For the past couple of Februaries and Junes here at The American Blackstory and over at SOUND IN COLOR (respectively), the schedule’s been a little unusual.
Sometimes the story I’m telling on both sites is interrupted by the one I’m living.
I used to feel terrible that somehow, someway, some major side quest always derailed my plans on these two sites.
But I’ve slowly come to the realization that at least for the moment, the story I’m being called to write is my own.
My third site (omg ikr) is currently undergoing updates, but in the meantime, you’re invited to follow where the universe takes me, read the lovely words, and heart the pretty pictures at @wherejoywanders on Instagram.
Stonewall had a formidable security team, and her name was Stormé.
And though Marsha P. Johnson, another famous face at Stonewall, may not have participated as once believed, everybody agrees that Stormé DeLarverie was not only there on June 27, 1969—she got her lick in.
“Storme DeLarverie – January 27, 2010 12:45am,” by Tony Notarberardino. Stormé would have been approximately 90 years old here in a portrait taken at NYC’s Chelsea Hotel. Read the backstory here.
“She literally walked the streets of downtown Manhattan like a gay superhero,” her friend Lisa Cannistraci told the New York Times.
Well-known for her neighborhood patrols—and her gun permit—Stormé didn’t tolerate “ugliness” in her community. But that’s exactly what met her when she rushed to the chaotic raid at the Stonewall Inn.
“Move along, f****t,” NYPD spat at her.
New York penal code prohibited cross-dressing, but police had to know someone was cross-dressing to enforce it. Stormé had been a chameleon all her life.
That night, she lived up to her name.
Stormé defied police orders, insisting on standing watch over their treatment of her “children” at Stonewall.
Her resistance was met with a club to the face.
In return, the man attached to that club officially met Stormé.
“I walked away with an eye bleeding, but he was laying on the ground, out,” she recounted to PBS.
The New York Times features an interesting article comparing Stonewall from the perspectives of two of its major players, Stormé and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine.
NYPD couldn’t have known it, but never backing down was Stormé’s specialty.
Born in 1920 as Viva May Thomas, the clear offspring of a Black mother and white father in a time when interracial relationships were still illegal, Stormé had grown up a pariah. She was once so badly bullied, she was left hanging from a fence by her leg, an injury she carried her entire life. The trauma stuck with her too. Even as a queer elder, Stormé wouldn’t repeat the names she’d been called as a child.
“Somebody was always chasing me – until I stopped running,” she said in one documentary.
Viva May as a fresh-faced 30 year old, courtesy of NYPL.
Finally done running, Stormé started shining.
From a prolific local singing career to a side-saddle horse act with the Ringling Brothers Circus, Stormé confidently found her place center-stage.
But somewhere along the line—public documentation of Stormé’s life starts to get intermittent as her name changed several times throughout the years—she also discovered that she wanted to shine a little differently.
In 1955, Stormé remerged as the only female-born performer at the Jewel Box Revue, a drag burlesque and variety show. At the same time, she unveiled a whole new face.
Stormé remembers that “somebody told me that I would completely ruin my reputation, and…didn’t I have enough problems being Black? I said, I didn’t have any problem with it. Everybody else did.”
Stormé slowly perfected that face until as far as casual observers, paying customers, and consequently, police officers, were concerned, at least on her performance nights, they were looking at a man.
She worked as a bodyguard, volunteer street patrol, and bouncer for several gay clubs still operating in New York like The Cubby Hole and Henrietta Hudson, but hated those titles.
Stormé packing heat in front of the Cubby Hole in 1986.
“I consider myself a well-paid babysitter of my people, all the boys and girls,” a friend recalled her saying.
When AIDS ravaged New York’s gay communities in the 80’s, that same friend asked Stormé for a $5 donation to buy Christmas gifts for those affected.
“Several hours later Stormé walked back into the restaurant with over $2,000,” and subsequently made it her annual tradition, he wrote.
In 1999, Services & Advocacy for LGBTQ+ Elders awarded Stormé their Lifetime achievement award for “crashing the gates of segregation and for the gender-bending example she showed the world,” noting that “she lives her life quietly and does much of what she does very quietly, sometimes anonymously… because what matters to her is that she does what she does, not that it makes a big splash.”
Unfortunately, that quiet life did not serve Stormé well. As she aged and her financial, living, and mental conditions all deteriorated, friends and admirers found themselves rallying others to her aid. Describing her as “someone who gave willingly of herself so that others might live meaningful, fulfilling lives free of discrimination and harassment,” their attempts at supporting an aging Stormé ultimately fell to a non-profit organization.
“I feel like the gay community could have really rallied, but they didn’t,” her friend Lisa told a Times reporter who found Stormé’s absence from NY’s 2010 Pride parade so unusual, he made it his headline.
Four years later, at the ripe old age of 93 (miraculous for anyone, but especially among queer elders), Stormé passed away quietly and alone.
But not forgotten.
When the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor was unveiled inside the Stonewall Inn, 50 names adorned the plaque in honor of the Rebellion’s 50th anniversary.
Listen in on PBS In the Life’s profile and interview with Stormé.
Hear more from Stormé including her singing, perhaps for the very last time, at 2:30.
There’s no more complete history of Stormé’s entire life than the one created by Chris Starfire here.
The Stonewall Veterans’ Association has an extensive entry on Stormé’s activism here.
The Code Switch podcast tackles Stormé’s story through an intersectional lens of queer pride, police brutality and racism, all topics prevalent throughout her life and still relevant today. Listen in here.
Read Stormé’s obituary published in the New York Times on May 30, 2014.
Yes, reports do vary as to whether that nickname came from the heavy buffalo fur coats these Black regiments wore on the American frontier, or from their hair texture that seemed nearly identical to the buffalo’s.
It’s the “soldier” that reasonably implies that all these men did was fight.
From their establishment in 1866 to the last regiment’s formal service disbanding in 1951, their military contributions are too tremendous to count.
But their peaceful contributions here at home are absolutely stunning.
In fact, if you’ve ever been to ANY major national park west of the Mississippi, chances are you’ve walked directly in their footsteps and don’t even know it.
Yosemite, Yellowstone, Hawai’i Volcanoes, Klondike, and Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks simply would not exist without the Buffalo Soldiers’ relentless work.
And that’s still just a fraction of the trails they blazed across the United States.
Between 1866 and 1891 alone, the Buffalo Soldiers are documented at 250 sites across twelve different states.
One of the furthest is Hawaii, and its “highly challenging” 36-mile Mauna Loa Trail. 30 of those miles leading to the 13,681-foot summit were painstakingly carved out of solid lava by the Buffalo Soldiers with 12-pound hammers as their only tools.
Mauna Loa Trail in 1931Buffalo Soldiers assist lava surveysHistorical photos of the Buffalo Soldiers’ work in Hawai’i, courtesy of the National Park Service
Further north in California, Brigadier General Charles Young—who later became the first Black U.S. national park superintendent and the highest ranking Black Army officer until he died in 1922—led his company in clearing a road into Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, allowing public citizens access to the giant trees for the first time ever.
When leadership suggested naming a sequoia for then-Colonel Young, he refused, humbly requesting the tree be named for Booker T. Washington instead. If sentiments were the same in 20 years, he said, only then might he accept the honor. Spoiler alert…
But that wasn’t the only big work the Buffalo Soldiers took on in California. If you’ve ever taken the trail up nearby Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48, you got it. Buffalo Soldiers.
Lt. James A Moss’s 25th Infantry, U. S. Army Bicycle Corps, atop Minerva Terrace at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. [August 1896 per Moss’s diary]
Among the first people to survey and create trails through the land that would become Yellowstone National Park, the nine men of the 25th Infantry bicycled from Missoula, MT to Yellowstone, crossing the Continental Divide twice over a 800-mile round trip. Since Yellowstone was still a largely uncharted place, there were no permanent accommodations. By necessity, these men carried over 100 pounds of gear, munitions and provisions, all on their bikes.
Compared to those assignments, Yosemite’s pristine landscape was a “cavalryman’s paradise” actively sought out by soldiers from all corners of the States. And yet, to this day, Yosemite specifically names the Buffalo Soldiers as the “stars of its story” and “safeguards of its mountain cathedrals.”
Buffalo Soldiers atop Yosemite’s Fallen Monarch in the Mariposa Forest. (NPS)
A Buffalo Soldier’s hat hangs in the Yosemite Office of the Acting Superintendent. A poster in the same office details the Buffalo Soldiers’ contributions to the park. (Click the poster image and open in a new tab to read in full.)
All of these trailblazing acts of service by the Buffalo Soldiers were before the National Park System was created. So more than just pioneers and explorers, the U.S. Army served as the country’s original Park Rangers.
In Yosemite, that service was especially vital as the park was especially vulnerable to all sorts of dangers like poachers, wildfires and overgrazing. The Buffalo Soldiers regularly patrolled against those dangers and were fully prepared to oppose them if necessary. When they weren’t protecting Yosemite’s borders, they built the Wawona Arboretum in 1903, and in the process, launched the U.S. National Parks’ first educational program, a cornerstone of the system today.
The 24th Infantry Buffalo Soldiers patrol Yosemite armed and on horseback in 1899. (NPS)
Now, if you’re paying attention, you might notice a theme. The Buffalo Soldiers were frequently sent to the most remote and rugged parts of the U.S. territories to forge new lands and protect them through military force if necessary. Aside from poachers, fires and livestock, the Army was almost certain to confront Indigenous People.
And Army leadership knew they had a secret advantage in the Buffalo Soldiers, because they’d learned it from some of the first U.S. pioneers, Meriwether Lewis & William Clark.
When native tribes encountered Lewis and Clark, it was frequently their curiosity or admiration of York, the expedition’s enslaved man, that gave those tribes any incentive to speak to white men at all.
It’d be naive to believe this didn’t influence the Buffalo Soldiers’ peacekeeping AND wartime assignments, where they were deployed against native Americans, the Spanish, Filipinos, and Mexicans among many others. Whether it was that they were expendable against other brown people, or that they unknowingly served as a shock tactic against them, the Buffalo Soldiers valiantly fought on behalf of the United States anyway.
The Army enlisted fighters, but look closer and you’ll find the Buffalo Soldiers’ true legacy still growing along the most peaceful streams, under purple mountains, and so many more places that make America beautiful.
KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:
Watch Yosemite Ranger Shelton Johnson discuss preserving the traditions of the Buffalo Soldiers in National Parks today.
Listen in on Ranger Johnson’s historically based podcast “A Buffalo Soldier Speaks” here.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture maintains an extensive Buffalo Soldiers collection here.
Jesse Stahl demonstrated some of the most legendary horsemanship the world’s rodeo circuit has ever seen.
When his name was called, the whole arena knew they were about to see the show of a lifetime.
They also knew that no matter how skilled, how risky, or how dazzling Jesse’s ride, there was no way he’d actually win.
An assortment of historical Jesse Stahl postcards
Though his talent was famously touted far and wide, Jesse Stahl was infamous, even among his competitors for “winning first, but getting third.”
No matter how hard Jesse rode, almost all of the judges he faced refused to score his ride higher than a white man’s. Dozens of others would allow him to ride for show, but wouldn’t let him compete at all.
The adage is that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far. And Jesse worked even harder, becoming widely renowned for feats of horsemanship no other cowboy would even attempt.
His pièce de résistance was riding a bucking bronco backwards. As if that weren’t already incredible, Jesse’s routine variations on that trick were almost superhuman.
He and Kentucky Black cowboy Ty Stokes often teamed up for what they called the “suicide ride,” where both men rode a bucking bronco simultaneously, with Ty facing forward and Jesse facing backward. According to another cowboy, Jesse even rode at least once backwards with a suitcase in his hand, exclaiming “I’m going home!”
Jesse Stahl rides backwards at a 1912 rodeo.The June 10, 1921 edition of the Chico Enterprise promotes Jesse’s daring
But riding backwards was hardly the only trick up Jesse’s sleeve.
“Hoolihanding,” the act of jumping from the back of a horse directly onto a bull’s before taking it down by the horns was invented and perfected by Jesse before it was eventually outlawed as too dangerous for the animals.
(Fellow Black cowboy Bill Pickett altered the move, jumping from a horse to simply wrestle a steer down by the horns, inventing what’s today known as “bulldogging.”)
A 1912 rodeo in Salinas, CA brought Jesse one of his most fearsome opponents, a bucking bronc forebodingly named Glass Eye. This unbroken horse terrified other competitors, but Jesse handled the gravity-defying ride with such ease, he even had time to ham it up.
Jesse Stahl and Glass Eye, 1912.
Despite these daring displays that literally put his life on the line, most sources—from fellow cowboys to local oral histories to museums—all agree that Jesse rarely ever won.
But as 2019 Blackstory feature Shelby Jacobs said, “If you impress the crowd, the coach can’t put you on the bench.”
Jesse may not have been able to win the judges, but he had so much crowd appeal, that today, some local writers credit Jesse for putting whole rodeos on the map, while giving him the superstar status of a “cowboy Steph Curry.”
Jesse is spoken of warmly as news of his passing is publicized in the April 24, 1935 Corning (CA) Daily Observer
And his fellow riders loved him most of all. Because Jesse depended on rodeos that would allow him to ride AND place well AND pay him—all tall orders for a Black person in the early 20th century—he died penniless. Rather than allow a legend to rest in a pauper’s grave, friends and competitors paid for his proper burial.
And though his name receded into history for a while, he was finally honored by the whole of the rodeo industry with his 1979 induction into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame, only the second Black cowboy after his friend Bill Pickett.
Like so many other incredible Black people, Jesse’s only just recently begun to receive his flowers. It speaks not only to the resurgence of Black cowboy culture, but why it had to resurge in the first place.
Leaps and bounds beyond his competitors, one single attribute kept Jesse Stahl’s name in the depths of history: his Blackness.
In the wake of that resurgence, we’re celebrating brand new milestones like the 8 Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo where I first learned of Jesse’s marvelous rides, and most recently, Beyoncé’s wins for her debut country record Cowboy Carter, including Best Country Album, the first EVER in the genre by a Black woman.
A Jesse Stahl banner at the 8 Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo and Beyoncé’s GRAMMY announcement. A century apart, a culture forever.
One of many unsung Black rodeo cowboys, and perhaps one of the best of any race, Jesse Stahl’s legacy made way for the spectacular accomplishments Black people are making in the rodeo, Western lifestyle, and country music industries today. Every moment of it that we’re able to enjoy now, he fought for 8 seconds at a time.
KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:
Learn more about Jesse’s exploits and those of many other Black Cowboys at the Oregon Historical Society.
Browse a more complete list of Jesse’s nationwide appearances & accomplishments over his decades on the rodeo circuit at The Active Historian.
Read “Let’s Go, Let’s Show, Let’s Rodeo: African-Americans and the History of Rodeo” at JSTOR.
Before President Barbie could run, a woman named Kitty dreamed big.
Louvenia “Kitty” Black was born in the late 1940s before Barbie existed.
But even then, she’d sit at home in Spartanburg, SC, coloring paper dolls into her own image.
It’d be 12 more years before Barbie came on the scene in 1959, and 7 more before Francie—Mattel’s first “Black” doll—was released in 1967.
“Black” because Francie was essentially a Barbie in blackface. Skin color aside, Francie was indistinguishable from her white counterpart.
Two years later, Christie was introduced as the Civil Rights Movement swept the nation. Her unique face mold and hair styles finally gave Black women a progressive, fashionable vision of themselves in mainstream toys, but…
The original Black FrancieTalking Christie (Barbiepedia)
Francie, Christie, Curtis, Cara, Brad and all the other Black skinned dolls Mattel introduced weren’t Barbie.
Barbie had shifted from just a doll to a symbol of what was possible for modern women. Even Mattel’s other white dolls were still just sidekicks.
That is, until 1980—four years after Kitty Perkins walked through the door, and two years after Mattel promoted her to Principle Designer.
Kitty didn’t even own a Barbie before before her 1976 interview with Mattel. But she bought one, made six outfits for her—all of which were subsequently put into production—and was hired on the spot.
It was Kitty’s presence at Mattel that made an authentic Black Barbie an actual possibility, and it all boiled down to one simple desire: “I wanted my Black Barbie doll to look more like me.”
“I had a person that was in the hair department, a sculptor, a face painter, and most of their direction would come from me because I was Black,” she recounted to the New York Post.
It was 1980, and for the first time in American history, children of ALL races saw ordinary store shelves consistently stocked with Black dolls that were fashionable, authentic, and most importantly, beautiful.
Dr. Mamie Phipps-Clark‘s “Doll Test” found that among white and Black children, almost all of them associated only the white doll with being “good” and other positive qualities.
Some people probably ignored her, some probably hated her, but for others, especially those who’d lived the Doll Test first-hand, Black Barbies were monumental.
At the same rate, some Black girls didn’t want a Barbie. She’d been a white doll for so long that some people didn’t care that Mattel finally got around to representing them.
In 1991, Shani & Friends, a Mattel subsidiary also led by Kitty, introduced an entirely new line of Afrocentric Black dolls. From their clothes and jewelry featuring African prints and hoops, even down to their names borrowed from Swahili and real-life Black Barbie Nichelle Nichols, everything about Shani & Friends was inspired by the diaspora. The trio even had different body molds. And though they only lasted 3 years as an independent line, Shani, Asha, and Nichelle’s face and body sculpts were reintegrated into the Barbie line to increase their range of representation.
By 1989, nine years after the first Black Barbie found shelves, Mattel sold 22 million Barbies globally that year alone. By 2021, that number was 86 million, or 186 Barbies every MINUTE.
Today, you can buy a Barbie in almost every single physical representation you wish. They come in all colors—including vitiligo, all shapes and sizes, and even have a range of disabilities from prosthetic users to Down’s syndrome.
And though you can find just about any Barbie these days, in 2019, Mattel’s best-seller was Black with an Afro.
Kitty retired from Mattel in 2004 after 30 years leading Barbie’s design, but the company’s commitment to diversity is stronger than ever, and so are their profits.
Barbie isn’t just a doll these days. She’s graced countless cartoons and movies (including 2023’s live action), costumes, self-care products, bags and accessories and so much more. If it exists, Barbie’s probably been there.
And Barbie certainly wouldn’t be the doll she is without the Black woman who made Barbie more like her.
An array of today’s Black Barbies, representing a range of our beauty.
The Third Avenue Trolley conductor had no idea he’d picked the right one on the wrong day.
The organist for New York’s First Colored Congregational Church was running late for Sunday service.
But in her haste, Lizzie Jennings almost single-handedly desegregated the New York Public Transit system…
A full century before Montgomery met Rosa Parks.
Two types of horse-drawn trolleys operated in the streets of New York: one was designated “colored riders allowed,” and the other’s ridership was left to the whims of the operator and his white passengers.
One trolley ran a regular, timely schedule. Guess which one did not?
New York’s Black citizens had two choices: wait or walk.
New York as it would have appeared to Lizzie Jennings. See the horse-drawn trolley at the bottom right corner.
On July 16, 1854, Lizzie Jennings didn’t have time for all that and boarded the first trolley she saw.
The operator still tried it.
Wait for the next car, he told her.
But she was in a hurry, Lizzie replied.
That one’s got your people, he persisted.
What people? Lizzie spouted back.
A car that allowed Black riders came and went because it was full.
Lizzie sat unmoved.
“He still kept driving me out or off the car,” Lizzie explained in her account published in the New York Tribune. “Said he had as much time as I had and could wait just as long.”
“I replied, ‘Very well. We’ll see.'”
The trolley operator’s eventual surrender came with a disclaimer: “if the passengers raise any objections, you shall go out… or I’ll put you out,” Lizzie wrote.
Quick to clap back, she “answered again and told him I was a respectable person, born and raised in New York, did not know where he was born and that he was a good-for-nothing impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church.”
Big NYC energy from a little lady in 1854.
So big, the operator tried to physically remove her.
Lizzie grasped onto the window, his coat, anything within reach to keep from being forcibly removed. They scuffled for several minutes before the operator called on the trolley’s horse driver for an assist.
If they were going low, she’d meet them in hell.
“I screamed ‘murder’ with all my voice.”
The pair finally resorted to driving the trolley to the nearest police officer, with Lizzie kicking and screaming the whole way.
Pushing her onto the ground, the officer sneered at her to “get redress if [she] could.”
So she did. Remember when I said Lizzie was the right one?
Elizabeth Jennings was the daughter of Thomas Jennings, the first Black person awarded a United States patent, owner of a profitable tailoring business, and a founder of THE Abyssinian Baptist Church, currently active in Harlem.
Her paternal grandfather had connections to Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and Lizzie’s personally written account of her mistreatment was published there, The New York Tribune, and many other abolitionist papers.
Lizzie’s powerful network didn’t stop there. They brought a 24-year-old upstart fresh out of law school to her door.
That man’s name was Chester Alan Arthur, future 21st President of the United States.
The Historical Society of the New York Courts documents a number of cases Arthur tried in support of African-American civil rights.
Against an all-white, all-male jury, Lizzie & Chester did the seemingly impossible: THEY WON.
News of Lizzie’s historic judgment in Frederick Douglass’ Paper.
Lizzie was awarded cash damages from the Third Avenue Railroad Company, but more importantly, an agreement to desegregate their trolleys, effective immediately.
“Railroads, steamboats, omnibuses, and ferry-boats will be admonished from this, as to the rights of respectable colored people,” The Tribune wrote.
Those who ignored the judgment weren’t far behind on the Jennings’ War Path.
The Legal Rights League, formed by Lizzie’s father Thomas, challenged every last New York transit hold out until in 1861, just seven years after Lizzie’s impromptu sit-in, ALL of them were finally desegregated.
After her case was won, Lizzie largely retreated into ordinary life, but she didn’t stop being an extraordinary person.
Until her death in 1901, Lizzie operated New York’s first kindergarten for Black children from her home.
All that history from a lady who just wanted to go to church, and hardly anybody knows her name.
But the city of New York is working to change that. There’s already a section of Park Row near her historic ride, dedicated to Elizabeth. She Built NYC, an arm of the NY Department of Cultural Affairs has fully funded five statues honoring trailblazing New York women.
Elizabeth Jennings is one of them.
As for the trolley operator, the horse driver and the policeman who abused her? They’ve virtually disappeared from history.
Maybe somebody should check with their people.
KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:
Lizzie is one of many famous New Yorker’s whose life and death were overlooked by the Times until modern days and their article on her here.
Read over Elizabeth’s first-hand account published in the NY Tribune at the Library of Congress.
Read The Search for Elizabeth Jennings, Heroine of a Sunday Afternoon in New York City for FREE at JSTOR.
STILL can’t get enough Elizabeth? Visit Dr. Katharine Perotta’s award-winning Elizabeth Jennings Project.
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