Michigan Disability Rights Coalition

Pride Month is a time to celebrate the people who made today’s movements possible, including those whose lives existed at the intersections of race, disability, gender, sexuality, poverty, criminalization, and survival.

Marsha P. Johnson was a Black LGBTQ+ liberation activist, performer, organizer, and co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, known as STAR, with Sylvia Rivera. STAR supported transgender and gender-nonconforming people, including young people who were unhoused or pushed out of other systems of care.
Johnson’s legacy also belongs in disability history. She experienced mental health disabilities, spent time in psychiatric hospitals, and was diagnosed with HIV in 1990. Disability history reminds us that advocacy is not only shaped by formal titles or organizations. It is also shaped by people who build community, care for one another, and fight for dignity while living through racism, ableism, and transphobia.

As we celebrate Pride Month, we honor Marsha P. Johnson’s life, joy, resistance, and lasting impact.

Learn more: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson

Marsha P. Johnson Marsha P. Johnson was one of the most prominent figures of the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City.