Pay It No Mind
Why We Have Pride Month The story of Stonewall, Marsha P. Johnson and the night everything changed
My last post, Veteran for Pride, was about why I supported Pride Month. After I wrote that I decided I needed to understand why there was a Pride Month. I mean, I already knew why, but I wanted to understand the details, the history. I wanted to understand the events that really created Pride Month. So I watched the documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Watching it gave me a whole new understanding of why Pride Month exists, its importance, and deepened my want to support the people that need it most.
A World You Cannot Imagine
To understand why Stonewall happened you have to understand the world that made it inevitable.
In 1969 homosexuality was not just socially frowned upon — it was illegal. In most states across America simply being gay could get you arrested. The American Psychiatric Association classified being gay as a mental illness (some people still think this today). Employers could fire you. Landlords could evict you. Your family could disown you. The law was not there to protect you. The law was there to punish you for existing.
Gay bars were some of the only places LGBTQ+ people could gather and even those were not safe. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village New York was one of them — a dark, run down bar owned by the Mafia who paid off the police to look the other way. Most of the time. When it suited them the police raided anyway. They would arrest patrons, humiliate them, drag their names through the papers and destroy their lives. And the people inside had no recourse. No rights. No protection. No voice.
For transgender people and drag queens it was even worse. There were laws — actual laws — that made it illegal to wear clothing that didn’t match the gender on your birth certificate. You could be arrested for how you dressed. For who you were.
Marsha P. Johnson knew this world intimately. She had been living in it since she arrived in New York City as a teenager with nothing but the clothes on her back and the courage it took to simply be herself. She was Black. She was transgender. She was homeless. She was everything that 1969 America had decided didn’t deserve dignity.
And yet every single day she showed up. She showed up for her community, for her friends, for the people sleeping on the streets of Greenwich Village who had nowhere else to go. She showed up with flowers in her hair and joy in her heart in a world that gave her every reason not to.
That is who was inside the Stonewall Inn on the night of June 28th 1969.
The Night Everything Changed
It started like every other raid.
Shortly after midnight on June 28th 1969 New York City police officers arrived at the Stonewall Inn. It was not unusual. Raids happened regularly. The routine was always the same — officers would enter, check IDs, arrest anyone they felt like arresting, humiliate the patrons and leave. The people inside would scatter. The bar would reopen. Life would go on. Until the next raid.
But something was different that night.
Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was exhaustion — the deep bone tired exhaustion of people who had been harassed and arrested and humiliated one too many times. Maybe it was simply that a breaking point had finally been reached. Whatever the reason, when the police began making arrests that night the crowd outside didn’t scatter.
They stayed.
And then they pushed back.
Sylvia Rivera described the moment vividly years later. The lights came on. The announcement came — they were being raided. Queens were being filed out and put into police cars. Guns had been drawn. And then Molotov cocktails started flying.
And Sylvia Rivera felt something unexpected rise up inside her.
Not terror. Not despair.
Relief.
“The revolution is here,” she thought. “Thank God.”
After years of being treated as less than human, after years of raids and arrests and humiliation — now it was their turn.
The Morning After
The sun rose on June 29th 1969 and something had shifted.
Word had spread through Greenwich Village and beyond. What had happened at the Stonewall Inn the night before was not just a bar fight. It was a declaration. And the people who had been hiding, surviving, enduring — they came out.
They marched.
Not with elaborate floats or rainbow flags. Not with corporate sponsors or city permits. They marched with the kind of urgency that only comes from having nothing left to lose. They were sick of being scorned. Sick of being ridiculed. Sick of being treated as criminals for the simple act of loving who they loved.
They wanted what everyone else already had.
The right to go to work without fear of being fired for who they were. The right to walk down the street holding the hand of the person they loved. The right to go about their lives — ordinary, unremarkable, human lives — without being harassed, arrested or erased.
“Not special treatment. Not extra rights.“
Not special treatment. Not extra rights. Just the same rights that everyone else took for granted every single day.
They wanted to be seen as people. Because they were people. They had always been people. And they were done waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
That march was the first spark of what would become the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. And one year later on June 28th 1970 — the first anniversary of Stonewall — the first Gay Pride marches were held simultaneously in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.
That is why we celebrate Pride in June.
Not because it is a party. But because it is a commemoration. A remembrance of the people who stood up on a hot summer night in 1969 and said — enough.
Why It Matters Now
I started watching this documentary as a straight white male who already supported Pride Month. I finished it as someone who finally understood it. There is a difference between supporting something and understanding it. Sitting with Marsha’s story — really sitting with it — made something click that I don’t think I could have articulated before.
Pride Month is not a party. It is not a corporate marketing campaign. It is a commemoration of people who had nothing — no rights, no protection, no safety — and chose to stand up anyway. People like Marsha P. Johnson who showed up every single day with flowers in her hair and joy in her heart in a world that gave her every reason not to. People like Sylvia Rivera who watched fire and fighting and felt relief — because finally, finally, something was changing. That fight is not over. Not even close.
As I watched how Marsha lived her life, I found myself tearing up. To feel unwanted. To be viewed as too different. To feel like the world doesn’t have room for you. I am here to tell you that I have made the decision to understand it more deeply than I ever have. As a straight white male and a veteran, perhaps I can help bridge a gap between what seems like two different worlds. But when you look closely it isn’t two worlds at all. It is one world — fractured and hurting — that desperately needs to become whole.
There will most likely always be people who will mock the LGBTQ+ community. People who say, “we don’t need a whole month for this.” But what those people fail to do is understand the why. They haven’t taken the time to look at the history. They’ve only looked from their own viewpoint and decided this thing called Pride Month wasn’t necessary. Don’t let those people stop you from being you. Do as Marsha would have done; you tell those people to “Pay it No Mind”.
Marsha P. Johnson spent her whole life trying to make it whole. Every June we stop and remember where it started — a hot summer night in Greenwich Village, a raid that went differently than expected, a community that finally pushed back. The least we can do is keep trying.
Remember her name. Keep fighting, and more importantly, never give up.
Want to Learn More?
- Watch The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson on Netflix
- Explore the NPR podcast – Codeswitch: In the face of trans erasure, what can we learn from Marsha P. Johnson?
- Visit the Marsha P. Johnson Institute at marshap.org
Photo: Marsha P. Johnson, Joseph Ratanski and Sylvia Rivera at the 1973 NYC Gay Pride Parade. Artwork by Gary LeGault (Dramamonster). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. – Creative Commons License
