Black History Month - Black Trans Women - February 1st

With it being Black History Month in the U.S., I wanted to do a short blurb each day of the month to highlight a Black trans woman in our country’s history. With everything going on in our country regarding bigotry, particularly racism and the heightened focus on demonizing the LGBTQ+ community (with the trans community being the primary target), I wanted to take a moment each day to highlight a Black trans woman for visibility and to focus on the strength and power of the community. For this first day I figured I might as well focus on arguably the most famous trans advocate of all time, Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha P. Johnson was a Black transgender activist, drag performer, and one of the most influential figures in LGBTQ+ history. Born in 1945 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Johnson moved to New York City as a teenager, where she became a central presence in Greenwich Village’s queer community. She is most widely known for her role in the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a pivotal moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, where she and other trans women and gender-nonconforming people resisted police violence and harassment. At a time when Black trans people faced extreme poverty, criminalization, and exclusion, Johnson lived openly and unapologetically, embodying both resistance and survival. Beyond Stonewall, Johnson dedicated her life to caring for those most marginalized within the community. Alongside Sylvia Rivera, she co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), an organization that provided housing, food, and support to homeless trans youth, many of whom were Black and Latinx. Johnson was also active in ACT UP during the AIDS crisis, advocating for people dying from HIV/AIDS while the government largely ignored them. Her legacy is foundational to Black trans history: she showed that liberation work includes mutual aid, visibility, and radical compassion, and her activism continues to shape conversations about racial justice, gender identity, and LGBTQ+ rights today.