The night of June 27, 1969 marks a historic turning point for contemporary LGBTQ+ rights in the United States. A routine police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City ignited a violent, multi-day rebellion after patrons of the bar resisted the discriminatory conditions they long endured. It is said that these riots began when a patron “threw the first brick” at a police officer in response to the unjust raid. While the LGBTQ+ community celebrates activist Marsha P. Johnson by crediting her with the throwing of said brick, the jury is out as to the historical accuracy of this claim. And by crediting a movement and a riot to a singular person, we mythologize Johnson’s personal legacy in favor of a digestible narrative, and actively erase the labor of countless LGBTQ+ people who put their lives on the line for our collective liberation.

The series of events that occurred during the Stonewall uprising is difficult to establish with certainty because so much of LGBTQ+ history isn’t well-documented. Our collective understanding of the riots comes largely from oral histories, which present conflicting and contradictory accounts as to what exactly took place. In addition to crediting Marsha P. Johnson with throwing the brick that started it all, historical accounts often cite Sylvia Rivera as the person who started the Stonewall riots. But it’s critical that we listen to the words of Stonewall’s vanguard activists, and how they contextualize themselves within history.

Both Johnson and Rivera denied being the first to fight back against the police during the uprising. In an interview from the 1970s where Johnson recalls the events of the historic night, she confirms "the riots had already started" by the time she arrived at the bar. Similarly, Rivera delivered a speech in 2001, clarifying, “I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians but I always like to correct it. I threw the second one, I did not throw the first one!” These personal accounts are further complicated by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who said that she did not see either Johnson or Rivera on the first night of the riots.

While it’s noble to recognize Johnson and Rivera’s legacy of resistance in a larger LGBTQ+ history that has often neglected trans women of color, these efforts are ultimately misguided. It’s dangerous to mythologize our transcestors without interrogating what we assume to be historical fact.

Eyewitnesses claim that the events preceding the Stonewall riots began as a police raid on the bar, a frequent and routine occurrence at gay bars during that time. A number of patrons were handcuffed and escorted outside by police. Among them was a butch lesbian who resisted arrest and repeatedly tried to escape before she was struck in the head with a baton. She then punched the cop, shouting to bystanders, “Why don't you guys do something?" This “first punch” is considered the inciting moment that motivated others to fight back against the police. The identity of this woman remains uncertain, but historical accounts suggest that it was Stormé DeLarverie, a Black biracial butch lesbian and drag king. In 2008, when DeLarverie was asked why she didn’t come forward and take credit for her actions, she answered, “Because it was never anybody’s business.”

Though historic evidence points to DeLarverie delivering the “first punch” of the uprising, this has been overlooked due to the false belief that either Johnson or Rivera were responsible. In Charles Kaiser's 1995 book, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, Kaiser makes a case that DeLarverie deserves the credit for mobilizing the patrons of the Stonewall Inn to fight back. In a response to DeLarverie’s obituary in the New York Times, he recalls an interview he conducted with her. “She denied that she was the catalyst, but her own words matched others’ descriptions of the defining moment: ‘The cop hit me, and I hit him back. The cops got what they gave.’” But can we definitively give singular credit to DeLarverie, when even she has denied being the catalyst for the rebellion?