Lesbian of the Month: Stormé DeLarverie
The Guardian of the Lesbians
I’d love to start this by greeting you with, “Happy Pride Month!” But I haven’t felt joy during Pride Month since 2016 when Carly Rae Jepsen was Cutting to the Feeling. I know I’m not the only one. Every year more of the rainbow flag is obscured. And every year lesbians (all of the LGB, if we’re being honest) are left out of an event started by gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. To make things worse, we have to deal with homophobes rewriting history to erase the lesbian many widely believe started the uprising at the Stonewall Inn: Stormé DeLarverie.
And that’s why she’s June’s Lesbian of the Month.
Before Stonewall
Most of us know little about this lesbian icon. Born to a white father and an African-American mother, she states she is not certain of her date of birth date since she was not given a birth certificate. No birth certificate? No problem! DeLarverie celebrated her birthday on December 24. In an interview, she states that while her grandfather takes most of the credit for raising her, her father paid for her education.
Growing up in the segregated southern United States, she was often bullied and harassed for being a biracial child. She recalls that “when the black kids weren’t chasing me, the white kids were chasing me.” But was that going to stop her? Absolutely not. Eventually, she stopped running and fought back. “I knocked their heads together,” DeLarverie recalls.
She spent her teens living a horse girl’s dream, riding jumping horses for the circus. It was around eighteen that she realized she was a lesbian. Her partner, Diana, was a dancer. They lived together for 25 years, until Diana’s death. According to a friend, she carried a photo of her at all times.
The Rebellion
“It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience – it wasn't no damn riot.”— Stormé DeLarverie
It’s easy for us to parrot the line “such and such threw the first brick/punch/shoe/lemon meringue pie at Stonewall.” Because that’s what social media and Hollywood have fed us. And if there’s anything those two partners in crime love to do it’s sensationalize things and get the facts wrong, sometimes just for the drama of it all.
Long story short: A police raid of the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969 sparked a spontaneous protest of police brutality by the gay and lesbian community. A fight broke out when a handcuffed woman, most likely DeLaverie, was roughly escorted from the inn to a police car. Despite being handcuffed, she allegedly escaped several times and began berating the police. Accounts say she fought with at least four of the officers. According to eyewitnesses, the butch lesbian was struck in the head by a police baton, causing a laceration. Once she was shoved into the police car, she shouted at the crowd, “Why don’t you guys do something?”
So they did.
With the crowd on her side, she fought back. Now scroll back up. Doesn’t that sound like our Stormé?
Understandably, it was difficult to make an accurate ID amongst all the ruckus. And DeLarverie’s biracial identity certainly clouded eyewitness accounts of the event. But many believe that it was DeLarverie. In fact, the woman herself stated that it was indeed her. “Nobody knows who threw the first punch, but it’s rumored that she did, and she said she did,” Lisa Cannistraci, DeLarverie’s long-time friend, recounted to the New York Times. “She told me she did.”
Despite these accounts and her confession, many still insist the identity of the woman is a mystery. But two things are certain:
The woman that did fight back, the spark that started the rebellion, was a lesbian.
Several butch lesbians fought back against the police that day and DeLarverie was inarguably one of them.
After Stonewall
Bold of you to assume she stopped fighting for gay rights after the events at Stonewall. She worked as a bouncer for lesbian bars in the 80s and 90s. In fact, she worked as a bouncer until the age of 85. And needless to say, she was a Pride parade regular.
An armed DeLarverie would even patrol the streets and check in on lesbian bars. Like a homosexual Spider-Man, this friendly neighborhood lesbian made sure no one bothered her “baby girls,” according to her New York Times obituary.
But she wasn’t only working to protect the LGB community. DeLarverie also worked to help support abused women and children. “Somebody has to care. People say, ‘Why do you still do that?’ I said, ‘It’s very simple. If people didn’t care about me when I was growing up, with my mother being black, raised in the south.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be here,'” she said about her work protecting and supporting those often forgotten or ignored.
Stormé DeLarverie passed away in her sleep at the age of 93 on May 24, 2014 in Brooklyn, New York, just a year before same-sex marriage was legalized in all 50 states of the United States.
Cannistraci became her legal guardian during her later years as DeLarverie suffered from dementia. Though she often didn’t realize she was in a nursing home, memories of her life remained strong. “She was a very serious woman when it came to protecting people she loved,” Cannistraci said of her old friend.
Legacy
DeLarverie is the very definition of a lesbian icon. She’s been honored by several institutions including the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture and the Brooklyn Community Pride Center. She was presented with a proclamation by Letitia James. DeLarverie has also been immortalized on the Stonewall National Monument.
Aside from being the Guardian of Lesbians, DeLarverie also had a hand in influencing lesbian fashion. She was often photographed in three-piece suits, inspiring other lesbians to wear menswear. And we all know how much lesbians today love suits. She was literally ahead of her time, an icon of gender-nonconforming fashion decades before anyone even uttered the words “unisex clothes.”
And even now, in another time, we remember her. Lesbians all over the world know her name. This little write-up couldn’t possibly do any justice to her legacy. Instead, I hope it might serve as a little plaque one might read while strolling the internet park. And I hope that we might live the way she did, unapologetically herself and fiercely protective of her people. Lastly, may it inspire my sisters outside of the U.S. to look into the history of gay rights movements in their countries, write about them, and share them.
There are people out there trying to erase us and our history. And we cannot let them.