StormÉ DeLarverie 1920to –2014
American singer, drag king, bodyguard, bouncer, and possible instigator of the Stonewall Riots. She was born to a white father and black mother, and since interracial marriage was illegal in Louisiana, was never issued a birth certificate and didn’t know her exact birthday. As a mixed race child, DeLarverie was frequently bullied, and sometimes brutally beaten, to the point where she was sent away to a private school for her safety. As a teenager, she rode jumping horses sidesaddle with the Ringling Bros. Circus. At 18, she realized that she was gay and moved to Chicago. There she worked as a bodyguard for the mob, and began singing with bands, finding success with her smooth baritone voice. In the 1950s, DeLarvarie began performing in drag as M.C. in the legendary Jewel Box Revue, a traveling drag show that was the first in the country to be integrated. The show boasted “25 Men and a Girl,” with DeLarverie being the only woman, a fact revealed at the end of the show. Comfortable in her stage clothes, she took to wearing masculine clothing on the street as well, and claimed to have started the trend among lesbians. She stayed with the Jewel Box for 15 years. In the course of her career, she performed throughout the U.S. and in Europe, at the Apollo Theater, the Copacabana, and Radio City Music Hall. She was also at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 when the rebellion started. Some oral history accounts credit the start of the riots to a butch lesbian who fought with the police to escape custody, was hit hard on the head with a baton, then shouted to onlookers, “Why don’t you guys do something?” Some have identified DeLarverie as that woman, and she later in life confirmed it. But whether or not one individual sparked Stonewall, DeLarvarie was certainly there fighting, and would continue to fight for the queer community for decades. Shortly after the uprising, her partner of 25 years died, a dancer named Diane, whose photo DeLarverie would keep with her. She ended her performing career, and became a bouncer for the lesbian bars Cubby Hole and Henrietta Hudson, while living in the famed Chelsea Hotel. When she wasn’t working, she was patrolling the streets with a licensed gun, on the lookout for any “ugliness,” ready to protect her LGBT “children” from harassment. She would continue to work as a bouncer and protector of the neighborhood well into her 80s. She suffered dementia toward the end of her life, and spent her final years in a nursing home, visited by the few left in the queer community who remembered her vital impact.