LGTBQ Civil Rights Icon Marsha P. Johnson to Get Monument
Trans activist and LGBTQ civil rights icon Marsha P. Johnson - who has been credited with launching the Stonewall uprising, a tipping point in the struggle for equality - will be getting a monument in her native New Jersey, ABC News reports.
Johnson hailed from the town of Elizabeth in Union County, New Jersey. Officials from union Country made the announcement that space for the monument had been approved, ABC News reported.
In a statement, county officials said:
"The monument is anticipated to be the first public monument in the State of New Jersey to honor an LGBTQ+ person and transgender woman of color."
June of 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which legend says was sparked when Johnson threw a shot glass, USA Today recalled in an article last December. Johnson herself contradicted this claim, saying that the riots had already begun when she made her way to the scene.
Even so, Johnson was a vibrant presence in the quest for equality.
Johnson and Rivera joined up to found the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a group that advocated for homeless gay young people, in 1970.
In May of 2019, New York City officials announced that Johnson and fellow rights advocate Sylvia Rivera would both be honored with a monument in Greenwich Village, near the Stonewall Inn, where the uprising began as the result of a police raid on the establishment in the early hours of June 28, 1969.
The New Jersey monument follows on the heels of a more recent honor for Johnson in New York City. ABC News reported that:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dedicated the East River State Park in Brooklyn to Johnson, making it the country's first state park to honor an LGBTQ person, according to the state.
Said Cuomo:
"Marsha P. Johnson was one of the early leaders of the LGBTQ movement, and is only now getting the acknowledgment she deserves. Dedicating this state park for her, and installing public art telling her story, will ensure her memory and her work fighting for equality lives on."
The announcement came on Aug. 24, ABC News noted, which would have been Johnson's 75th birthday.
Johnson died in 1992. She was 46 when her body was found in the Hudson River. Police wrote her death off as a suicide, but Johnson's family pressed for the case to be re-opened. In 2012, a new investigation was launched, but to date, the mystery of her death has not been solved.