Stormé DeLarverie

Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to DeLarverie and many eyewitnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall uprising, spurring the crowd to action.

She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father.

She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who performed and hosted at the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall.

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."

She is known as "the Rosa Parks of the gay community."

DeLarverie's father was white and wealthy.

Her mother was African American and worked as a servant for his family.

According to DeLarverie, she was never given a birth certificate and was not certain of her actual date of birth.

She celebrated her birthday on December 24, Christmas Eve.

Her father paid for her education, and she was largely raised by her grandfather.

As a biracial child, DeLarverie faced bullying and harassment from the other children.

"The white kids were beating me up; the Black kids were. Everybody was jumping on me. ... For being a negro with a white face."

She rode jumping horses with the Ringling Brothers Circus when she was a teenager.

She stopped riding horses after being injured in a fall.

She realized she was lesbian near the age of eighteen.

Biracial and androgynous, she could pass for white or Black, male or female.

She was picked up twice on the streets by police who mistook her for a drag queen.

Decades later, the events of June 28, 1969, have been called "the Stonewall riots."

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."

At the Stonewall rebellion, a scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs, who may have been DeLarverie, was roughly escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon.

She was brought through the crowd by police several times, as she escaped repeatedly.

She fought with at least four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes.

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 was bleeding from a head wound as she fought back.

Bystanders recalled that the woman, whose identity remains uncertain (Stormé has been identified by some, including herself, as the woman).

Accounts of people who witnessed the scene, including letters and news reports of the woman who fought with police, conflicted.

Where witnesses claim one woman who fought her treatment at the hands of the police caused the crowd to become angry, some also remembered several "butch lesbians" had begun to fight back while still in the bar.

At least one was already bleeding when taken out of the bar (Carter, pp. 152–153).

Craig Rodwell (in Duberman, p. 197) claims the arrest of the woman was not the primary event that triggered the violence, but one of several simultaneous occurrences: "there was just ... a flash of group—of mass—anger."

The sole argument raised against this woman being DeLarverie is that some witnesses reported this woman was "caucasian" (Carter, p. 309).

But as a biracial woman, DeLarverie could appear Black, white, or biracial, depending on lighting, dress, and the expectations of the audience.

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".

Nobody knows who threw the first punch, but it's rumored that she did, and she said she did,' said Lisa Cannistraci, a friend of DeLarverie and owner of the Village lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson.

'She told me she did.

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 butch lesbians who fought back against the police during the uprising.

Her partner, a dancer named Diana, lived with her for about 25 years until dying in the 1970s.

According to friend Lisa Cannistraci, DeLarverie carried a photograph of Diana with her at all times.