![]() ![]() It is impossible to pinpoint when work towards gay rights started, but it wasn’t with Stonewall. ![]() It’s symptomatic of a broader issue: minimizing the work of women, specifically lesbians, and especially lesbians of color. It’s one thing to pretend like the Stonewall Rebellion “gave” us gay rights, but it’s made worse by excluding Stormé DeLarverie from the narrative. The gay rights movement in the second half of the twentieth century is no exception. A revolution occurs after long-existing tension between the oppressor and the oppressed. I disagree with David Carter’s assertion that the “Stonewall Riots sparked the Gay Revolution” in the first place. I can’t remember hearing about Stormé’s death. Edie, “whose landmark case let the Supreme Court to grant same-sex married couples federal recognition for the first time and rights to a host of federal benefits,” according to the New York Times, died only three years after Stormé did. White lesbians like Edie Windsor, who was a heroic lesbian in her own right, died amidst widespread grief. Many lesbians don’t wish to rock the boat and assert our place in the gay rights historical canon because we don’t want to be ostracized for it. I love my gay comrades, but the Black Lesbian Heroine isn’t a popular or agreeable narrative among the rainbow community. The narrative that excludes Stormé from the event that took place at 1:20 am on June 28, 1969, is a matter of misogyny, lesbophobia, and racism. “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience- it wasn’t no damn riot,” she said. Stonewall Contentionĭavid Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution - who has supposedly completed “extensive research” on the matter - “never found any evidence to support the contention that Stormé DeLarverie was a participant in that event.” However, Stormé actually spoke about her involvement. ![]() However, Stormé spent the later years of her life alone in a nursing home with few visitors. Not only did she confess to throwing the first punch at the Stonewall Rebellion - that was aimed at a police officer - she was a bouncer who volunteered to patrol gay and lesbian streets, to look after her “baby girls.” She did this work up until her 80s. Stormé DeLarverie is one of the most important lesbian activists of the second half of the twentieth century. ![]()
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