Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera: Who Really Started Stonewall
Quick Answer
Who started the Stonewall riots? The Stonewall uprising of June 28, 1969 was led primarily by transgender women and drag queens of color, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Both women went on to found STAR, an organization that housed homeless trans youth in New York City. They were later marginalized by the mainstream gay rights movement. Marsha P. Johnson was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992. The case was ruled suicide in under an hour. Her friends said she was murdered. It has never been solved.
In June 1973, four years after Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera fought her way to the microphone at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in Washington Square Park. The crowd was mostly white, mostly cisgender, and they booed her. She kept going. "I've been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and sisters in jail that write me every week and ask for your help," she told them. "And y'all better quiet down." They didn't. She finished the speech anyway. When it was over, she walked off the stage. The movement that Stonewall built had spent four years trying to figure out how to get rid of her.
The bar that shouldn't have existed
The Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village was owned by the Genovese crime family. It had no liquor license. The Mafia paid off the police to look the other way most of the time, but raids still happened. When cops showed up, they would check IDs, arrest people whose identification didn't match their presentation, and detain anyone in drag. New York City law at the time required people to be wearing at least three items of clothing "appropriate" to their assigned sex, or they could be arrested for "masquerading." The law was enforced selectively and often violently.
The raid on June 28, 1969 started at 1:20 in the morning. Police moved in to arrest staff and patrons. What happened next is disputed in its details but not in its outcome: the crowd fought back. People threw bottles, coins, and garbage. The officers barricaded themselves inside the bar while a crowd of hundreds gathered outside. The riots continued for six days.
Marsha and Sylvia
Marsha P. Johnson was 23 years old in 1969. She was a Black drag queen who had come to New York from Elizabeth, New Jersey and was living on the street and occasionally in the margins of the Village when she could find a bed. The P in her name stood for Pay It No Mind, which was her answer when anyone asked about her gender. She later said she arrived at Stonewall around 2am that night, after the riot had already started, and found the place already on fire. She stayed and she fought.
Sylvia Rivera was 17. She was Puerto Rican and Venezuelan, had been homeless since she was eleven, and had been living on and off in the Village for years. Rivera and Johnson had met years earlier and had become close. Rivera said later that Johnson was like a mother to her. Rivera was inside the Stonewall Inn when the raid began. She stayed until the end.
In 1970, the two of them founded STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The organization ran a shelter for homeless trans youth out of a building in lower Manhattan. Rivera paid the rent herself. The mainstream gay organizations did not send money. STAR House lasted two years before the building was lost. They had housed, by some counts, more than 200 people.
The rewriting
By the early 1970s, the gay rights movement was trying to go mainstream. The strategy required looking respectable. Drag queens and trans women of color were not considered respectable. The movement that Stonewall had built began quietly moving its founders to the margins.
The 1973 rally was not a one-off. Rivera had been excluded from organizing committees, her presence treated as a liability. When she got to the microphone that day, it was because she pushed her way there. The crowd that booed her included people who had been at Stonewall. They were booing her because she was calling out the movement for abandoning incarcerated LGBTQ people and homeless trans youth: the people with the least power, the people she had spent years actually helping. The speech is on video. It runs about three minutes.
In 2015, a film called Stonewall was released. The director was Roland Emmerich. The film featured a fictional white cisgender gay man from Indiana throwing the first brick at the uprising. The backlash was immediate. The film flopped. Emmerich later said he understood why people were angry. That did not change what the film had done.
July 6, 1992
Marsha P. Johnson's body was found floating in the Hudson River near the Christopher Street piers on July 6, 1992. It was days after that year's Pride march. The NYPD ruled her death a suicide. The investigation lasted roughly 45 minutes.
Her friends and the people who knew her said she had not been suicidal. They said she had been happy, that she had plans, that she had seemed fine. There were reports of head trauma. The police attributed it to the water. The case was closed.
In 2012, after sustained pressure from activists, the NYPD reclassified the cause of death from suicide to undetermined. The investigation was reopened. No arrests were made. The case remains open and unsolved. Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Brooklyn was named in her honor in 2020. The park sits along the waterfront near the East River.
Sylvia Rivera died of liver cancer in 2002. In her final years she had returned to activism, living and organizing out of a church in Greenwich Village. She was 50 years old.
The No Kings Yas Queens shirt is for the people who know this history. The full collection is for everyone who finds the official version of history a little too convenient. If you want more on what the movement erased, the post on the real history of drag covers where it actually came from.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Did Marsha P. Johnson start the Stonewall riots?
Marsha P. Johnson is among the most well-known participants in the Stonewall uprising, but the exact sequence of events is disputed. Johnson herself said in a later interview that she arrived around 2am, after the riot had already started. She stayed and fought. The uprising involved many people, including other trans women and drag queens of color. The historical debate has often focused on "who threw the first bottle" while the broader point — that the rebellion was led by trans women and drag queens, not by white cisgender gay men — is not disputed by serious historians.
Who was Sylvia Rivera?
Sylvia Rivera was a transgender activist born in 1951 in New York City to a Puerto Rican father and Venezuelan mother. She was homeless from age eleven and present at the Stonewall Inn on the night of the 1969 uprising. Along with Marsha P. Johnson, she founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) in 1970 and ran STAR House, a shelter for homeless trans youth in lower Manhattan. She was pushed to the margins of the mainstream gay rights movement throughout the 1970s and 80s, returned to public activism in the late 1990s, and died of liver cancer in 2002 at age 50.
What happened to Marsha P. Johnson?
Marsha P. Johnson was found dead in the Hudson River on July 6, 1992, days after the New York City Pride march. The NYPD ruled her death a suicide after a brief investigation, a conclusion her friends and community rejected. There were reports of head trauma on her body that were attributed to the river. In 2012, the NYPD reclassified the cause of death from suicide to undetermined and reopened the case. As of 2024, no arrests have been made and the case remains open.
What was STAR?
STAR stood for Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, founded by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera around 1970. The organization ran STAR House, a shelter for homeless transgender and gender non-conforming youth in New York City. Rivera paid the rent on the building herself. The mainstream gay organizations of the era did not provide funding. STAR House operated for roughly two years before the building was lost. The organization housed an estimated 200 or more people during its existence.
What was Sylvia Rivera's 1973 speech?
On June 24, 1973, at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in Washington Square Park, Sylvia Rivera forced her way to the microphone and delivered a speech that has since become one of the most significant documents in LGBTQ history. She was booed by a majority-white, majority-cisgender crowd. The speech, known as "Y'all Better Quiet Down," called out the mainstream gay rights movement for abandoning LGBTQ people in prison and homeless trans youth. The speech is approximately three minutes long and is available on video.
Why are Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera important?
Johnson and Rivera were among the key participants in the Stonewall uprising, founded one of the first trans rights organizations in the United States, and spent years doing direct service work housing homeless trans youth at a time when no mainstream organization would fund it. They were then systematically marginalized by the movement their rebellion helped create. Their story is not incidental to LGBTQ history. It is central to it, which is precisely why it took decades to end up in the mainstream version.
