Trans women at last get credit for ‘throwing the brick’ at bigotry

According to LGBTQ legend it was Marsha P Johnson, a black transgender woman, who threw the first brick at the Stonewall Inn 50 years ago, sparking the modern gay liberation movement.

Whether her act of rebellion was truly the first in the rioting is debatable, although she was “almost indubitably among the first to be violent”, writes David Carter in Stonewall, his 2004 book about the police raid on a New York gay bar that became a historic moment.

What is certain about Johnson’s role, at least for today’s transgender community, is that the stone she cast packed the most thunder...