisoned transgender women.
Miss Major has spent forty years in activism, fighting against the prison system, racism, and transphobia in the United States. She is an award winning leader in social justice, and recently founded the organization House of Griffin-Gracy in Little Rock, Arizona.
"We've got to revolt, and we’ve got to reclaim who the fuck we are and let these people realize, before they came along, we were honored and worshipped and appreciated and adored.”–Miss Major
A graphic poster reading “Stone Wall was a riot: Don’t forget our queerstory” with an illustration of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Riviera
Sylvia Riviera
“If it wasn’t for the drag queen, there would be no gay liberation movement. We’re the front-liners.”
Sylvia Rivera was born and raised in New York City and lived most of her life in or near the city; she was of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent. At age 3 Riviera become an orphan and was raised by her grandmother, their relationship was tumultuous and caused her to run away at aged 11, and engaged in survival sex work to survive. A turning point came when Rivera and Johnson’s paths crossed in New York in 1963. “She was like a mother to me,” Rivera said of Johnson.
Rivera and Johnson became key figures in the events that followed the police raid on the Greenwich Village gay bar the Stonewall Inn on 28 June 1969. Historians say it is unclear if Riviera was present during the evening of the Stonewall riots, but nevertheless Rivera's activism began in 1970 after she joined the Gay Activists Alliance at 18 years old, where she fought for not only the rights of gay people but also for the inclusion of drag queens like herself in the movement. “Before gay rights, before the Stonewall, I was involved in the Black Liberation movement, the peace movement,” Rivera said in an interview in 1989. “I felt I had the time and I knew that I had to do something. My revolutionary blood was going back then. I was involved with that.”
With close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.
Today, decades after Rivera was fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights, recognition is finally growing for her invaluable contributions to social justice, but the transgender community is still under attack.
According to a 2019 report, 331 trans and gender diverse people were killed across the world in the year up to September, including one in the UK and nine in Europe.
Andrea Jenkins is an American policy aide, politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is known for being the first black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, serving since January 2018 on the Minneapolis City Council.
“My whole life I’ve been fighting, trying to improve the conditions for Black people. That’s what I will continue to do, even if they never stand up for me.”–Andrea Jenkins
We celebrate Andrea Jenkins (born 1961, Chicago, Illinois, US.) Andrea Jenkins made history in 2017 as the first African American openly trans woman to be elected to office in the United States. In addition to representing Ward 8 and serving as the Vice-President of the Minneapolis City Council, She is a poet, oral historian and an activist.
Jenkins lives just a few blocks away from 38th and Chicago, the crossroads in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed on 25 May last year. She spent two decades of her life working to revitalise the community there, and kicked off her 2017 campaign for the city council’s Eighth ward in an arts centre a few yards away. She sang gospel in front of the nation’s media at a press conference in the days after Floyd’s death and played a central role in re-examining how the city’s long-criticised police force was funded. She insisted that racism be treated as a national public health emergency.
She began her career working as an aide and helping to establish the Transgender Issues Work Group. Jenkin’s curated the University of Minnesota's Transgender Oral History Project. In 2016, she ran for city council and won with over 70% of the vote. Jenkins sets a powerful precedent for the future of politics and LQBTG+ activism.
