Stormé DeLarverie (1920-2014) was a gay rights activist who may or may not have thrown the first punch at the 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I’m Kate Kelly, host of Ordinary Equality and guest host for today’s episode of Encyclopedia Womannica.
There is a famous photo of today’s queer icon that was taken in 1961. She sits on a park bench, one leg crossed, a cigarette in her hand. Her suit and tie fit her perfectly. The title reads, “The Lady Who Appears to be A Gentleman.”
For the first half of her career, our icon made her living exactly that way, as a Drag King, singer and emcee. After the Stonewall uprising, she became known as the guardian angel of west village lesbians, patrolling the streets for what she called “ugliness.”
Let’s talk about Storme DeLarverie.
Storme DeLarverie was born in 1920, in New Orleans. Her father was wealthy, and white; her mother was Black, and a servant in her father’s home. Because interracial marriage was illegal at the time, Storme says she was never given a birth certificate. But throughout her life, she celebrated her birthday on December 24th - Christmas Eve.
Much of Storme’s childhood was marked by violent bullying. Her father had her privately educated, but that didn’t stop kids from routinely beating her up for being both rich and biracial. Her father sat her down one day and told her if she didn’t stop running, she’d be running for the rest of her life.
“When I was 15,” she said in a 2001 documentary, “I stopped running, and I haven’t run a day since.”
Storme started singing, often in local, New Orleans clubs. It was there she began cultivating her deep, rich baritone, a perfect fit for the jazz songs she often crooned.
When she was around 18 years old, Storme came out as gay. Fearing for her life, as a biracial lesbian in the South, Storme moved to Chicago.
Throughout the 1940s, Storme performed onstage as “Stormy Dale,” a jazz singer. She presented as a woman, in dresses, with long hair, and a flower behind one ear.
After over a decade in show business, Storme took a trip to Miami, where she visited a venue called Danny’s Jewel Box. The owners mentioned they needed some help with one of their shows. Storme agreed to six months. She ended up staying for 14 years.
The show became known as the Jewel Box Revue, a touring drag cabaret. Storme became emcee, musical director, and occasionally, the stage manager. At first, people warned Storme -- who was tall, broad shouldered and handsome -- not to do drag, that it would ruin her reputation. But Storme blew them off.
“It was very easy,” she later said. “All I had to do was just be me and let people use their imaginations. It never changed me. I was still a woman.”
The Revue grew famous for their slogan “25 Men and One Girl.”
Audiences were aware that the drag queens -- called, at the time, “female impersonators” -- were the 25 men. But who was the one girl? The reveal wouldn’t come until the very end, when Emcee Storme -- dressed to the nines in an impeccable suit and, sometimes, a mustache -- starred in a number called “A Surprise With A Song.”
Storme and the Revue performed in New York City and around the country, often putting on 3 to 4 shows a day.
In the summer of 1969, Storme was in New York, dressed, as she often was, in masculine clothes. At the time, New York had what was called a “three-item” rule. Anyone -- though the law targeted queer folks, especially lesbians -- had to be publicly dressed in at least three items of clothing that “matched” their sex assigned at birth.
Laws like these antagonized Storme -- she was harassed for wearing men’s clothes, and, at least twice, arrested for wearing a dress, because police were convinced she was a man in drag -- but she was never one to back down from a fight. She wore what she wanted.
In the early hours of June 28, Storme was at the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village. Police raided the club, hauling out patrons, including Storme, under all kinds of homophobic laws. A crowd began to form outside. People were tired, and angry, and fed up.
Legend has it that a lesbian in a three-piece suit punched a police officer. The identity of that person has never been revealed, but a number of witnesses -- and Storme herself, at one point -- said she’d been the one to throw that first punch. And that punch was what sparked the Stonewall uprising. Those five days of riots shifted the course of queer history. They are why we celebrate pride in June.
But Storme didn’t quite see them as a riot.
In the month after Stonewall, Storme’s partner of 25 years, a dancer named Diana, died. In the wake of her death, Storme left show business. She was nearly 50, but strong, and imposing, with a license to carry -- and she dedicated the rest of her life to protecting her chosen family.
Until she was 85 years old, Storme worked as a bouncer for several lesbian bars in lower Manhattan -- though she described herself as, “a babysitter of all my people, all my boys and girls.” She was known for roaming the streets, looking for what she called “ugliness” -- bullying, rudeness, racist or homophobic behavior. Anything that threatened her “baby girls.”
“She literally walked the streets of downtown Manhattan like a gay superhero,” a friend told the New York Times in 2014. “She was not to be messed with by any stretch of the imagination.”
Storme lived her own life like one, long rebellion. She challenged ideas around gender, performance, and sexuality. She put her body on the line to ensure acceptance, and kindness. And she never, ever ran from a fight.
Storme died in 2014, at the age of 93.
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Special thanks to Encyclopedia Womannica for having me on today’s episode.
You can find me at @Kate_Kelly_Esq on social media, and on WMN’s original podcast, Ordinary Equality.
Happy Pride!