Heroes of Stonewall: Zazu Nova

Zazu Nova at a GLF meeting in 1970

The third name given by eyewitnesses at the Stonewall riots for the person who may have thrown the legendary “first brick” was Zazu (sometimes “Zasou“) Nova — and if I had to put money down on one of them, this is who I would pick. The sad thing is, there’s just not a ton of information about her and her name is often left out of conversations about the riots altogether.

Nova was a transvestite (in the common lingo of the day) and a sex worker on the streets of Greenwich Village in 1969. Nova had given herself the title “Queen of Sex” and was known to carry herself as though she were actually royalty. Nova was a practicing Unitarian, and was said to be quite proud of having a religious upbringing. It was rumored Nova had spent time in prison for murder — and though it’s definitely true that she’d been in prison, the why is all conjecture.

Whether or not Nova was a murderer, she was definitely a badass. One anecdote shared in the book Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter (and coincidentally one of the only places to get information on Nova or on Jackie Hormona from their lives before the riots) relates that she and a man named Martin Boyce were about to get jumped by five men, when she pulled a heavy chain out of her purse and chased the five men away.

Now, Zazu Nova was not inside the Stonewall Inn when the police raided it. But Nova frequently worked Christopher Street, and the raid drew quite a crowd. Nova was absolutely present at the start of the riots, and absolutely had the, let’s say, gumption to react to the police abusing Stormé Delarverie. She was later seen fighting alongside Marsha P. Johnson that first night — which might explain how some witnesses believed that it was in fact Johnson who threw the brick even though she wasn’t there yet.

It’s very difficult to find much about Nova following the riots. She became involved in the Gay Liberation Front that was founded after the riots. She was also a founding member of New York Gay Youth and was involved in Street Action Transvestite Revolutionaries, the organization started by Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — though I can’t find exactly to what extent. What became of her after those organizations fizzled out, I truly cannot find.

And that’s it. That is all that I could find about someone who may be one of the greatest heroes of the modern LGBTQ+ movement.

Heroes of Stonewall: Sylvia Rivera

Of all of the heroes of the LGBTQIA+ community who fought for us at the Stonewall Riots, I personally think that Sylvia Rivera may have had the most important impact on our community — however, she may also be the most controversial. Though we view her as a hero and champion for our community now, she was not always looked on so fondly.

Sylvia was given the name Ray Rivera when she was born on July 2, 1951 and was of both Puerto Rican and Venezuelan heritage. Her father, Jose Rivera, abandoned the family. Her mother committed suicide — orphaning the young Rivera at only three years old. And so she was raised by her grandmother, who vocally disapproved of how effeminate “Ray” was. This disapproval became even worse when Rivera began to wear makeup in the fourth grade — as a result, she was living on the streets at eleven years old, surviving only by making money through sex work. She was taken in by a group of drag queens, who gave her the name Sylvia that she would carry for the rest of her life.

Rivera developed a very, very fluid sense of gender identity throughout her life. She would alternate between referring to herself as a gay man, a gay girl, a drag queen, a street queen, and a transvestite (while that was still the popular term in usage, anyways.) Consistently, however, she shirked labels whenever possible. In one interview she stated, as a response to the gender identity question: “I am Sylvia Rivera. Ray Rivera left home at the age of 10 to become Sylvia. And that’s who I am.”

Rivera took to activism early, before the Stonewall Riots, and was active in the Civil Rights Movement and protested against the Vietnam War, and was involved in youth activism with the Young Lords and Black Panthers. She was particularly vocal, however, about queer homeless people of color — who she felt were being left behind by a gay community that only wanted to assimilate into the mainstream. She frequently struggled with substance abuse and homelessness herself, so she sought to give a stronger voice to those who — like her — suffered from racism, poverty, as well as inmates, drag queens, and other often ignored sections of the queer community. (Some of these groups, I might add, are still often ignored — we could use another Sylvia Rivera!)

Rivera was a regular customer of the Stonewall Inn in 1969 and was frequently there with her close friend Marsha P. Johnson. Although Rivera stated in interviews in the 90’s that she was present when the riots began, most other accounts — including Johnson’s telling of it — indicate she arrived after the riots began. In fact, by some accounts, she may not actually have been present the first night of the riots at all — though Johnson made sure Rivera was aware of the riots that night, it’s unclear if Rivera actually showed up until the second night of the riots. She was certainly present at that point.

Following the riots, Rivera worked alongside the Gay Liberation Front — and with their next iteration, the Gay Activists Alliance. In 1971, she campaigned with them to pass a sweeping anti-discrimination ordinance in New York City. However, despite her hard work, the GAA made deals that stripped the language protecting non-gender conforming individuals, like drag queens and transvestites. The argument was that it would not be possible to pass the bill with “extreme elements” included — but the GAA rapidly became more conservative, and began to outright exclude any protections for the more “radical” portions of the LGBTQ+ community. The leadership of the GAA would have Rivera plan and front rallies — until the media showed up, when the straight passing members of the organization would essentially push her aside. Eventually, Rivera was all but pushed out of the organization. When recalling this in an interview years later, she’d add “Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned.”

In 1970, River and Johnson worked together to found the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to provide support and advocacy for young homeless queer people. In 1972, STAR even managed to open housing for homeless queer youth — with rent paid mostly from money that Rivera and Johnson earned as sex workers. According to Rivera, aside from trying to help those who needed it, they were trying to help move the community away from the mafia-controlled bar scene.

In 1973, at a Christopher Street Liberation Day rally Rivera gave an impassioned speech in which she warned of heterosexual men who preyed on the transgender community, and also declared that queer inmates looking for help “do not write women. Do not write men. They write to STAR.” Despite that — and how revolutionary an organization STAR was — it was short lived, partly because of Rivera’s passion. At the same rally, Rivera and Lee Brewster interrupted Jean O’Leary‘s speech. Rivera argued, “You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!”

Rivera and Johnson

Following the rally, Rivera attempted to commit suicide — but was found and saved by Marsha P. Johnson. Unfortunately, that outburst cost Rivera much of her remaining support in New York’s LGBTQ+ community. STAR closed within the year. Rivera took the better part of the next 20 years off from activism, feeling totally abandoned by her community. She did — on certain occasions in the ’80s — speak up on behalf of those left homeless by the AIDS crisis.

In July of 1992, Johnson’s body was found in the Hudson River. Police ruled the death a suicide — something Rivera, among others, insisted was false. Rivera stated that she and Johnson had made a pact to “cross the ‘river Jordan’ together.” In May of 1995, Rivera attempted to commit suicide in the Hudson River. The attempt failed, but afterwards she got back into advocating for the most vulnerable in the queer community — much to the chagrin of other activists in the community. Most of the focus of queer activism at the time involved fitting the homosexuals into existing legal structures — getting marriage equality, overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, passing the Matthew Shepard Act, etc. These were not Rivera’s priorities, and she made it quite well known.

She was banned from New York’s Gay & Lesbian Community Center for most of the mid-90s for angrily insisting that they provide housing for homeless queer youth during the frigid winters. She attacked the Empire State Pride Agenda for not being inclusive of transgender issues. She also made something of an enemy of the Human Rights Campaign, because — as she would tell Michael Bronski: “I’m tired of sitting on the back of the bumper. It’s not even the back of the bus anymore — it’s the back of the bumper. The bitch on wheels is back.”

Despite her friction with many queer organizations, Rivera was an active member of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, and often helped to feed the poor and homeless through their food pantry. In 2000, Rivera traveled to Rome, Italy for WorldPride. There she was called “the mother of all gay people” and participated in the Millenium March. In 2001, Rivera attempted to revive STAR as a political organization — changing the “T” to stand for “Transgender,” which was beginning to come into common usage. The new STAR, under Rivera’s leadership, pushed for a trans-inclusive New York State Sexual Non-Discrimination Act, as well as the New York City Transgender Rights Bill. They also fought for justice for Amanda Milan, a transgender woman who was murdered in 2000.

Sylvia Rivera suffered from liver cancer at the end of her life. Before her death — on her deathbed — she negotiated with Matt Foreman and Joe Grabarz, leaders of the Empire State Pride Agenda, to ensure they would be more inclusive of transgender people and issues in the future. She passed away on February 19, 2002.

Rivera’s portrait in the National Gallery — also featuring Christina Hayworth (left) and Rivera’s partner Julia Murray (right) — which shows them at New York Pride in June of 2000.

After her death, she became much more appreciated by the queer community. The year of her death the Sylvia Rivera Law Project was established, to help fight against discrimination based on gender identity and expression. The MCC in New York built a shelter for homeless queer youth, which is named Sylvia’s Place in her honor. The New School named their social justice hub the Baldwin Rivera Boggs Center, putting her name alongside James Baldwin and Grace Lee Boggs. The intersection of Hudson Street and Christopher Street in New York was also renamed in her honor, coming to be called “Sylvia Rivera Way.” In 2015, she became the first transgender (well, genderfluid?) American citizen to have a portrait placed in the National Gallery of the Smithsonian. It was recently announced that she — along with her friend Marsha P. Johnson — will soon be honored with a monument in Greenwich Village

There have even been some fictional depictions of Rivera. In 2002, she was depicted in the musical ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol 1. In 2007, a musical called Sylvia So Far premiered in New York, based on Rivera’s life. She is also depicted in the short film Happy Birthday Marsha!

Despite all that Rivera did, the communities she specifically fought for — the poor queer — mostly transgender — youth of color are still by far the most vulnerable in the queer community. They are the most likely to be homeless, most likely to be uneducated, most likely to be unemployed, and most likely to commit suicide. It’s been 50 years since the Stonewall Riots. It’s been 19 years since she was called the “mother of all gay people” at WorldPride. Now that WorldPride is going to be in New York City, honoring that momentous event 50 years ago, let’s not forget what Rivera was actually fighting for and truly honor her legacy by keeping that fight going.

Heroes of Stonewall: Marsha P. Johnson

Although she regularly said her middle initial stood for “Pay it no mind”, Marsha P. Johnson proved to be a difficult person not to notice. Though Johnson is commonly referred to using female pronouns (she/her/hers) — and I’ll be doing that here — her actual gender identity is a bit of a mystery. She variously described herself as gay, a transvestite, and as a (drag) queen — though words like “transgender” really weren’t being widely used yet during her lifetime. My personal opinion is that she would probably identify as gender non-conforming or non-binary, but make your own judgments.

Johnson was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on August 24, 1945 — one of seven children — and was named Malcolm Michaels Jr by her parents, Malcolm Michaels Sr and Alberta Claiborne. They were not, from all accounts, a particularly open-minded family and Claiborne was said to believe that being a homosexual was like being “lower than dog.” Johnson was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and remained a devout, practicing Christian for her entire life.

At the age of five, Johnson began to wear dresses — but stopped because she was harassed and teased by neighborhood boys. Some time during this period, Johnson was sexually assaulted by a boy who was roughly the age of 13. In 1963, Johnson graduated from Edison High School and promptly moved to New York City with $15 and a bag of clothing. By 1966, she was waiting tables, engaging in sex work, and living on the streets of the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan.

She also began to perform as a drag queen — initially going by the name “Black Marsha” before settling on Marsha P. Johnson. She was often recognizable for having flowers in her hair — something she began doing after sleeping under flower sorting tables in Manhattan’s Flower District. She usually had on bright colored wigs, shiny dresses, and long flowing robes. Marsha was known to be peaceful and fun, but there was a violent and short-tempered side to her personality (which her friends commonly called “Malcolm”) — leading some to suspect that she suffered from schizophrenia. Between her sex work and her occasional violent outbursts, Johnson claimed to have been arrested more than a hundred times.

When the Stonewall Inn began to permit women and drag queens inside, Johnson was one of the first to begin regularly visiting the bar. Some witnesses have even credited her with starting off the riots in 1969. Although this claim has certainly gained traction and become the popular version of events, she likely was not the woman who sparked off the Stonewall Riots by throwing the legendary “first brick” — this was also rumored, and was perhaps more likely to be Jackie Hormona or Zazu Nova by eyewitnesses — Johnson did have one particularly iconic, though unconfirmed, moment in the riots. She is said to have shouted “I got my civil rights!” and thrown a shot glass at a mirror. ( Some said this — the “shot glass heard round the world” — was the moment that started the riots, but Johnson herself disputed this. According to Johnson, word of the riots reached her and she immediately went to collect her friend Sylvia Rivera so they could join in — but Rivera was sleeping on a bench. According to Johnson, she arrived at about 2:00 am, forty minutes after the riots began. (I guess word traveled fast!) There are many reports that on the second night of rioting, Johnson climbed up a street lamp with a purse that was loaded down with a brick — which she dropped through the windshield of a police car. Though there’s a lot of stories about those riots, and a lot of confusion about the details it is very clear that Johnson was there and made a noticeable impact.

Although she’d been an activist before, Johnson became a real leader in the LGBT movements that followed the riots. In 1970, she and Sylvia Rivera founded the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) — an organization that provided community support for transgender youth. She also joined the Gay Liberation Front and participated in the Christopher Street Liberation Pride rally that commemorated the first anniversary of Stonewall (and was, essentially, the creation of the Pride festivals we celebrate.) At one rally in the early 70’s, Johnson was asked by a member of the press what they were protesting for –Johnson shouted into the reporter’s microphone “Darling, I want my gay rights now!”

Johnson once said, “I was no one, nobody, from Nowheresville until I became a drag queen. That’s what made me in New York, that’s what made me in New Jersey, that’s what made me in the world.” In 1972, she began to perform periodically with the international drag troupe Hot Peaches. She was also continuing to work as a sex worker, taking the money she (and Rivera) earned from that business to help pay the rent for the housing for transgender youth that STAR had established that year. Johnson also took on an active role mentoring all of the youth in their care, becoming a “drag mother” even to those who were not performers. Although STAR declined and closed in 1973, it was a groundbreaking organization and the shelter that it provided queer youth was truly revolutionary.

In 1973, Johnson also performed with the Angels of Light drag troupe — taking on the role of “The Gypsy Queen” in their production of “The Enchanted Miracle”. That same year both Johnson and Rivera were banned from participating in New York’s gay pride parade — the committee organizing the parade felt that drag queens and transvestites brought negative attention and gave the cause “a bad name.” In response, Rivera and Johnson marched ahead of the beginning of the parade.

In 1975, Andy Warhol took pictures of Johnson for his “Ladies and Gentlemen” series. Johnson’s success as an activist and a performer, as well as her regular appearances throughout the decade, earned her the nickname “Mayor of Christopher Street.”

By 1979, Johnson’s mental health was beginning to decline quite severely. Her aggressive side was coming out more often, and a Village Voice article called “The Drag of Politics” listed all of the Manhattan gay bars from which Johnson had been banned. In 1980, a friend named Randy Wicker invited Johnson to stay with him for a particularly cold night and the two remained roommates for the rest of Johnson’s life. This was — as far as I can tell — the first time Johnson had a permanent address since moving to New York in 1963.

In the 1980’s, Johnson began to work with ACT UP as an organizer and marshal, and was a prolific AIDS activist. She made this her primary focus for the last few years of her life. On July 6, 1992 — just after that years New York Pride festivities — she was found dead in the Hudson River with a large wound in the back of her head. The police ruled her death a suicide — despite pressure from the community and the fact that she had a wound in the back of her head. One witness had spoken of Johnson’s fragile mental health to the police — which was all the police, who had no interest in investigating a black queer person’s death, needed despite witness testimonies also describing Johnson being harassed by a gang. Another witness claimed to have heard a man brag about killing a drag queen named Marsha. The police did allow Seventh Avenue to be closed so that Johnson’s friends could spread her ashes out over the river.

In 2012, an activist named Mariah Lopez was finally successful in convincing the police to re-open Johnson’s case and investigate it as a homicide. That was also the year that the first documentary about Johnson was released: Pay It No Mind — The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson. This documentary included footage from an interview that had been filmed only ten days before Johnson’s death. Fictionalized versions of Johnson also appeared in the films Stonewall (released in 2015) and Happy Birthday Marsha! (released in 2016.) In 2017, another documentary was released — The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson — which followed the Anti-Violence Project’s Victoria Cruz investigating Johnson’s death on her own. Despite all of these tributes, it wasn’t until 2018 that the New York Times published an obituary for her.

Johnson — with her friend Sylvia Rivera — will be honored with a monument in Greenwich Village, near Stonewall. This is perhaps most fitting for Johnson, since she was quite insistent about moving the Stonewall monument from Ohio to Christopher Street in New York City in 1992 — famously saying “How many people have died for these two little statues to be put in the park to recognize gay people? How many years does it take for people to see that we’re all brothers and sisters and human beings in the human race? I mean how many years does it take for people to see that we’re all in this rat race together?”

Johnson may not have “thrown the first brick” at Stonewall, but she led the fight for LGBTQ+ equality in every other way. Randy Wicker said of Johnson that she “rose above being a man or a woman, rose above being black or white, rose above being straight or gay”, while Rupaul described her as “the true Drag Mother.”

So, while we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, let’s all pay plenty of mind to Marsha P. Johnson — and to the other heroes who stood up that day and said “Darling, I want my gay rights now!”

Stonewall Riots

I’m sure almost everyone reading this site already knows about what is arguably the single biggest turning point in LGBT+ history: the Stonewall riots. Buckle up, this one is long but it couldn’t be more important.

First, let’s talk about the Stonewall Inn itself. The Stonewall Inn was (and is, to this day) located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York. It was owned by members of the Genovese crime family because, backtracking a bit, during Prohibition when the sale of alcohol was forced to go underground, organized crime had essentially taken over the gay bar industry. There really weren’t any gay-owned and operated nightlife establishments, not like we see now. On the one hand, this was good because that meant the police were often paid not to raid these bars — on the other hand, it meant that the owners of these operations were only in it for the money and so they overcharged for watered down drinks and generally treated their customers badly. In fact, it’s theorized that the owners of Stonewall were making more money off of blackmailing their wealthier regulars than from their liquor sales. But their customers did not have many other places to go. Some of the patrons of the club were homeless, gay eighteen year-olds who literally had nowhere else to go. For them, Stonewall wasn’t just a bar — it was home. In every sense of the word.

To prevent any cops from coming into the establishment, a bouncer peered through a peephole at anyone trying to come in. Anyone who was permitted in either needed to “look gay” or be someone the bouncer recognized. All visitors had to write their names in a guest log, although it was very rare for anyone to use their real name. On weekends, there was a $3 cover charge that came with two drink tickets. (The 1960’s definition of “overcharging for drinks” is not the same as our modern definition of “overcharging for drinks”. If I get a drink ticket with my cover charge, I am extremely happy. Especially on a Saturday night!) If a cop was spotted, bright white lights would turn on — the bar was kept intentionally as dark as possible, but these lights would signal that everyone needed to stop dancing together and stop touching at all.

Police raids were increasingly common in the period leading up to June 28 1969, but the Genovese crime family was always — up to that point — tipped off before a raid happened. At 1:20 am, however, they discovered that there was a first time for everything. Detective Charles Smythe and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine arrived at the door with four plainclothes officers and two uniformed patrolmen, banged on the door and shouted “Police! We’re taking the place!” The Genoveses had not been tipped off, which they would later learn was because the raid was actually ordered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, who suspected them of bootlegging their liquor (correctly, I might add.) There were also four undercover police (two male and two female) who were already inside the bar.

From the beginning, the raid did not go as planned. In a typical raid, the patrons were lined up and asked to show their identification, and anyone dressed as a female was sent to the bathrooms with a female officer in order to verify their sex. (Why, yes, that was as invasive as it sounds!) The patrons of the bar refused to line up — some attempted to flee from the bar immediately, but the police blocked off the doors. Others lined up but refused to present their IDs, and still others refused to go to the bathrooms with female officers. Some of the lesbians present were inappropriately touched while being frisked by male police officers.

The police decided that they were simply going to make arrests of anyone who did not cooperate. The patrol wagons hadn’t arrived yet, so the police lined up the people they were arresting. The patrons who were not being arrested were released by the front door. Instead of leaving, however, they waited and watched. A crowd began to form, which quickly grew to be over 100 people in size. Deputy Inspector Pine would later say it was “ten times the number of people being arrested”. The crowd began singing “We Shall Overcome” and shouting “Gay Power!” and other various catchphrases to deter the police from their current course. As the patrol wagons arrived, pennies and beer bottles were thrown at them.

Stormé DeLarverie

The police attempted to force a woman into one of the arriving wagons — by most accounts she was “typical New York butch” Stormé DeLarverie. She was clubbed over the head for complaining her handcuffs were too tight — and that set her off. She fought four police officers for ten minutes, before looking at the crowd and saying “Why don’t you guys do something?” At that point, she was tossed into the patrol wagon — but they were too late. She’d struck the match.

Marsha P. Johnson

The popular version of events holds that Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick — which would have been right at this moment. Johnson’s own telling of the events says she wasn’t there until about an hour and a half later — after she’d heard about the riot, she went to find her friend Sylvia Rivera before joining in. The other two names often given for the possible “first brick thrower were Jackie Hormona (also unlikely, in my opinion) and Zazu Nova (that’s who my money is on!) There are countless different versions of what happened, depending on who you ask. There was no organization except — according to Michael Fader, who was present — “a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit.” According to various accounts, including Fader’s, there was a feeling in the air that this night was going to change things and “we were never going to go back”. That could not have been more true.

Sylvia Rivera

The police were ultimately forced back into the bar by the crowd, where they were essentially captives. Garbage was set on fire and forced through the windows of the bar. The NYPD’s Tactical Patrol Force (TPF) was called in, in order to help free the stranded police officers and get them medical treatment (which a few of them needed). The TPF also tried to clear the streets by forming a phalanx and pushing the crowd back — but the crowd made a joke of it. They formed a kick line in response to the police’s formation. Those in the kick line sang a parody of the popular vaudeville song “Ta-ra–ra Boom-de-day” with lyrics that went “We are the Stonewall girls/We wear our hair in curls/We don’t wear underwear/We show off our pubic hair.” The TPF did not appreciate the humor, and launched into a full-scale assault on the kick line, hitting them with nightsticks and bats.

That enraged the crowd even more. The mob started chasing the police, flipping cars, By four in the morning, however, the streets had been cleared. News of the riot appeared in several local papers, and rumors flew about what had caused them. That night, the riots picked up again — many people came back from the night before, but this time they were joined by activists who had been present, by people who enjoyed provoking the police, and even by some tourists. Thousands of people gathered outside the Stonewall Inn. Accounts vary on which night was more violent but there was one notable change — homosexual men and women were making out with each other openly on the street. One witness described it: “From going to places where you had to knock on a door and speak to someone through a peephole in order to get in. We were just out. We were in the streets.” Traffic trying to get through Christopher Street was stopped, with cars and buses being blocked and harassed until the occupants would announce their support for the demonstrators. Police cars were vandalized. More than a hundred police officers were sent — but every time someone would get arrested, the mob would rush out and recapture them from the police. By 4 am, the second night of rioting had died down.

For the next several nights, there were smaller altercations between police and the LGBT community in New York City. Less than a week later, a bus was chartered to get activists from New York safely to Philadelphia for what would be the last of the Annual Reminders. Following the riots, many of the people present became members of the newly formed Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in order to further fight for equality for the queer community.

(Adapted from this Facebook post.)