MARSHA: An LGBTQ Rights Activist, Drag Performer and Trailblazer

“We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are.”

TRQ: Marsha P. Johnson Born August 24, 1945

Drag performer, model and LGBTQ rights activist Marsha P. Johnson was born on August 24, 1945. “Mayor of Christopher Street” to residents of Greenwich Village, Johnson was a vital presence in the New York art scene and helped instigate the Stonewall riots. Johnson helped start the Gay Liberation Front and was drag mother for the S.T.A.R. House. Drag queen RuPaul has called Johnson “the true Drag Mother” and artist Anohni named his band Antony and the Johnsons after her. 

Johnson was born Malcolm Michaels Jr. in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a religious family heavily involved in the Methodist Episcopal church. Johnson remembered her mother describing homosexuals as being “lower than a dog.” At age 5 Johnson started wearing dresses but stopped temporarily after she was raped by a teenage boy. 

In 1963, once Johnson graduated from high school, she moved to New York City. With only a bag of clothing and $15 in her pocket, she struggled to survive. Finding it difficult to land a job, Johnson began “hustling” as a sex worker near Howard Johnson’s. She came out, mixed women’s clothes into her wardrobe, and used the drag name Marsha P. (for “Pay it no mind”) Johnson, inspired by the Howard Johnson’s restaurant. 

As a sex worker working drag, she lived a dangerous life. Spending time alone with customers in cars and hotel rooms meant Johnson faced the constant threat of violence. One customer shot her. 

When Johnson was 17, she befriended Sylvia Rivera, a trans woman from Puerto Rico. Johnson taught Rivera how to shape an identity, put together a look, and survive on the streets. 

Challenging mainstream ideas of sex and gender, Johnson identified as a gay, transvestite drag queen. She also embraced irreverence, sarcasm, and a camp sensibility. Commentary in Village Voice described her style as “the interstice between masculine and feminine.” She fashioned leftover flowers from Manhattan’s Flower District into crowns and wore them often. 

“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.”— Marsha P. Johnson 

Johnson was comedic, camp and a survivor. Of course, she was also political. The Stonewall uprising happened on June 28, 1969, after the police harassed and humiliated members of the LGBTQ community and publicly arrested them on meritless charges. Pushing back, the community filled the streets in protest and changed the course of LGBTQ history. Johnson and Rivera were among the uprising’s most prominent instigators. 

After Stonewall, Johnson and Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to help homeless transgender youth. STAR provided services in New York, Chicago, throughout California and in England, but Johnson’s contributions as an activist community leader were overlooked as the gay and lesbian liberation movement went mainstream. 

Still living on the streets, Johnson met and posed for pop artist Andy Warhol for his Ladies and Gentlemen series in 1975. When Johnson brought friends to a store, in the Village to see the screen-print portrait on display, owners of the store kicked her out. 

In her life, Johnson struggled with mental health and would sometimes roam naked through city before receiving antipsychotic medication. Knowing no other way to survive, Johnson was arrested over 100 times. She contracted AIDS in 1990 and spoke about it publicly and fearlessly. Johnson organized protests with the grassroots political group ACT UP. 

“How many years has it taken people to realize that we are all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race?”— Marsha P. Johnson 

Johnson’s body was found in the Hudson River on July 6, 1992. At first the police ruled her death a suicide, though her friends argued she was not suicidal. A wound on the back of her head caused others to wonder if she hadn’t been attacked. Indeed, in 2012 the police reopened her case as a potential homicide. The documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017) details activist Victoria Cruz’s efforts to find out more about Johnson’s death. 

Johnson features in Pay It No Mind: Marsha P. Johnson (2012) and Happy Birthday, Marsha! (2017). The Marsha P. Johnson Institute was established in 2015 to protect transgender and gender nonconforming rights. In 2019, the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument inducted Johnson as one of its inaugural fifty American trailblazers. 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

Sources:

Biography

Legacy Project Chicago

NY Times

Out History

Wams NY History