Black History Month often gets flattened into neat timelines and respectable heroes. Marsha P. Johnson does not fit neatly anywhere. She spilled over edges, laughed too loudly, wore flowers in her hair, lived broke, loved fiercely, and fought like hell for people the world refused to see.
Marsha was a Black trans woman, a Stonewall veteran, a sex worker, an activist, a caretaker, and a spiritual force. Long before the language of “mutual aid” went mainstream, she was doing it barefoot in the streets of New York.
And if you squint just a little, if you look past the Western frames we’re handed, Marsha P. Johnson looks a lot like a Bodhisattva.
Who Was Marsha P. Johnson?
Marsha P. Johnson was born in 1945 in New Jersey and moved to New York City with little more than $15 and an unbreakable sense of self. She became a central figure in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement, especially after the Stonewall uprising in 1969. While history books often center cisgender gay men, Marsha and her close friend Sylvia Rivera were on the front lines, fighting police brutality, poverty, and the criminalization of queer and trans lives.
Marsha famously said the “P” in her name stood for “Pay It No Mind.” It wasn’t denial. It was refusal. Refusal to let a violent, racist, transphobic world dictate her worth.
Fighting for Trans Youth When No One Else Would
Marsha didn’t just protest. She stayed.
Alongside Sylvia Rivera, she co-founded STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. STAR wasn’t a slogan. It was a roof. A kitchen. A place where unhoused trans youth, many of them Black and Brown, could sleep without fear.
Marsha used what little money she had, often earned through sex work, to feed kids who had been kicked out, beaten, erased. She didn’t wait for grants or nonprofit approval. She saw suffering and responded.
This is where the Bodhisattva energy lives.
In Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is someone who could seek liberation for themselves but chooses instead to stay behind and help others awaken, again and again, even when it hurts.
Marsha stayed.
A Bodhisattva in a Flower Crown
Marsha didn’t preach doctrine. She practiced compassion through action. She believed in joy as resistance. She believed in showing up glittered and unashamed in a world that wanted her invisible or dead.
She marched. She laughed. She protected children who weren’t hers by blood but were hers by love.
She embodied karuṇā, compassion that does not flinch at suffering, and upāya, skillful means. Sometimes her skillful means was a protest chant. Sometimes it was a warm meal. Sometimes it was simply telling a trans kid: you get to exist.
That matters.
Black Power, Trans Power, Human Power
Marsha P. Johnson is not a footnote. She is a towering example of Black history, Black resistance, and Black brilliance. Her life exposes how incomplete liberation movements are when they abandon their most vulnerable members.
She was Black power that didn’t look respectable enough for history books. She was trans power before the word trended. She was spiritual power without a temple.
And her death, still surrounded by unanswered questions, reminds us how disposable society treats Black trans women even as it borrows their courage.
What Marsha Teaches Us Now
Marsha’s legacy asks uncomfortable questions:
Who are we leaving behind in our movements?
Who gets protection and who gets slogans?
Are we willing to show up materially, not just ideologically?
Mindfulness without justice is dissociation. Spirituality without solidarity is decoration.
Marsha P. Johnson teaches us that liberation is not clean, not polite, and not individual. It is communal. It is messy. It is rooted in care.
Black History Month is not just about remembering the past. It’s about recognizing whose shoulders we’re standing on.
Marsha stood barefoot on broken glass so others could walk a little safer.
Pay it no mind?
No.
Pay it forward. 💐
Leave a Reply