On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village — a gay bar owned by organized crime and patronized by the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ community, including drag queens, homeless youth, and transgender women of color.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were there. Their exact role in the first night of resistance is debated. What is documented: both were in the crowd, both were active in the uprising, and both spent the following years doing something harder than throwing bottles.

Rivera co-founded STAR — Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries — with Johnson in 1970. It provided housing for homeless trans youth at a time when no shelter, no organization, and no government program would help them.

Johnson became a prominent ACT UP activist during the AIDS crisis, throwing herself into advocacy for a community that was dying faster than anyone was moving to stop it.

Both Rivera and Johnson have been repeatedly written out of mainstream LGBTQ history. The anniversary of Stonewall became Pride, a celebration increasingly oriented toward white gay men, while the trans women of color who started the riot received limited recognition until decades later.

Marsha P. Johnson was found dead in the Hudson River in 1992. The death was ruled a suicide. Many who knew her disputed this. The case was reopened and closed again. No one was charged.