Stormé DeLarverie was a biracial lesbian with a larger-than-life personality. She has been described as “the Rosa Parks of the gay community,” and one of her friends said that she “walked the streets of downtown Manhattan like a gay superhero.”

Many—including DeLarverie herself—believed that she was the “Stonewall lesbian” who (after being clubbed by a police officer) threw the first punch at the uprising at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969, an event that gave rise to the gay rights movement.

The daughter of a wealthy white man and a black woman who worked in his home in the segregated South, young DeLarverie faced bullying and harassment from neighborhood kids. As a teen, she ran away with the circus, performing on horseback for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. DeLarverie also started singing around this time, first dressed as a woman and then dressed as a man. She was the cross-dressing emcee of the Jewel Box Revue, a renowned show in which all the other performers were female impersonators, and appeared at such famous venues as the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. She wore masculine clothing in her off-hours too, which may have inspired others in New York City’s lesbian community to adopt that style. That fateful night at the Stonewall Inn, a gathering place for people in the LGBT community, she described being clubbed by a police officer who may have mistaken her for a man and returning his blow with a punch to the face. The incident sparked scuffle later known as the Stonewall riots, or Stonewall uprising, which helped push the LGBT community into campaigning for their civil rights.

A protector of New York City’s gay community, DeLarverie worked as a bouncer at lesbian bars into her 80s and patrolled the streets looking for what she called “ugly”—any type of discrimination or harassment. Though she had no family of her own, she called the gay and lesbian youth of New York City her “children” and dedicated her time to looking after them.