Pay Her Some Mind: Marsha P. Johnson

‘They call me Marsha ‘Pay It No Mind’ Johnson for a reason; I try and pay a lot of those little things that happen to me in life with absolutely no mind.’

Marsha P. Johnson; an activist, a performer, a prostitute, a protector, a pariah, a rioter, a queen. As a front-runner of the LGBTQ+ movement, Johnson has historically been given very little credit for her work towards liberation, justice and equality for people of all genders and sexualities. Who was Marsha P. Johnson, really? And why do LGBTQ+ persons everywhere have so much to thank her for?

Note: During Johnson’s lifetime, the 60s, 70s and 80s, the LGBTQ+ community did not have the same vast vocabulary to describe gender as we do now in 2020. Johnson was a transgender women, but often referred to herself as a drag queen or transvestite. Both terms are outdated in regards to defining gender expression, transvestite especially is considered a derogatory slur. When quoting directly from sources, I will not omit these words, but know that their context in modern society has now drastically changed. When asked about her gender expression, Johnson herself said ‘I don’t know what I am if I’m not a woman’. Therefore, as the writer of this biography, I will be referring to her with feminine pronouns and by her chosen name.

Born as Malcolm Michaels Jr. on August 24th 1945, Johnson was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was the fifth of seven children in a working class working class family, who were always active members of their local Mount Teamon Church. Johnson’s father, Malcolm Michaels Sr., worked at a general motors factory, whilst her mother Alberta was a housekeeper. She claimed to have been five years old when she began to wear dresses, though she noted she was somewhat naive in doing so, as boys in her neighbourhood would try to ‘get fresh’ with her. From a young age, Johnson was the victim of sexual abuse, something that she would experience for her entire life. Despite this, Johnson held on to her religious beliefs, saying that ‘[Jesus Christ] was the only many I could ever trust [...] he takes me very seriously’.

In 1963, Johnson graduated from Thomas A. Edison Highschool, and decided she would move to New York City with nothing but $15 and a bag of clothes. ‘I learned and I saw, I learned to go out with different men. I waited on tables. I learned how to survive,’ Johnson told one interviewer. It wasn’t until her big move to the city that Johnson felt she could embrace her LGBTQ identity. ‘It didn’t look too gay, until I saw all these nellie things hustling,’ she explained to Steve Watson, writing for The Village Voice in an article, The Drag of Politics, which would go on to be one of Johnson’s most well known interviews. Soon after arriving in New York, Johnson began to experiment with her new identity and drag persona. In her early days, she would only wear partial drag and began referring to herself as Black Marsha. Later, she would adopt the name Marsha P. Johnson - Johnson being taken from her beloved Howard Johnson restaurant on 42nd street. The ‘P’ truly stood for ‘Pay It No Mind’ - something she reminded everyone who knew her frequently and certainly.

‘I've been in gay liberation ever since it first started in 1969’.

Indeed, Johnson is most widely recognised as an instigator of the Stonewall Inn riots. At the time of the riots, homosexuality and ‘cross-dressing’ were illegal in every state but Illinois. LGBTQ persons had to find places to express themselves away from the eyes of the law. The Stonewall Inn was a notoriously seedy gay bar, and one of few places that LGBTQ people could convene. This is not to say that it was inherently safe; there were no fire exits, the bathrooms were filthy and the toilets often overran. However, it was the only place in the city that allowed same-sex dancing, an illegal activity at the time. At 1:20am on Saturday, June 28th 1969, a number of policemen both in plainclothes and uniform swarmed New York’s Stonewall Inn, located on Christopher street. This was only unusual in that usually, the staff of the Inn would usually receive a warning about an upcoming raid before the police arrived, so they would be able to warn their patrons prior to enforcement arrival. Perhaps it was the surprise of the raid which led to the events that would follow: an all-out riot.

One witness, Micheal Fader, recalled ‘Things happened so fast you kind of got caught not knowing. We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit [...] everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw [...] it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue’. Though accounts of that night vary widely, many attribute the beginning of the resistance to Johnson. According to eye-witnesses Morty Manford and Marty Robinson, after witnessing notable lesbian activist Stormé DeLarverie being violently arrested and handcuffed by the police on scene, Johnson declared ‘I have my civil rights!’ and threw a shot glass at a mirror in the bar. This event has often been referred to as ‘the shot glass heard around the world’ by the LGBTQ community.

The Stonewall riots are so important as they remind us that the first pride march was a riot, which is so often forgotten in today’s LGBTQ activism. By 4am on the night of the 28th, the streets had been cleared, yet the riots would continue the next night and well into the week, bringing the same levels of violence and disruption as the first night had. Eventually, rioting died down, but on the the year’s anniversary of the Stonewall riots (28th June 1970) New York, Los Angeles and Chicago held their first ‘gay pride’ parades. Surprisingly, there was little resistance from onlookers, but this may be because the marchers took up the entire street for fifteen blocks.

Johnson’s activism did not end with the Stonewall riots. The same year as the first pride parade, 1970, Johnson joined her close friend and fellow transgender woman Rivera in founding ‘Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries’. According to Johnson, ‘S. T. A. R. originally was started by the president, Rivera, and Bubbles Rose Marie, and they asked me to come in as vice president. S. T. A. R. is a very revolutionary group’.

(Left: Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson)

And revolutionary it was. Like many transgender people in 1970s New York, Johnson was unemployed, unable to find work and homeless. Finding shelter was difficult due to the rampant racism and transphobia of the time. Rivera, Marie and Johnson saw a need to house vulnerable LGBTQ+ persons including themselves. ‘Marsha and I just decided it was time to help each other and help our other kids,’ Rivera told interviewer Leslie Feinberg, ‘We fed people and clothed people. We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent. We didn’t want the kids out in the streets hustling’.

Originally, S. T. A. R.’s home was a trailer truck parked in an outdoor parking lot in Greenwich Village. Around two dozen S. T. A. R. youth lived there. However, one day Johnson and Rivera returned to the trailer to find it was being towed away whilst it’s residents were still sleeping. Though most were able to jump out before the driver could get very far, one woke en route to California. After this, it was decided that S. T. A. R. needed a more permanent home. They managed to get a building at 213 Second Avenue, where for almost three years, they housed and protected countless vulnerable homeless youth, teaching many of them how to read and write. Sadly, after rent increased beyond what S. T. A. R. could afford, they were evicted from the building and the organisation as it once was came apart.

‘It’s hard work, being beautiful, when you don’t have a place. I do my best though.’

Johnson gave her entire life over to her cause - the liberation of LGBTQ+ persons everywhere - and suffered the consequences. From 1966 she lived on the streets and engaged in prostitution so that she could provide for herself as well as other homeless LGBTQ+ persons. She claimed to have been arrested for sex work over 100 times, and one occasion was even shot. With all that she had been through, it was no wonder that Johnson began to struggle with her mental health. It was known among her close friends that Johnson suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness. Robert Heide, a friend of Johnson, described how when she was under stress she would change from ‘generous and warmhearted’ to ‘a very nasty, vicious man, looking for fights’; historians have suggested that Johnson’s volatile behaviour may have been the result of a schizotypal personality disorder at work. Multiple times, Johnson had been found walking nude up Christopher Street and would be taken away and hospitalised, treated with anti-psychotic medications, but after a month or so would return to usual. Due to her situation as a homeless black transgender woman, it is unsurprising she never received proper medical help for her conditions, which were more than likely brought on from a life of trauma and destitution.

‘I don't think they do a good investigation on a gay murder. They think, ‘Oh, that is one more gone.’ When you gay, it takes forever’.

Being a transgender woman, even in today’s society, is incredibly dangerous. In 2019 alone, the USA counted 21 murders of transgender women - all but one of them were women of colour. Sadly, the true number of victims is likely to be far higher, given that many transgender deaths are often misreported with the victims being deadnamed by media, police or even their own families. Johnson knew this danger too well. When asked ‘Isn’t it dangerous sometimes when someone thinks you’re a woman and then they find out you’re a man?’ Johnson replied, ‘Yes it is. You can lose your life. I’ve almost lost my life five times’.

On July 6th, 1992, Marsha P. Johnson was found floating in New York’s Hudson river, dead. She was only 46 years old. The supposed ‘investigation’ consisted only of two phone calls before her death was ruled a suicide.

Netflix’s 2017 documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson best details the circumstances surrounding the suspicious nature of Johnson’s death. There is a large amount of uncertainty around the truth of Marsha’s death. Like many deaths of LGBTQ+ persons at the time, the police almost immediately ruled her passing a suicide. After Johnson’s death, the Village was in uproar - protests were held with demands for justice for Johnson as well as all other murder victims in the community; no justice then was found.

It wasn’t until 2012 that activist Mariah Lopez succeeded in having the New York Police Department re-open the inquiry into Johnson’s death. The documentary follows transgender activist Victoria Cruz, who 25 years on from her passing, begins to put pressure on the investiagation into Johnson’s death. Unfortunately, the case remains unsolved to this day, though the Anti-Violence Project (who Cruz works for) continue to fight to find out the truth about Johnson’s death and justice for many other transgender women who never got their day in court.

‘I am very fortunate to be black, gay and transvestite, and get as far as I did in this world.’

Unfortunately, Johnson’s involvement in LGBTQ+ activism goes largely uncredited in writings about Stonewall and the beginnings of gay liberation. The attempts to erase Johnson from LGBTQ history speak to long standing racism and transphobia even within the community itself. Much of LGBTQ narrative is dominated by white, cis-gendered gay men. There was a great deal of controversy surrounding the 2015 film Stonewall, which downplayed the roles of Johnson, Rivera and DeLarverie in favour of centring the narrative around a cis-gendered, gay male lead. As Ehn Nothing writes, ‘Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were not respectable queers, nor were they poster-children for the modern image of “gay” or “transgender.” They were poor, gender-variant women of colour, street-based sex workers, with confrontational, revolutionary politics.’

This erasure and exclusion from the mainstream LGBTQ narrative was something Johnson faced in her own time. ‘There's always been discrimination within the queer community,’ said Michael Musto, longtime friend of Johnson, ‘In the ‘60s especially a lot of the white gay men looked down on people of colour, [they] sometimes looked down on drag and trans’. In 1973, Johnson and Silvera were even banned from marching in that year’s New York pride parade by the gay and lesbian committee running the event, as ‘drag queens’ were ‘giving them a bad name’ - this didn’t stop either of them from definitely marching ahead of the parade. Still, it is deeply upsetting to consider that they were excluded from the very form of protest that they started only four years previously.

Despite the attempts of the wider media to erase her from the LGBTQ+ liberation narrative, the legacy that Johnson left behind is undeniable. She was never afraid to speak up for herself, and for those like her who she saw facing oppression. She made this particularly clear in one interview; ‘I think if transvestites don’t stand up for themselves, nobody else is going to stand up for transvestites. If a transvestite doesn’t say I’m gay and I’m proud and I’m a transvestite, then nobody else is going to hop up there and say I’m gay and I’m proud and I’m a transvestite for them’.

Susan Stryker, an professor of women’s studies at the University of Arizona, recognised how Johnson’s layered marginalised identity contributed to her strength of character: ‘Marsha P. Johnson could be perceived as the most marginalised of people - black, queer, gender-nonconforming, poor. You might expect a person in such a position to be fragile, brutalised, beaten down. Instead, Marsha had this capacity to find joy in a world of suffering. She channelled it into political action, and did it with a kind of fierceness, grace and whimsy, with a loopy, absurdist reaction to it all’.

Though the initial run of S. T. A. R. ended in the early 70s, it was later reformed by Rivera and transgender activist Mariah Lopez in 2000. Rivera passed away in 2002, but still Lopez continues the work that they began. ‘I am carrying on the legacy started by two homeless trans people. We help those in hospitals and prisons,’ Lopez explains, ‘Sylvia and Marsha couldn’t envision the world we live in today and S. T. A. R. cannot die.’

This is not to say that the activism undertaken by Rivera and Johnson has gone completely forgotten. In 2019, the city of New York announced that there would be a statue placed in Greenwich Village to commemorate both Johnson and Rivera for their roles as key figures in the Stonewall riots and contributions to LGBTQ+ activism. New York’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, said she felt it was important for the monument to have a name and face: ‘The LGBTQ+ movement was portrayed very much as a white, gay male movement, this monument counters that trend of whitewashing the history’. They hope the statue will be completed by early 2021, ready for Pride season to begin in June. Similarly, street artists Homo Riot, The Dusty Rebel and Suriani made the Brooklyn ‘Pay It No Mind’ mural as a tribute to Johnson and her prominence as a figure of the Stonewall Riots, on the 50th year anniversary of the events.

‘Until my people have their rights, there’s no cause for celebration.’

Marsha P. Johnson reminds us that even though the LGBTQ+ movement has come so far, there is so much further to go. It is so often forgotten in the summer seasons of rainbows and glitter that the first Pride was a riot; a riot started by a transgender woman of colour. Regardless of all the discrimination and hatred she faced, Johnson is remembered by those who knew her as a selfless, loving individual who fought endlessly for LGBTQ+ persons everywhere to enjoy the rights and freedoms that she could have only dreamed of in her own time. Her memory matters - we should all pay her some mind.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:

Adams, Sam, "First Reviews: ‘Stonewall’ Is ‘An Embarrassing Punishment Of A Film’", Indiewire.Com, 2015 <https://www.indiewire.com/2015/09/first-reviews-stonewall-is-an-embarrassing-punishment-of-a-film-130370/#!> [Accessed 11 April 2020]

Bono, Sal, "The Death Of Marsha P. Johnson And The Quest For Closure", Insideedition.Com, 2019 <https://www.insideedition.com/death-marsha-p-johnson-and-quest-closure-51708> [Accessed 12 April 2020]

Brooklyn Street Art, "Homo Riot, Suriani, The Dusty Rebel “Pay It No Mind”", Brooklynstreetart.Com, 2019 <https://www.brooklynstreetart.com/2019/06/06/homo-riot-suriani-the-dusty-rebel-pay-it-no-mind/> [Accessed 20 April 2020].

Carter, David, Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked The Gay Revolution (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013), p. 64, 66

Chan, Sewell, "Overlooked: Marsha P. Johnson", The New York Times, 2018 <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-marsha-p-johnson.html> [Accessed 7 April 2020]

Duberman, Martin, Stonewall (New York: Penguin Random House, 2019)

Feinberg, Leslie, "Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries", Workers.Org, 2006 <https://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-73/> [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Feinberg, Leslie, Transgender Warriors : Making History From Joan Of Arc To Dennis Rodman (Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 131 <https://archive.org/details/transgenderwarri00fein/page/153> [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Fosburgh, Lacey, "Thousands Of Homosexuals Hold A Protest Rally In Central Park", The New York Times, 1970, p. 1 <https://www.nytimes.com/1970/06/29/archives/thousands-of-homosexuals-hold-a-protest-rally-in-central-park.html> [Accessed 11 April 2020]

France, David, The Death And Life Of Marsha P. Johnson (New York: Netflix, 2017)

Holden, Stephen, "June 28, 1969: Turning Point In Gay Rights History", Nytimes.Com, 2020 <https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/movies/16stone.html> [Accessed 12 April 2020]

Jacobs, Julia, "Two Transgender Activists Are Getting A Monument In New York", Nytimes.Com, 2019 <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/arts/transgender-monument-stonewall.html> [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Kasino, Michael, Pay It No Mind - The Life And Times Of Marsha P. Johnson, 2012 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjN9W2KstqE> [Accessed 7 April 2020]

Kohler, Will, "June 28, 1969: The True History Of The Stonewall Riots", Back2stonewall.Com, 2019 <http://www.back2stonewall.com/2019/06/the-true-history-stonewall-riots.html> [Accessed 11 April 2020]

Musto, Michael, "Marsha P. Johnson Case Reopened", villagevoice.com, 2012 <https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/11/26/marsha-p-johnson-case-reopened/> [Accessed 22 April 2020]

Nothing, Ehn, STREET TRANSVESTITE ACTION REVOLUTIONARIES: SURVIVAL, REVOLT, AND QUEER ANTAGONIST STRUGGLE (Untorelli Press, 2013), p. 6, 22, 24, 26, 28. <https://untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2011/12/STAR.pdf> [Accessed 7 April 2020]

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Watson, Steve, "The Drag Of Politics", The Village Voice, 1979, p. 72 <https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/06/04/stonewall-1979-the-drag-of-politics/> [Accessed 13 April 20