A person’s hand extended in the air with a trans flag bracelet around the wrist. They are making a finger heart, which can also look like a snap gesture.
Image Credit: Natalia Blauth on Unsplash

“We really believe that we would have no pride without the T, and there would actually probably be no Stonewall without the T,” said Stacy Lentz in an interview with NPQ.

Lentz is an LGBTQ+ activist and CEO of the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, a global nonprofit committed to advancing LGBTQ+ rights and creating safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people. She is also one of the owners of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar with historic consequences for the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement that led to the Stonewall Uprising in June 1969. Her words underscore the fact that transgender people—particularly transgender women of color—have always played a crucial role in the struggle for LGBTQ+ liberation.

Yet, even within the LGBTQ+ community itself, transgender people of color have always had to fight against erasure and for their legacy to become visible.

“We really believe that we would have no pride without the T, and there would actually probably be no Stonewall without the T.”

Though the Stonewall Uprising was not the first time that LGBTQ+ people pushed back against state violence, it was a key turning point in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. That night, it was trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera who put their bodies on the lines to resist police brutality and demand dignity.

Johnson and Rivera knew what it was like to live on the margins. The two would go on to co-found Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization dedicated to supporting the most marginalized individuals: homeless queer and trans youth. Though neither of them would live beyond 50 years old, their work underscored why LGBTQ+ activism must be intersectional and not leave out the most vulnerable.

“Not only have they come out and really tried to attack them in every way of public life, but really just erased their existence.”

The Pushback Against Erasure

Today, trans women of color continue to face elevated rates of homelessness, violence, and other types of discrimination. Just over 55 years after the Stonewall Uprising, there is a continued need to continue Johnson and Rivera’s work..

The current calculated attempt by the right-wing to erase LGBTQ+ history is not surprising. As Lentz notes, throughout his campaign, Donald Trump claimed that there are only two genders, making it clear that he was going to attack trans people if elected to office. Still, it was hard for many to conceive that the attacks would be at this level. The very first day in office, Trump signed an executive order toward “restoring biological truth” and relegating any other identities beyond male and female as “gender ideology.”

“Not only have they come out and really tried to attack them in every way of public life, but really just erased their existence,” Lentz said.

“I always say that, here in New York, we have geographic privilege. I grew up in Kansas, and there’s a lot of folks in the South and Midwest, and especially trans folks, that don’t have the geographic privilege that maybe we have here in New York.”

Less than a month after Trump took office, the National Park Service had already removed references to transgender people from the website commemorating Stonewall. Moreover, the federal government has deleted over a dozen National Park Service web pages related to LGBTQ+ history, which has drawn public outcry, particularly from trans people who know what it is like to have their experiences erased.

“The Stonewall Riots happened because trans people, particularly of color, rose up against state violence. You can’t even begin to tell the story without our trans ancestors and elders,” said transgender writer, editor, and activist Raquel Willis on X.

On February 15, hundreds of people gathered at the site of the Stonewall National Monument to protest against changes in the official language from LGBTQ to LGB.

For those living in the South, Lentz noted that anti-trans legislation will have a greater impact.

“I always say that here in New York, we have geographic privilege,” Lentz told NPQ. “I grew up in Kansas, and there’s a lot of folks in the South and Midwest, and especially trans folks, that don’t have the geographic privilege that maybe we have here in New York.”

In North Carolina, for instance, Republican lawmakers recently introduced a bathroom bill that is clearly discriminatory against transgender people. The state, which has been the site of protests to defeat such legislation in the past, was also the home of civil rights advocate Pauli Murray, who many view as a queer icon.

The Legacy of Pauli Murray

An attorney whose work was critical in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which struck down segregation in public schools, Murray was also one of the co-founders of NOW (National Organization of Women) and the first perceived Black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal Priest.

Known for coining the phrase Jane Crow to describe the particular discrimination that Black women face because of both their race and gender, Murray struggled with her own gender identity throughout her life. In an article for The 19th News and Sojourners, María Celeste Masis Ocampo writes, “In an era when identifying as queer was legal and dangerous, Murray navigated a complex gender identity with many scholars today suggest would align with transgender or gender nonconforming identities.” The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice has examined this question, highlighting how it was “illegal and dangerous” to be openly gay during Murray’s lifetime.

Without a doubt, Murray made significant contributions to civil and human rights but for years her story was not widely known. A recent documentary, the grand opening of Murray’s child home, and honors—including a commemorative quarter in honor of her life’s work—strive to protect their legacy and contributions to the civil rights movement For this reason, many were shocked to learn that Pauli Murray’s biography was also erased from the National Park Service website.

The Pauli Murray Center immediately urged supporters to take action by calling their congressional representatives, visiting the Pauli Murray Center, supporting the center with a donation, and keeping a look out for further advocacy opportunities.

“The federal government had already recognized Murray’s contributions as significant. Now they’ve chosen to erase and obscure those contributions based on the reality that Pauli was a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. This just paints a picture of why it feels critical to take a stand in this particular moment,” the center’s executive director, Angela Thorpe Mason, told The 19th News.