During Pride Month, it’s especially important to remember trailblazers like Marsha P. Johnson, a trans icon and one of the most prominent figures of the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City…
By Christopher Turner
Illustrations by Michael Hak
In the annals of LGBTQ+ history, few figures shine as brightly – or as defiantly – as the late Marsha P. Johnson. A fearless trans activist, self-identified drag queen and self-described “street queen,” Johnson was a fixture of street life in New York City’s Greenwich Village for nearly three decades, a pivotal force in the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s, a protector of marginalized youth, and a symbol of unapologetic self-expression. Her legacy, though long overshadowed, has come to be recognized as foundational to the fight for 2SLGBTQI+ rights.
Today, historians and friends of Johnson describe her as a trans woman. The term transgender was not in wide use in Johnson’s lifetime; she usually used she/her pronouns for herself, but also referred to herself as gay, as a transvestite or simply as a drag queen.
Johnson played a pivotal role in the historic 1969 Stonewall Riots – protests in response to the ongoing police raids of gay bars in New York City that are widely credited as sparking the modern-day 2SLGBTQI+ rights movement.
“At the forefront of the riots and the early movement were transgender and gender-nonconforming women of colour, like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy,” the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law wrote in a 2019 article for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
As we face an era of backlash against increasing affirmation and acceptance of 2SLGBTQI+ identities, it’s more important than ever to understand, learn about and share queer history, which has historically often been overlooked. In February 2025, following US President Donald Trump’s executive order, the US National Park Service removed the “T” from the “LGBTQ+” acronym and also removed all references to transgender people from the official Stonewall National Monument website and other government websites.
While the Trump administration attempts to erase transgender people from history south of the border, it’s important to remember that Stonewall’s history is not only part of queer history, it is undeniably tied to transgender history. Johnson and countless other trans and gender-nonconforming individuals fought bravely, and often at great personal risk, to push back against oppressive systems both before and after the riots.
But who was Marsha P. Johnson beyond the protests and headlines? What was it about her that made her such an enduring figure of resistance and love? This is the story of a woman who stood at the front lines of queer history, armed with flowers in her hair and an unbreakable spirit.
From Elizabeth, New Jersey, to the streets of New York
Marsha P. Johnson was born Malcolm Michaels Jr. on August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Her father, Malcolm Michaels Sr., worked on the assembly line at a General Motors factory in Linden, and her mother, Alberta (née Claiborne) Michaels, was a housekeeper. Johnson was raised in an extremely religious household alongside six siblings, and the family attended Mount Teman African Methodist Episcopal Church. Johnson practised her Christian faith throughout her life; later, she was drawn to Catholicism and also frequently visited houses of worship of other faiths. Commenting on this upbringing, Johnson once said, “I got married to Jesus Christ when I was 16 years old, still in high school.” According to her nephew, Johnson always maintained a close but fraught relationship with her family back in New Jersey.
From an early age, Johnson knew they were different. Johnson first began wearing dresses at the age of five, but stopped temporarily because of harassment from boys who lived nearby and the rigid gender norms of the time that encouraged men to suppress any expressions of femininity.
Despite these restrictions, Johnson found ways to explore her identity. She later recalled being bullied as a child and feeling alienated from her community. However, she also spoke fondly of finding small moments of joy in her youth, such as playing with dolls and finding solace in faith.
In an interview conducted with Johnson on June 26, 1992, she revealed that she had been a victim of sexual assault at a young age by another boy, who was around 13. After this, Johnson described the idea of being gay as “some sort of dream,” rather than something that seemed possible, and so chose to remain sexually inactive until she left New Jersey for New York City at the age of 17.
In December 1962, Johnson entered the United States Navy under her birth name and stayed for six months; during that time, she earned a GED from Thomas A. Edison High School in Elizabeth. After her honourable discharge in June 1963, Johnson promptly packed a bag with little more than a few belongings and took a leap of faith: she moved to New York City, a place that would allow her to embrace her true self. She later recalled that she left New Jersey with $15 and a bag of clothes.
Upon arrival in Greenwich Village, commonly known as “the Village” to New Yorkers, Johnson alternated between going by her given name, Malcolm, and a persona she had created: Black Marsha. However, life in New York was not easy. Initially Johnson began waiting tables in Greenwich Village, but soon began spending time with street hustlers near the Howard Johnson’s restaurant at Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street. Like many LGBTQ+ youth living in the city at the time, Johnson faced homelessness, discrimination and police brutality. Johnson did not have a permanent home during this time, and bounced around sleeping at friends’ homes, hotels, restaurants and movie theatres. She often relied on the kindness of friends and strangers to survive.
Not long after moving to New York, then 17-year-old Johnson met 11-year-old Sylvia Rivera, a Puerto Rican transgender girl, and the two became instant friends. Rivera later said of Johnson, “She was like a mother to me.” As Johnson had done for herself, she encouraged Rivera to love herself and her identity.
Johnson engaged in prostitution and was often arrested – she stopped counting after the 100th time, she later said – and was once, in the late 1970s, even shot. She could often be found in seedy hotels near Times Square, including the Dixie Hotel (now the Hotel Carter) on West 43rd Street.
“The ones that used to make the most money were the boys that could wear their own hair, with just a little bit of makeup,” she later recalled.
Johnson eventually fully embraced her gender-nonconforming identity and adopted the name that would make her famous throughout the city: Marsha P. Johnson. Initially she said that the “P” stood for “Piola,” but she quickly changed that to “Pay It No Mind,” a phrase she often used to dismiss nosy questions about her gender and identity. Johnson even said the phrase once to a judge, who was amused by it, leading to Johnson’s release. The surname came from a Howard Johnson’s restaurant where she liked to hang out.
Johnson’s flamboyant, colourful outfits, often adorned with flowers, and her radiant personality made her a beloved figure in the Village. Within a few years she became a fixture at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street that mostly catered to gay men, where she socialized, performed and found solidarity among other queer individuals.
“My life has been built around sex and gay liberation, being a drag queen,” Johnson said.
The Stonewall Uprising: A moment of defiance
Although New York State downgraded sodomy from a felony to a misdemeanour in 1950, living openly outside the sexual mainstream often meant a difficult life, because persecution of gay people and criminalization of their activities were still common. Same-sex dancing in public was prohibited. The State Liquor Authority banned bars from serving alcoholic beverages to gay people. People could be charged with sexual deviancy for cross-dressing. Police enforcement was often arbitrary.
Early on the morning of June 28, 1969, the mafia-run gay bar Stonewall Inn was raided by the police – a common occurrence at the time. But this time, instead of complying, the bar’s patrons fought back. The riots reportedly started at around 1:20 am, after butch lesbian Stormé DeLarverie fought back against a police officer who attempted to arrest her. This is confirmed by police reports and eyewitnesses.
While the first two nights of rioting were the most intense, the clashes with police would result in a series of spontaneous demonstrations and marches through Greenwich Village for roughly a week afterwards, and Johnson was there every night.
Numerous legends have grown around the event – usually characterized as a riot, but more recently described as a rebellion or uprising – but the evidence acknowledges that Johnson was among the “vanguard” of those who resisted the police, according to David Carter, the author of the 2004 book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. Johnson was 23 at the time. A number of Stonewall veterans interviewed by Carter named Johnson, along with Zazu Nova and Jackie Hormona, as “three individuals known to have been in the vanguard” of the pushback against the police at the uprising.
Throughout the years, Johnson gave conflicting recollections of the events that night. In 1987, she recalled arriving at around “2:00 [that morning],” saying that “the riots had already started” by that time and that the Stonewall building had already been set on fire by police.
While there are differing accounts of who actually threw the first brick during the riot, most agree that Johnson was a leader in the resistance. According to witnesses, she was among the first to take action, shouting, throwing objects and encouraging others to fight back. On the second night of the riot, Johnson climbed up a lamppost and dropped a heavy bag onto a police car, shattering the windshield. Some accounts claim that she also threw a shot glass at a mirror, an act now known as “the shot glass heard around the world.”
What is undeniable to any critic who questions the Stonewall event is that Johnson was a well-documented key figure in the disturbances immediately following the police raid at the Stonewall Inn, and her presence and leadership in the following days cemented her as a key figure in the movement.
A radical force for change
Stonewall helped to galvanize a more assertive, even militant, gay-rights movement in New York City, and ultimately prompted the first Gay Pride parades, which took place in some cities across North America in 1970.
On the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, on June 28, 1970, Johnson marched in the first Gay Pride rally, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Day.
After Stonewall, Johnson was quick to join gay rights organizations that formed, and became one of the most visible activists in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. However, the movement began to silo trans people of colour and their issues as it focused on cisgender members of the community. Johnson knew trans people need support, too, so she got to work. Along with Rivera, she co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR, in 1970 to advocate for young transgender people. STAR for a time provided shelter, food, clothing and support for homeless transgender and gender-nonconforming youth – many of whom had been rejected by their families and had nowhere else to go.
The pair also set up STAR House, one of the first known shelters for LGBTQ+ youth. The first STAR House was in the back of an abandoned truck in Greenwich Village. Nearly 24 young people called the truck home until one morning, Johnson and Rivera witnessed the truck driving away with STAR residents still sleeping inside – apparently, the truck was not abandoned after all. As they watched their “kids” jump from a moving truck, the pair realized that they needed to create a real home. Johnson and Rivera rented a dilapidated building with no electricity or running water, which they tried to fix up. Johnson and Rivera used their own money – often earned through sex work – to fund food and rent for those living in the shelter. STAR House was of personal importance to Johnson and Rivera, as they had both spent much of their youth experiencing homelessness and destitution. The pair covered off the rent for eight months; when they could no longer pay, they were all evicted. But the impact of STAR had already been felt by many.
STAR grew out of the Gay Liberation Front, which advocated for sexual liberation and pushed to align gay rights with other social movements. At a time when even mainstream gay rights groups were reluctant to embrace transgender activism, Johnson and Rivera pushed for full inclusion. They fought tirelessly for housing rights, legal protections and healthcare access for transgender people. Their efforts laid the groundwork for much of today’s trans activism.
After STAR disbanded, Johnson continued speaking out for LGBTQ rights and was steadfast in her commitment to helping homeless transgender youth.
Her goal, she declared in an interview for a 1972 book, was “to see gay people liberated and free and to have equal rights that other people have in America,” with her “gay brothers and sisters out of jail and on the streets again.” She added, in a reference to the radical politics of the time, “We believe in picking up the gun, starting a revolution if necessary.”
In 1973, Johnson and Rivera were banned from participating in the New York Gay Pride parade by the gay and lesbian committee administering the event, who stated that they “weren’t gonna allow drag queens” at their marches, claiming they were “giving them a bad name.” Johnson and Rivera’s response? They marched defiantly ahead of the parade.
Johnson was also a prominent member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and frequently participated in demonstrations, marches and sit-ins. She was an outspoken advocate for AIDS awareness, particularly as the epidemic ravaged the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s. She joined ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), demanding better medical treatment and visibility for those living with HIV/AIDS.
During a gay rights rally at New York City Hall in the early ’70s, photographed by Diana Davies, a reporter asked Johnson why the group was demonstrating, Johnson shouted into the microphone, “Darling, I want my gay rights now!”
During another incident around this time, Johnson was confronted by police officers for hustling in New York. When the officers attempted to perform an arrest, Johnson hit them with a handbag that contained two bricks. Asked by the judge for an explanation for hustling, Johnson claimed to be trying to secure enough money for a tombstone for her husband (his name was Cantrell, according to Rivera) – during a time when same-sex marriage was illegal in the United States. When the judge asked what had happened to “this alleged husband,” Johnson responded, “Pig shot him.” Initially sentenced to 90 days in prison for the assault, Johnson’s lawyer eventually convinced the judge that Bellevue Hospital would be more suitable.
A life of joy and struggle
The 1970s were a time of greater visibility for Johnson not only for her endless activism, but for her appearance. Her outfits – red plastic high heels, slippers and stockings, shimmering robes and dresses, costume jewellery, bright wigs, plastic flowers and even artificial fruit in her hair – were often assembled from scavenged or discarded materials.
In 1970, Johnson gave an interview to radio station WBAI, where she stated that she was undergoing feminizing hormone therapy with the goal of eventually getting gender surgery.
“I was no one, nobody, from Nowheresville, until I became a drag queen,” she said in a 1992 interview.
Among those who noticed was Andy Warhol, an influential celebrity in his own right, and a key fixture in New York’s fashion and avant-garde art scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Warhol took Polaroids of Johnson and included her in Ladies and Gentlemen, a 1975 portfolio of 10 screenprints depicting gender-ambiguous drag queens and transgender revellers that was first displayed at The Gilded Grape, a nightclub on Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue. It was a popular hangout for New York’s Black and Latinx trans women and drag queens, and was close to Warhol’s studio, known as The Factory. Johnson is the most famous subject in the Ladies and Gentlemen series; in fact, many in the series remained unlabelled and anonymous for decades. It took researchers years to uncover their names and identities, until finally in 2014 the Warhol Foundation published an official list of all those featured in the Ladies and Gentlemen paintings.
Johnson also gained a small amount of fame as part of the drag performance group Hot Peaches, a legendary drag theatre troupe that celebrated LGBTQ+ culture and resistance and began performing in 1972.
Despite her connection to Warhol, her performances and her fierce activism, Johnson lived much of her life on the margins. She struggled with mental health issues, including schizophrenia, and was often homeless. She had the first in what she said was a series of breakdowns in 1970, the year after the Stonewall Riots, and was in and out of psychiatric institutions after that.
“I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong,” she reportedly often said.
She also faced regular harassment from both the police and members of her own community. Through it all, she never lost her kindness or her sense of humour. But, although generally remembered as generous and warm-hearted, Johnson did have an angry, violent side that could sometimes emerge when they were depressed or under severe stress.
“She would wander, start off talking about one thing and end up miles away; people would say that drugs had ruined her mind, that she was a permanent space cadet,” the historian and author Martin Duberman wrote in the 1993 book Stonewall, adding that Johnson’s mind had “concentrated wonderfully” when she was organizing STAR.
She became a fixture at the Christopher Street Piers, a gathering place for queer youth, and was known for her generosity – giving away her last dollar to someone in need, sharing food and offering words of encouragement.
In 1980, a pivotal year for Johnson, she was invited to ride in the lead car of New York’s annual Gay Pride Parade, and began living at the home of a close friend, the gay activist Randy Wicker. When Wicker’s lover, David, became terminally ill with AIDS, Johnson became his caregiver until he died of AIDS in 1990. After his death, and the death of other friends with the virus, Johnson became committed to sitting with the sick and dying, as well as doing street activism with AIDS activist groups, attending protests by and meetings of ACT UP, the AIDS advocacy organization.
Johnson remained devoutly religious in later life, grieving for friends. She could sometimes be found prostrate before a statue of the Virgin Mary at the Catholic Community of Saints Peter and Paul in Hoboken, New Jersey. She was often also seen lighting candles and praying at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Hoboken, which was renamed Our Lady of Grace in 2008.
In 1992, George Segal’s sculpture, Gay Liberation, was moved to Christopher Park as part of the new Gay Liberation Monument. Johnson famously commented, “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?”
In a June 26, 1992, interview, Johnson said she had been HIV-positive for two years. “They call me a legend in my own time, because there were so many queens gone that I’m one of the few queens left from the ’70s and the ’80s,” she said.
Several days later, she was seen for the last time.
The mysterious death of a revolutionary
Days after New York’s 1992 Gay Pride parade, on July 6, 1992, Johnson’s body was found floating in the Hudson River near the Christopher Street Piers. She was 46. The police quickly ruled it a suicide, despite suspicious circumstances and witness reports of harassment. Johnson’s friends and other members of the local community acknowledge that while Johnson did struggle mentally, she was not suicidal, and many believed she had been murdered, noting that the back of Johnson’s head had a massive wound. But her case was largely ignored by authorities at the time.
Johnson’s death occurred during a time when anti-gay violence was at a peak in New York City, including bias crime by police. In fact, 1992 was the worst year on record up to that point for anti-LGBTQ violence, according to the New York Anti-Violence Project. Johnson was one of the activists who had been drawing attention to the issue, participating in marches and other activism to demand justice for victims, and for an inquiry into how to stop the violence.
Johnson’s body was cremated, and a funeral was held at a local church in Greenwich Village on July 26, 1992. Hundreds of people showed up at the church for her funeral; it was so crowded that people stood on the street. Following the funeral, there was a march down Seventh Avenue, and then friends released Johnson’s ashes over the Hudson River, off the Christopher Street Piers. Police allowed Seventh Avenue to be closed while Johnson’s ashes were carried to the river. After the funeral, a series of demonstrations and marches to the police precinct took place, to demand justice for Johnson.
For years, activists fought to reopen the investigation. Finally, in December 2002, a police investigation resulted in reclassification of Johnson’s cause of death from “suicide” to “undetermined.” Then in November 2012, activist Mariah Lopez succeeded in getting the police to reopen the case as a possible homicide.
In 2016, Victoria Cruz of the Anti-Violence Project also tried to get Johnson’s case reopened, and succeeded in gaining access to previously unreleased documents and witness statements. Cruz sought out new interviews with witnesses, friends, other activists and police who had worked the case or had been on the force at the time of Johnson’s death. Some of her work to find justice for Johnson was filmed by David France for the 2017 documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which streamed on Netflix.
Today, justice for Marsha P. Johnson remains elusive. Her death remains a painful reminder of the violence faced by Black transgender women – a crisis that sadly persists today.
Marsha P. Johnson’s legacy
Johnson’s whole life seemed to be a balance between popularity and exclusion. Throughout Greenwich Village, she was known as “Saint Marsha,” and she had a reputation for being generous and kind. But despite her popularity, Johnson also lived a life of poverty and danger.
Today, Marsha P. Johnson is rightfully recognized as a pioneer of 2SLGBTQI+ rights. Her name has been reclaimed by activists, scholars and artists, who celebrate her contributions not only to the Stonewall riots but to the queer liberation movement and advances around the globe. There are books, movies and documentaries telling her story, as well as murals and plaques bearing her name that can be spotted in gay villages worldwide. In New York City, a bronze sculpture with holes to insert flowers, known as A Love Letter to Marsha by American artist Jesse Palotta, notably became the first statue of a transgender individual in New York City when it was erected in Christopher Park along Christopher Street in the West Village section in 2021.
Then there’s the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, founded in 2019, which continues her work by advocating for Black transgender people, providing resources and fighting against systemic discrimination – something she spent her entire life fighting for.
“As long as gay people don’t have their rights all across America,” she once said, “there’s no reason for celebration.”
She may have lived on society’s margins, but her impact is at the centre of history. Marsha P. Johnson didn’t just fight for trans rights – she fought for love, community and a world where everyone could live without fear.
CHRISTOPHER TURNER is the editor of IN Magazine. He is a Toronto-based writer, editor and lifelong fashionisto with a passion for pop culture and sneakers. Follow him on social media @Turnstylin.
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