Stormé DeLarverie
| Stormé DeLarverie | |
|---|---|
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| Born | December 24, 1920 New Orleans, Louisiana, United States |
| Died | May 24, 2014 (aged 93) Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Master of Ceremonies, Bodyguard, Singer, Bouncer, Drag king |
Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was a butch lesbian whose purported scuffle with police was one of the defining moments of the Stonewall riots, 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 graced the stages of 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."
Almost 50 years 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. ~ Stormé DeLarverie
At 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. 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 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, but accounts vary), 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".
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