Island Noir: Beyond the Palm Trees
Island Noir Podcast, hosted by Nya Starr, dives into impactful crimes affecting marginalized people around the world—past and present. Every episode honors the victims, uncovers truth, and amplifies resilience.
Unseen victims. Untold truths. Uncovered resilience.
Island Noir: Beyond the Palm Trees
Laughter, Lipstick, and Lies: What Happened to Marsha P. Johnson?
In our Pride special, Island Noir: Beyond the Palm Trees revisits the suspicious death of Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson, the Black trans activist who, alongside her friend Sylvia Rivera, co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) and helped lay the foundation for what we now recognize as Pride.
In 1992, Marsha’s body was found in the Hudson River. The NYPD called it suicide.
Noir Seekers drop your thoughts below.
We love hearing from you! Drop your fan mail here:
Like, comment, and Subscribe ✊🏾
In a world that punished people just for being who they are, one voice stood out bold, beautiful and unbothered, with flowers in her hair, boldness in her, her walk, and move through the world with fire in her soul. Damn, that sounded like something Maya Angelou would say. But anyways, her name was Marsha P Johnson, and tonight we're following her journey from protests to the unanswered questions that still linger. Welcome back to another powerful episode of Island Noir podcast. I'm your host, nia Starr. Island Noir podcast. I'm your host, nia Starr. Today we're diving into a story that's part celebration, part tragedy and, as always, all truth. But before we get into who Marsha P Johnson was, we need to talk about the world she was born into, because to really understand her as a person, we have to understand the journey, the war she walked through just to even exist during her time. This episode we're pulling back the layers on her life, a life that sparked change and a death that still demands answers. We'll walk through her early years and her rise as a revolutionary in the queer liberation movement and the mystery surrounding her final days, and in all of it, her laughter, her lipstick and her legacy. We're asking the same question her community still asks today? What really happened to Marsha today? What really happened to Marsha?
Speaker 1:Mid-20th century America wasn't just unkind to queer people, it was hostile. Same-sex relationships were illegal in nearly every state. Dressing up outside of your assigned gender that alone could get you arrested or worse, harassed, beaten, humiliated. Queer bars were raided constantly, brutalize the people, drag them out, and if you're poor, black or trans, you weren't just pushed aside, you were targeted. Now most people point to the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 as the beginning of queer resistance, and yeah, it was a turning point. But there's more to it. During my research on this, I found it very interesting.
Speaker 1:The Stonewall Inn was a small bar in New York City, greenwich Village. It wasn't fancy, it didn't even have a liquor license, apparently but it was one of the few places where queer folks, especially trans people, drag queens and homeless youth could gather without immediate fear, or so they thought. That was until the night of June 28, 1969. Around 1.20 in the morning, police raided the bar A routine shake-up, but this time it was a bit different, because this time the people in the bar fought back, the patrons refused to go quietly and by this time crowds started to gather outside and bottles were being thrown. What started as a raid turned into six nights of protests. The streets erupted with chaos and rage, but in a way, in a sense, they also united a lot of of the queer community and their allies Drag queens, trans women, street kids, everyone. They were all there on the front lines facing the riot cops, with all geared up with nothing but heels, fists and fury. And while Marsha P Johnson has often been credited with throwing the first brick, even she said in interviews that wasn't quite how it went down, but the fact that she was there, she was part of that fire and afterward she kept it burning, because Stonewall didn't end with just broken windows and ramming doors. It became a movement Because within a year, the first Pride March took place, new activist groups formed and the fight for lgbtq liberation was no longer just whispers and back alleys.
Speaker 1:It was loud, it was out front, it was impossible to ignore. Those seeds of resistance were planted long before stonewall. Back in the Harlem Renaissance, I learned that Black queer artists like Gladys Bentley and Richard Bruce Nugent were already bending the rules, creating, performing, living out loud in a world that wanted them to just stay quiet and stay out of sight, out of mind. They challenged racism and homophobia with every line, every lyric, every look. Marsha P Johnson didn't come out of nowhere. She came from that specific legacy. She came from that specific legacy and just when you, the community, might catch a break, another war hits, the AIDS epidemic, entire neighborhoods wiped out, friends, lovers, whole chosen families gone. The government ignored it, hospitals turned people away. The media barely wrote about it, but through it all, marsha stood as a black trans, poor and powerful. Now that we've set the stage, let's talk about the woman who lit a spark.
Speaker 1:Before she became Marsha P Johnson, she was known as Malcolm Michaels Jr, born August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, new Jersey. She was the fifth of seven children in a working-class Christian home. Her father, malcolm Sr, worked at a General Motors plant and helped support their large family. Not much is publicly known about their relationship, but it could mean it was just really private or simply not discussed as much. Marsha's mother, alberta, was a devoted parent but also held strong religious beliefs that shaped her view of Marsha's identity when she eventually came out. When she eventually came out, according to Marsha, her mother once expressed disapproval of her gender expression in a deeply hurtful way, but still, marsha never spoke about her mother with resentment. Marsha wore a cross necklace throughout her life and often spoke about her own faith. Despite the judgment she faced, she still had her own connection to spirituality and it remained strong.
Speaker 1:From an early age, marsha expressed herself in ways that challenged traditional gender norms. As a child, she explained that she experienced significant trauma which affected how she eventually navigated the world, and for a time she suppressed parts of herself for safety, and a lot of it has to do with her religious upbringing as well. After graduating high school in 1963, she left New Jersey behind and, as you can imagine, she left because of her family's disapproval of her lifestyle, and when she left she only had $15 in a bag of clothes. She moved to New York City, and that's where Marsha P Johnson was born. The P, she often said, stood for pay it no mind. It became her mantra, her shield, her motto, a way to move through the world on her own terms, not just surviving, but declaring her right to exist with pride. She didn't just show out, she changed the whole damn fucking scene. This is where Marsha took her stand. So let's connect the dots.
Speaker 1:We talked about Stonewall Uprising earlier, about the rage, the pushback, the fire, the protests and the first Pride Parade. Well, marsha P Johnson didn't just walk through all that, she lived it, she advocated for it, she fought against it, not only for herself but for others. Not long after the protests, marsha teamed up with her sister in the struggle, sylvia Rivera, and together they co-founded STAR Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries in 1970. Now if you've listened to our season premiere, when Power Fears Truth, the Story of Fred Hampton, this is gonna sound familiar. The Black Panther Party set up free breakfast programs, community clinics and patrols because they knew the system wasn't built to protect them or supply them with the necessary resources that others naturally got. So Marsha and Sylvia did the exact same thing, but for trans and queer youth.
Speaker 1:Star was a radical act of care A place to sleep, food to eat, a community to belong to. They ran it out of a busted apartment in East Village. No grants, no big donors, just their heart, their hustle and hope. Marsha basically became the drag mother, not just in title, but she also acted it out. She looked out for kids who had been kicked out, left behind or overlooked. People called her the Saint of Christopher Street, and it wasn't just a nickname. She was like the Mother Teresa, she was the Gandhi. That's who she was, and everyone looked up to her Because she was the type of person that would give you away her last dollar and she shared her food and walked the streets reminding people that they mattered. So this is actually one of the shows that I've been meaning to get around to watching, but I don't know. If you guys ever watch Pose, then you already know that this isn't fiction, chosen families like Star were real and there were lifelines for people in the world that weren't accepted. That show gives everyone a glimpse of what Marsha and Sylvia were doing decades earlier.
Speaker 1:And when the AIDS crisis hit hard, marsha didn't just leave. She joined the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, also known as ACT UP, a direct action group demanding people living with HIV and AIDS were seen treated with care and respect, as well as protected. They were putting pressure on politicians, calling out pharmaceutical companies and demanding access to equal care or just care in general. Marsha wasn't just a fighter. She was also an artist. She performed with the drag troupe known as Hot Peaches, bringing in beauty and power to the stage. Bringing in beauty and power to the stage. She even caught the eye of Andy Warhol, who featured her in his Ladies and Gentlemen, series highlighting the boldness of drag queens and trans women who couldn't be simply erased. Just like Fred Hampton believed in the people's power and care as resistance and building what the system refused to give. And just like Fred, marsha's story didn't end with celebration it ended with silence and questions.
Speaker 1:Before we get into the next chapter of Marsha's story, I just want to take a moment, as your host, to share something from the heart. I know people come from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs and I always want to honor that. But one message that shows up in so many religions and value systems is the call to treat others with kindness, with decency, with respect. Others with kindness, with decency, with respect. You don't always have to agree with someone's path to treat them like a human being. That's just basic. You know, I personally may not always see eye to eye with somebody. I may not have the same political views or religious views. The same political views or religious views. If you come to me with respect, if you live your life without harming others, without doing something that's bad and that doesn't go against my morals or values, I'm going to treat you with the same dignity. I reciprocate the same behavior. That's just me. Character matters to me. If someone's character is ugly, that is what speaks volumes, not their gender, not their beliefs, not who they love. I'm not saying that I don't have my opinions on certain things I do, but I also believe in giving people their own space for growth.
Speaker 1:There's a clip on social media that's been going around lately. It's a clip with Arsenio Hall from the Arsenio Hall Show. I don't know if you guys know Arsenio Hall, but Arsenio Hall is the actor that played in Coming to America. He played Eddie Murphy's friend. He also had a show back in the 90s similar to Oprah's the Arsenio Hall Show.
Speaker 1:He was being interrupted by white gay protesters in the audience and his response he said something that has always stuck with me. He said I'm black, I'm the biggest minority you know, and what he meant was because he knows what it's like to be judged, what it's like to be oppressed, mistreated. He himself could never turn around and do that to someone else. If you haven't seen it, go look it up on YouTube. Just type in Arsenio Hall audience, interrupt show or something like that, and you'll see the clip for yourself.
Speaker 1:But that clip speaks on why, as a person of color or someone that comes from a marginalized community, why would you turn around and do the same thing to someone else is what he was pointing out. So for the folks listening, especially parents, especially people of faith, I know it might be hard when your child doesn't walk the path that you envisioned. But if your child isn't hurting anyone, like they're not a serial killer, didn't beat someone, they're not in a gang, if they're just being themselves, just being free, then how bad is the path really? Is it bad enough to lose them forever? Enough to lose them forever? If someone's identity has no impact on your life, why respond with hate? You can't claim to stand for love or for righteousness and still treat others like they don't deserve to exist. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below and please make sure that you're respectful. At the end of the day, conversation matters, but so does respect, and I would like to maintain that Anyhow.
Speaker 1:The next part of this story isn't easy. It's where the joy in Marsha's story takes a very sharp turn. One night in July of 92, rain had passed through. Just earlier the air was still thick from the summer heat, but by morning the skies had cleared. In the Hudson it shimmered beneath the warm rising sun. It felt like any other day.
Speaker 1:Until the news broke Marsha P Johnson's body was found in the river floating not too far from the Christopher Street piers, a place where she once laughed, danced and organized, where she mothered a whole community the world tried to forget. Police arrived, they took a swift, swift look and ruled it a suicide. There was no real investigation, no deep dive and no fucks given. Just another case quickly closed. No real investigation, no deep dive, but Marsha's community. They knew something wasn't right. She had been in good spirits just days earlier. She had plans and she had just come from pride.
Speaker 1:Days earlier she told friends she was being followed and harassed by men near the piers. Witnesses said she'd been in a heated argument just two nights before with a local man from the neighborhood, Someone who reportedly hurled slurs at her during a confrontation, and this person would later brag about hurting a drag queen named Marsha. There were also reports of her being harassed by a group known in the area, guys who had a reputation for robbing people. But even with all of these witnesses, there were no names released. But to her chosen family this felt like a warning that, even after everything that they fought for, even though, even though they've made contributions, black trans lives could still be taken, could still be erased, but her people didn't let that happen. They continued to rally, protest. They refused to let her name just fade. Protests. They refused to let her name just fade. They said it louder because Marsha Payne, no Mind Johnson, didn't live life quietly and her community.
Speaker 1:Marsha's story isn't isolated. Since 2013, at least 308 transgendered women have lost their lives to fatal violence here in the US, according to the Human Rights Campaign. But the numbers tell something greater, because 84% of all trans and gender-expensive victims were people of color, and those victims, black transgendered women, made up majority, about 61%. That's more than six out of every ten lives lost. These individuals weren't just murdered, they were failed. They were failed especially by the media that never thought to put their names out there compared to other victims. And this isn't a new pattern, it's systemic, a pattern that started long before Marsha and one that even continues till this day.
Speaker 1:And we're seeing it right now, because when you live in an intersection that we live in in society, especially being black or being LGBT, being poor you don't just face one single threat. You face all of them all at once, from the moment Marsha's body was pulled from the Hudson River on that warm July morning in 1992, the official response was cold. In footage later released by Victoria Cruz, an LGBTQ activist and investigator with the Anti-Violence Project, marsha is seen just days before her death, smiling but honest. She basically tells Cruz that she doesn't think that law enforcement agencies do a well of a job into investigating murders involving the LGBTQ community. She goes on to say that when you're gay, gay, it takes forever. I always say tomorrow is not promised to me. This is, in a way, she's foreshadowing her own death, and it's sad because she obviously knew that this system wasn't going to help her, or the system back then, and she was right.
Speaker 1:Randy Wicker, marsha's roommate and close friend, described how her body laid in the street hours on the hot pavement, her blood just soaking into the asphalt. No urgency, no dignity. Not even the coroner's van was on time. It was a makeshift memorial that grew in that same spot. Flowers were laid, but justice never showed up. Wicker gathered firsthand accounts. Marsha's body had a visible wound at the back of her head A hole, someone said, but a medical examiner later chalked it up to post-mortem decomposition in water. And just like that the police walked away. But the streets, you know, the streets talk and one of those people was Beanie Tony. He was a local around the area and he told Wicker he had seen Marsha arguing with man named Michael, a neighbor with facial scars and a known temper. Michael had shouted slurs at her, so I'm guessing that's the individual that was at the bar later. That was basically bragging to anyone that would even pay him any mind that he had killed Marsha and apparently Tony had tried to report it and the NYPD never followed up. There were other reports and even with Wicker writing to law enforcement to look further into the investigation.
Speaker 1:It's not surprising because throughout the early 90s the peers became known for something else Queer bodies turning up in the water, and it was with increasing frequency. They were often trans, often black or brown and almost always their cases dismissed. But the louder the community got, the more the system tried to sweep it under the rug. Still, randy Wicker didn't stop. As I said, he wrote letters, but he also stood on corners with petitions, collected signatures, held signs that read Justice for Marsha. She was black, she was trans, she was a sex worker. In the NYPD's eyes she was a non-person, and Marsha wasn't alone in that either. Jesus Jesse Santiago was another trans person, and he was murdered in the Bronx. Eyewitnesses heard the slurs and told NYPD this when they were questioned. But again, nypd refused to label it a hate crime. They said that the killer was drunk, said the slurs were indiscriminate, the pattern wasn't hard to see, but everything else was just going backwards.
Speaker 1:This wasn't just one death. This was a rhythm of erasure ignored leads, missed witnesses, excuses after excuses and just silence, until finally, in 2012, after two decades of community pressure, petition, journalism and activism, the NYPD reopened Marsha's case. Her cause of death was changed from suicide to undetermined. To this day, the case remains unsolved and the question still hangs in the air, much like the fog over the Hudson what really happened to Marsha Payette, no Mind Johnson.
Speaker 1:At this point, I find myself circling the same question. Not just what happened, but how did they let this happen? Again and again, when you step back and look at the facts, a few things stand out. Marsha's body was pulled from the Hudson. She had a wound, possibly blunt force trauma, on the back of her head, as we've already heard, witnesses said there was confrontation, there was threats, there were confessions and there was harassment. So the question is where was the follow-up, where was the urgency? Something that I also wanted to find out, but I couldn't, when I was looking up the cases, find out. But I couldn't, when I was looking up the cases, I couldn't find out if there was any outside examiner, outside from law enforcement, if the family or friends went to a professional outside of the NYPD. I wanted to know did anyone advocate for a second autopsy before she was cremated? Because if they didn't, then even that final layer of truth is gone. And I get it, she was in the river right, so maybe evidence could have been washed away, dna could have been degraded. But her clothes, her personal belongings I also wonder if those were ever tested for DNA left by someone else other than Marsha.
Speaker 1:When we zoom further back, we're looking at the other bodies that started turning up in the Hudson around the same time and it starts to feel calculated not necessarily by one serial killer, by a system and a location that made it easy to prey on the marginalized. Think about it Same area, same time period, same kind of victims, queer, trans, often black, brown, and they had similar injuries. Could it have been a predator? Possibly. Could it have been multiple people using the piers like a hunting ground Also possible. But the most chilling part is that none of that mattered because nobody with power, nobody in the public service was looking. This wasn't just one person loss. This was about a city that didn't protect her, a city that didn't protect queers, a system that didn't investigate her case or any other case like hers, and a world that struggles to say her life mattered.
Speaker 1:So what do we do with all of this? We ask louder, we support trans-led justice organizations, we educate ourselves, we look at every case the system said was just another suicide and say, nah, show me the truth, because the fog may still hang over the Hudson, but we don't stop until we see through it. Before we close, I want to take a moment to speak directly to my LGBTQ noir seekers, especially those who felt the weight of invisibility, injustice and silence. If Marsha's story moved you, if it lit something in you, there are ways to carry that forward. Lit something in you, there are ways to carry that forward.
Speaker 1:And now to all my listeners here are some organizations doing the work on the ground and in the courts every single day. We have the Marsha P Johnson Institute and you could go, look that up. On marshaporg, it was created in Marsha's honor. This organization basically protects and defends the human rights of Black trans people through organizing, advocacy and community support. And we also have the Transgender Law Center, and you can find more information on their website on transgenderlawcenterorg Fighting for legal protections and policy changes that affirm trans lives Because, as we know, rights shouldn't depend on visibility alone. And then, lastly, we have the Okra Project, and you can find that on the okraprojectcom. They provide nourishment, mental health resources and holistic care for Black trans folks, with a focus on healing and dignity. So if you're ever wondering how to help give, where you can speak when it matters.
Speaker 1:It doesn't take a headline to make a difference. It just takes action, intention and heart, because so much of what Marsha stood for wasn't about being praised. It was about being seen, respected and loved. She gave when the world gave her nothing. She showed up for the forgotten. It's a legacy that still pushes us to fight harder, to love louder and to protect each other better. She wore flowers. She started fires. Marsha P Johnson wasn't just a symbol. She was a spark, a movement and a reminder that queer lives are sacred and they deserve truth and not just tribute.
