She performed as a baritone.ĭuring shows audience members would try to guess who the “one girl” was, among the revue performers, and at the end Stormé would reveal herself as a woman during a musical number called, “ A Surprise with a Song,” often wearing tailored suits and sometimes a moustache that made her “unidentifiable” to audience members. The revue regularly played the Apollo Theatre in Harlem as well as to mixed-race audiences, something that was still rare during the era of racial segregation in the United States. Whether or not DeLarverie was the woman who fought her way out of the police wagon, all accounts agree that she was one of several lesbians who fought back against the police during the uprising.įrom 1955 to 1969 DeLarverie toured the black theatre circuit as the MC (and only drag king) of the Jewel Box Revue, North America’s first racially integrated drag revue. “‘Nobody knows who threw the first punch, but it’s rumoured that she did,” said Lisa Cannistraci, owner of the Village lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson. Bystanders recalled that the woman, whose identity remains uncertain (Stormé has been identified by some, including herself, as the woman), sparked the crowd to fight when she looked at bystanders and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?” After an officer picked her up and heaved her into the back of the wagon, the crowd became a mob and went “berserk”: “It was at that moment that the scene became explosive.” Some have referred to that woman as “the gay community’s Rosa Parks”. She was bleeding from a head wound as she fought back.
Described by a witness as “a typical New York City butch” and “a dyke-stone butch,” she had been hit on the head by an officer with a baton for, as one witness stated, announcing that her handcuffs were too tight. She fought with at least four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes. Police brought her through the crowd several times, as she escaped repeatedly. However, DeLarverie was very clear that “riot” is a misleading description: “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience – it wasn’t no damn riot.”Īt the Stonewall rebellion, a scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs, who may have been Stormé, was roughly escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon. The events of 28 June 1969 have been called “the Stonewall riots”.
According to friend Lisa Cannistraci, DeLarverie carried a photograph of Diana with her at all times. Her partner, a dancer named Diana, lived with her for about 25 years until Diana died in the 1970s. She realised she was lesbian near the age of eighteen. She rode jumping horses with the Ringling Brothers Circus when she was a teenager, but stopped after being injured in a fall. She celebrated her birthday on 24 December.Īs a child, DeLarverie faced bullying and harassment. According to DeLarverie, she was never given a birth certificate and was not certain of her actual date of birth. She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker – the “guardian of lesbians in the Village” (Greenwich Village, New York City).ĭeLarverie’s father was white her mother was African American, and worked as a servant for his family. She was born in New Orleans, and is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who performed and hosted at the Apollo Theatre and Radio City Music Hall. Stormé DeLarverie (24 December 1920 – ) was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to Stormé and many eye witnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall rebellion, spurring the crowd to action. Today marks seven years since Stormé DeLarverie died, and it seems like a good time to honour her as she was often overlooked when Stonewall was featured in the media. On 28 June 1969 an uprising began at the Stonewall Inn, New York City, which went on to impact the future of LGBT rights around the world.