After Lives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans.

Just the Heads Up, the following episode mentions homophobic language and violence, and discusses racism, misogyny, transphobia, mental health, and suicide.

Take care while listening.

And I you know that we are all we have because we want to redom on Marsha.

It's Sunday, July twenty sixth, nineteen ninety two, on Gimi.

Things and Praise for the life of Marcia Johnson.

We are testimony to help deeply.

She has touched so many people.

You're listening to Reverend Karen Ziegler speaking at what's now called the Church of the Village on West thirteenth Street.

Hundreds of people are gathered for Marsha's memorial.

The reverence says she's never seen anything like it before.

She starts the ceremony with the prayer, love me God, let.

This safety still in her spirit.

Let us open our hearts to all that we feel today.

This church has a history of offering spiritual connection for queer people.

The reverend is a lesbian.

She wears a white jacket and pin to it is a button for Marsham, a black and white photo with a flower crown and her big smile.

Help us to.

Remember her, help us to know her, that we can tell her story to kids that come after us.

After her opening prayers, she asks everyone to stand and sing together.

Earlier that month, Marcia crossed the River Jordan.

She was forty six, far too young.

The weeks before and after her death, deep in our understanding of the end of a life that was cherished by so many and still is today.

I'm Roquel Willis, and this is afterlives.

They called me a nage because there's so many quaints.

God that I'm one of the few quaints.

Still that few waits, Still, that few waits.

I didn't make the best.

Of every Day Anywhere, Episode seven.

I hope nobody cries Darling.

This rady is supposed to keep going on.

Oh no, Michael, Ah, you're listening into a conversation between Marcia, her friend Tony Nunziata, and Michael Cassino, who's recording all of this as a spring rain fell.

Michael says he filmed this a month or two before Marcia passed.

Apparently, the goriot for the reservoirs was good for the Redsiva.

I don't think just when it's famulous for anyone, even for the Redsivoir.

They're all at Tony's apartment in the village, where Marcia hung out a lot.

It was nice when Marcia would come by.

It was always nice.

This is Paloma, Tony's daughter.

She was one of the friends that would just drop in of my dad.

I think it's the best way to explain it.

Ploma's parents separated when she was young, but she spent a lot of evenings after school with her dad.

He was queer and performed with Marcia in the Hot Peaches.

Poloma doesn't remember exactly when she met Marcia, only that she was young.

Sometimes Marsha would babysit while her dad ran errands.

As Paloma got older, she remembers sitting at the table with Marsha while Tony cooked.

I remember him making stooth.

He'd like to give her something good to eat.

He'd make a lot of really healthy, nourishing, yummy stuff.

In the spring of ninety two, Michael came to Tony's and brought his camera along with him.

The recording that day followed some of their typical routines.

I'm telling you.

I thought you were just gonna make some sick.

Well I picked this up at my friend Louis store.

He made the meat up.

Today, so oh thank you.

Sure you don't want anything to eat, Michael, Michael's got a low place in the stomach now.

Oh yeah, you're hunger now I love him.

Okay, yeah, it just got room for meat.

Love.

You didn't have any room for your suit, you know.

What I mean.

Paloma says when Marsha came around, she wasn't the dazzling Marcia in the Hot Pizza spotlight.

She was just a friend chatting away.

She talked a lot about like boyfriends and looking for her husband.

She wanted like a rich husband.

I've lived my whole life to find my millionaire husband.

But that's my whole life's dream mind, just to find my billionaire husband, to get my little house in the country and raise chicken.

Another one of Marcia's dreams a simpler life.

She sort of wanted someone to make life easier for her.

She'd talk about that a lot.

She was fun and she was really great to hang with, but there also was a sadness, also a yearning for more comfort and ease in her life.

It's hard.

You can hear some of that sadness in this conversation.

They're just chatting about the weather, but there's a real longing there for Marsha.

They haven't been that many sunny days though, love, But summer's coming up.

Just because summer's coming, he said, promised anyone.

I wish it was.

Promised billionaire promise.

Oh, I want my billionaires son.

That's only real.

I lived for forty six years.

We know by now that when Marcia talks about her struggles, she often does it with a laugh, but that hurt lies just beneath that feeling of hanging on for something that might never come.

Tony was that friend there to listen, to feed her, offer her care, and at the end of their interview, Marsha talks about how she needs rest and relief to avoid breakdown, but to getting out of.

Town always deadnely good to the Cape seems like a real good idea.

Tony invites Marcia to come to Cape cod with him and Coloma to get a break from the city.

I would love to have you, really, Oh, I would love to come to the cap.

One going up with ploma on Wednesday, I think next.

Week sometime.

And they all went.

She didn't know it, but it would be a final bit of sanctuary.

It's a quiet, little, sleepy, natural part of the cape, not much going on much, you know, dunes and tall grass.

To take a bike ride down to the beach.

Tony drove them all out.

It was peaceful.

Marsha may have snuck off the Pee Town, the cape's queer hub at some point for a little partying.

Paloma doesn't remember.

Mostly it was relaxed.

It was just making breakfast, having blueberry pancakes, sitting outside.

Watching the birds.

Marsha made French fries one night, a lot of time around the table.

Nobody knew it then, but Marcia would be gone before the end of the summer.

I'd like to think though, that even if she had known, the time left in her body was so limited, that she still would have chosen to spend it the exact same way, because these were beautiful days, the kind of days she deserved, with people that loved her, surrounded by natural beauty and calming scenery.

We had a very nice time up there.

It was a healthy time, fresh air.

It was nice to have Marcia nature.

But Marcia was always looking ahead.

I remember she wanted to look good for Pride.

Our timing was around getting her back for Pride.

She wanted to be back for that, and she wanted to look good.

She wanted to have nice skin.

It's gonna be Gay Pride Day.

It's weekend.

I got a voidoustaff and I'm gonna wear it.

The Sunday at.

Hope Marcia was recorded again when she got back from the Cape.

It was right before Pride, which fell on the last weekend in June, just days.

Before she died.

Pride was a whole weekend of events.

On Friday night, there was a candlelit visual honoring those loss to AIDS.

Saturday was a Gay Day festival, and Sunday was the march, a grand parade really.

As Central Park in sixtieth Street, Fifth Avenue.

It's gonna be the first year that would marching down Fifth Avenue.

Michael tagged along with Marsha to some of the festivities to record her.

Hi Go Pride Weekend, Hi Happy Pride, wee okay.

All through the weekend, Marsha was doing her thing as the community greet and the community was embracing her too.

She's seeing like artists who know and love her, who have taken her photograph and she just knows everyone.

People are coming up to her.

You know, Tourmaline, Marsha's biographer.

She's talking about a party that weekend before the Pride March.

I've watched all this footage, right, so I can see the actual conversations that they're having and they're like, you remember me, like we were in Puerto Rico, or do you remember me?

Like you probably wouldn't, but like we were at the dance floor.

Was so oh John, thanks got Dave weekend?

Oh Jock about another person that helped me?

Like she was just beloved.

It was like a flower and just all the pollinators were coming to her.

It was the same story.

As Marsha made her way down to Christopher Street, she couldn't walk far without getting swarmed by people.

An AIDS vigil she went to capture the emotion of the last decade of her life, the sadness and the joy.

You're watching the candles go into the water and floating on the water as she's like saying goodbye to loved ones and recently, maybe like two months before, she had like a big memorial for a loved one named Coco Chanel and she felt exhausted from this, but in this moment she is really receiving and receptive to the care and the adulation and love of the community, and really getting energized from it.

It's like she was and is the saint of this moment.

On the Sunday morning of the Pride March, she woke up early to get there on time.

She met up with her dear friend Sylvia Rivera.

They hadn't seen each other as often as they'd used to during.

The Star days.

After Sylvia was booed off the stage in seventy three for her now infamous y'all bet a Quiet Down speech in Washington Square Park, she took a big step back from the movement and was living in the suburbs.

Today though they were back together side by side, and Marcia was dressed to the nines as usual.

She was wearing like purple and gold glittery stuff and she had like a shortwag gone.

She seemed very jubilant.

I don't think she was on a float, but she was definitely surrounded by people that were crying out for joy seeing her.

This is one of the people passing by who said, hello, my.

Name is ANNONI I use sheep pronouns.

I'm a singer and I am calling from Sydney, Australia.

Anni called us while on tour with her band A Noni and the Johnson's, literally named after Marcia.

In twenty twenty three, the band's fifth album, My Back was a Bridge for You To Cross, was recognized as an Album of the Year by The New Yorker.

And guess what's on the cover of that album.

It's a close up black and white photo of one Marsha P.

Johnson.

Annoni's work as a performance artist and musician has brought Marsha's name to all kinds of places, her tour stop in Sydney just being one of many.

But back in nineteen ninety two, Anoni was just a twenty year old figuring out her own life and i identity in the village.

She wanted to understand more about her history too.

I learned about Marcia actually interviewing the manager of the Pyramid Club, Hattie Hathaway.

She's a queen from the village who described Marcia as like our great mother.

Annonie had seen Marshall plenty of times, but was finally learning about her significance and what some considered her sainthood.

When Marsha walked by her pride, she had a new sense of appreciation.

And I just went up to here and I said, you know, I just told her I loved her.

Actually is what I did.

I told her I loved her, and I told her thank you.

Marsha didn't know.

Annie Annoni describes the way she was dressed as a death rock queen, like she comes straight out of mad Max.

She wonders if that gave Marcia pause.

If it did, Marsha didn't show it.

She greeted her warmly, as she did anyone in her community.

And she said she loved me too, And I kissed her hand.

That kiss would be a farewell.

We'll be right back.

Marsha was pulled out of the water light over the edge here.

Marsha's body was found on July sixth, nineteen ninety two.

West across the river to then eyeshot of where we stand is the building where Marsha b Johnson Andy Wicker, who lived together to whirl the way.

Marsha's roommate Randy recorded himself on a visit down to the pier not long after Marsha was found.

He'd last seen Marsha on July second.

It was laundry day and he thought she just ducked out to avoid it.

On the third and fourth, he assumed she'd been whisked away to Fire Island for July fourth festivities, but by July fifth, he started to worry.

Just before Pride weekend, he'd noticed some symptoms of a mental health breakdown.

Here's Randy talking with another friend of Marcia's at the pier.

No, but she was getting mental.

When did you see her laugh?

Yeah?

Well, even after day Fridday, she was acting kind of mental because we saw her going into her states just a little bit though, and it was getting worse.

But when we last saw on Thursday, she's so seeing Norman.

Randy tried to file a missing person's report, but was told that wasn't an option for an adult over forty years old.

The next day, on July sixth, her body was found.

I was there when they pulled her up.

Yeah, the head was right here.

Here's another person Randy met while filming at the pier that day, and.

The head was up and the people were down.

Fire truck's emergency police came really quick, huh, and they pulled her out and it was very nasty because the way they pulled her up, they just dropped us and we were all like, oh my god, they just dropped it right on the floor.

It was like, oh my god.

It Within twenty four hours, the NYPD had already ruled Marcia's death a suicide.

The shockingly quick decision felt too many insufficient.

People started doubting the police investigation and speculated there was more to the story.

She was a nobody them.

She was a black, poor transit site prostitute with a long record of mental problems at HIV.

The idea of suicide seemed impossible to Randy, but when the police first called him, he thought of her deteriorating state of mind.

Randy convinced himself she had fallen into the river accidentally trying to find her spiritual father, Neptune or something like that.

When I first heard, oh, I could think of at the time.

She told me she looked in the river and saw her father at the bottom of the river.

But as the days passed, he started to worry that maybe something more sinister had happened.

It was something he couldn't even fathom at first.

I mean, it was unthinkable to me that somebody with her.

Marsha B.

Johnson.

Randy got concern that pointing to her mental health gave the police an easy way to clear the case.

The NYPD's report underscores repeatedly that Marshall was mentally ill and that she had HIV.

To investigating officers, that profile on paper might have seemed like enough of a reason for someone to end their life, but they didn't know Marcia.

When they told us, we didn't believe it.

That's Genie, Marcia's sister.

Marcia's nephew, Al couldn't believe it either.

He was less surprised to hear that Marsha had died than he was to hear that it was ruled of suicide.

I was more surprised that they found her in the ribbon, like, why is she in the river?

You know what's going on?

The details weren't clear, but I knew when they said suicide it didn't sit well with me.

Marsha's not the type of take her own life like that, So I was just more surprised by that than anything else.

She would never kill herself.

We knew that we fought it.

They did fight it.

Marcia's community started organizing to put pressure on the police.

They wanted a bigger investigation, They wanted to change the declaration of her cause of death.

Randy kept thinking back to things that he'd heard when he was down at the pier, that Marcia was bleeding when they pulled her out, that she had a hole in her head, so there.

Was blood coming out of her head.

The blood ran right down here and people kept walking over it.

How do you know she had a hole in her head.

I could see it.

I could see the hole.

It's a haunting image, but it's also not proof of violence.

The body decomposes quickly in the water.

In twenty seventeen, the documentary team behind the Death and Life of Marsha P.

Johnson had an independent medical examiner look at the autopsy report.

He found there was no evidence of a violent assault before Marcia drowned, but that.

Doesn't rule out violence.

If someone pushed Marcia or even chased her into the water, that would still be a homicide.

It's also important to acknowledge that it is possible Marcia died by suicide.

She may not have shared with anyone what she was going through, will never know unequivocally.

Her friends and family weren't sure what happened, but they also felt like the police were clinging to the wrong details.

For example, the police report mentions that Marcia was carrying her birth certificate.

There are reports that Marcia frequently talked about crossing the River Jordan like in the old hymns she grew up with, that the bullet in her back was causing her pain.

Marcia had recently thrown out all her clothes.

The police seemed to be taking these details as evidence that Marcia preparing for suicide.

But the thing is this was just Marsha.

Her birth certificate was a form of IDs she used to get into clubs, she often got rid of her clothes, and she'd been living with the bullet in her back and it's a residual pain for over a decade.

To the people that knew her, all of this was normal.

Suicide wasn't something she talked about even when she was nearing a breakdown.

If anything, she'd been excited for Pride a couple days after.

She was happy to visit with her family and brought her sister flowers for her birthday.

Paloma, who had spent time with Marsha on her Cape Cod trip, also shared a detail that has stuck with me.

Marcia was very afraid of the water.

There were times in Marcia's life when she would look for her father in the river or talk about how being near it was cleansing, but just before her death, it terrified her.

On the cape, they take trips to a nearby pond, and Marcia would literally sit back and stay as far away as she could.

She didn't want to go anywhere near the water.

She didn't want to put her feet in.

She'd stay back the same At the beach, she didn't go in at all, and talked a lot about being afraid of it, which makes me sad for the way she died.

It makes me sad too, And it's just one more thing that doesn't add up.

I thought, there's no way that Marcia would have killed herself by jumping into water.

That's just not what she would have done.

Ever, that's not how she would have killed herself.

I don't think she would try to feel such pain and fear.

With so many unanswered questions and disturbing possibilities, Marcia's community members did what they'd always done well.

They mobilized against the powers that be.

That was swetters to the police Commissioner.

And that was a demonstration, and that was putting up flyers.

You know, we're pasting flyers throughout the village in Chelsea.

This is Matt Foreman.

In nineteen ninety two, he was the executive director of New York's Anti Violence Project.

Today, he still works serving the queer community as the director of a San Francisco organization that provides free legal services for folks living with HIV and AIDS.

At the Anti Violence Project, or AVP, Matt worked with his team to provide support for queer victims of violence and to help them and their families find some justice.

And there was so much violence at the time Marsha died.

We were handling up to sixteen hundred cases of anti gay Wesleyan trans violence every year.

I'm curious about what you your take is on the community's perception of the NYPD at that time.

Was their faith or trust that they would find justice for these people.

There was very, very little trust.

This is the whole reason the Anti Violence Project existed in the first place, because the queer community needed a way and to pressure the police to work towards justice.

When Marsha was found, the organization jumped into action.

They wanted to hold the police accountable.

I never felt that they took a step back and really started investing in the case from the get go, meaning let's do a serious canvas of anyone who might have been down there in those hours, Like let's really try to figure out who saw what, who could have seen what, could have posted a reward.

They didn't.

Witnesses did come forward though.

Fourth I was on this spear here.

He was all standing around here by four black guys, and I.

Was standing around here.

This is Benny Tony Matt Foreman didn't know him, but he's one of the multiple witnesses who saw Marsha being harassed that night.

He was trying to tell Marsha to be a man, and Marshall's was just being Marsha who Marshall was okay.

Benny went out of town shortly after the fourth of July.

It wasn't until he returned to New York in September that he found out Marsha died.

His memory of that night came rushing back.

He shared what he knew with Randy, who recorded their conversation.

They had taken Marsha by the arms and by the legs and swung him around the pier.

After peer, Benny went to find a police officer that night, but when he mentioned someone was being harassed, the officer didn't seem worried about it.

Bennie says, in all honesty, he wasn't too worried.

He'd seen Marsha back on her own two feet after she was thrown around, so Benny went to check out the fireworks.

When he walked back to the pier about an hour later, Marsha and these guys were nowhere to be found.

Another witness told AVP that they saw Marcia early the next morning, around four am on July fifth.

She was up on twenty second Street, but headed to the river.

They said she was terrified and felt like she was being followed.

That was the last time anyone on record saw Marcia.

AVP says the police definitely knew about that witness, and Benny Tony also told the police his story.

I see the food guys all the time down here on the pier.

They beat the hell all the white guys.

You can take the old white guy's money.

Oh he didn't, black guy.

They was abouty thinh week.

Benny says they even robbed him once, but he didn't feel like the NYPD really listened to what he had to say.

The first thing the police said to him, how much did Randy Wicker pay you to come in here and tell us the story?

They wouldn't believe what Benny Toney had told them, and they couldn't care less.

By the fall of ninety two, Randy had jumped into action to get some justice for Marcia.

This made him well known but not well liked by the sixth Precinct.

Everyone, we have four of these at the shop show, I should give him a whole stack.

Give him a whole stacking.

Randy set up tables to raise awareness and put up flyers.

The front window of his store in the village became part trine, part Justice for Marcia headquarters.

You know what, if you'll come around the corner of the Lightning Shop, I'll give you a packet of information to give you articles about her death and about the lousy police investigation.

In Randy's shop window there were photographs and a poster that said star and in the center of his display, surrounded by antique figurines and light fixtures, was a giant sign that read goodbye Marcia, we love you.

The NYPD continued its investigation.

They interviewed over a dozen people and wrote a report that was over thirty pages long, but they weren't budging on the cause of death.

Community members made up their minds about what happened to Marsha.

I believe that Marsha was either chased and was forced into the river, or she was pushed into the river.

I'm convinced of that.

I don't know who did it, but that.

I know happened.

There are a lot of people who believe the same thing, including Marcia's sister.

I believe somebody killed her.

And why do you feel that way.

I just think it because one time she was saying about how she had got shot, but she said, I'm just keep right on going.

We have be myself.

It's true that Marcia faced so much violence in her life just for being herself.

On some level, whether or not she was killed, she was still a victim.

When we went to visit Randy, he was wearing a shirt in honor of her.

I say, here, Marsha b Johnson's randgender victim of hate.

She was a victim of hate.

That doesn't mean it's gun being murdered.

I think quite after way she could have been.

Randy says he's divided about whether Marsha was killed or whether she fell into the water because she was having a breakdown.

But I think there's something to this idea that she was a victim either way.

A victim of a violent and transphobic and racist world, a victim of law enforcement who didn't care enough to intervene when she was being harassed, a victim of our healthcare system which was never able to.

Offer her all the care she truly deserved.

A victim of the government's neglect for the AIDS crisis.

I have HIV for about two years.

I mean, I'm always dying, it's something or.

Other, always dying of something.

Marcia endured so much, but there was a limit to what she could survive.

Whether she went in the water because she wasn't receiving the care that she needed, or whether she went in the water because she was being chased, or whether she went in the water because someone pushed her.

It is really clear that structural and interpersonal violence shaped that moment.

Tourmaline sees many factors in Marcia's death.

She also points out that Marcia wasn't alone in suffering from these systems.

This kind of violence was affecting so many queer entrance people of color.

We want to make sure we're not erasing the day to day forms of violence that Marsha was navigating, that we are not erasing the government neglect of our communities.

Tourmaline doesn't adopt one theory of Marcia's death and her biography.

She holds space for varying truths, and all of those parts felt true and honest.

But if that's the case, what does justice really look like.

In December nineteen ninety two, five months after Marcia's death, her supporters had not given up on her case.

They organized the march to the precinct.

They kept talking to the press, they kept pushing.

Finally, the police sat down for a community meeting.

Marsha's family members were there, Randy was there, So was the Anti Violence Project.

Even a city council member made his voice heard.

Ten days after the meeting, the cause of the death was officially changed.

It was no longer considered a suicide.

Instead, it would be documented as a drowning of an undetermined nature.

That was a big victory.

It wasn't like Oh, we found the perpetrators.

But it was a victory.

It's not an easy feat to get the NYPD to change their mind, to admit they were wrong.

After months of work, this felt like a win, but it wasn't a triumph.

So much had been lost.

Marsha had been lost.

Her community did away with a painful police narrative, but that didn't offer real closure, not that then in the nineties, and not for decades to come.

The case was reopened in twenty twelve.

In twenty seventeen, a documentary team did its own independent investigation, but Marcia's cause of death remains unsolved to this day.

Everyone wants to know what happened to the love You know what I mean.

Everyone wants to close you.

She always wants some kind of closure, put it to rest.

Marcia's death is still a source of pain, not only for her loved ones and community, but even for us now looking at her life in twenty twenty five.

But we can take solace that she was laid to rest with so much love, and that Marsha's memory transcended the violent unknowns of her death.

I'm sure marsh be more touched by this than the fanciest mass of Saint Patrick's.

Stick with Thus.

I brought candles and glitter and loose change to sprinkle.

We're back with Afterlives.

This is Marcia's friend, Augusto Machado.

Back in July nineteen ninety two.

In the hours after Marcia's body was found, the news about her spread quickly in the village.

When it reached Augusto, he knew he had to go down to the piers, and he knew exactly what to bring with him.

So I made a big, humongous circle of glitter and then loose change of pennies Nicholstein's and quarters because she always asked for spare change, and I thought, symbolically, well, that's part of the journey, and to make her feel comfortable.

Augusto wasn't alone.

Many people were moved to do the same thing.

People gathered, cried and shared memories by the peer.

And it grew into a monument down there.

And the acknowledgment was really wonderful that people who really weren't friends acknowledged that she made her mark an impression on all these intergenerational people in the village just by living her life.

What came together on the pier has been called the People's memorial.

Glass bottles formed a misshapen oval, and within its borders, leaves covered the concrete.

They marked the exact spot Marsha's body had been laid down.

You can see it on our Instagram at afterlives dot pod.

Marsha's roommate Randy, brought his video camera to check it out, and he was really moved by what he saw.

You can hear his voice break as he leaves.

His own contribution came.

Earlier, and I thought this was so nice that I thought it deserves some flowers.

So I'm gonna be the first one that put.

Flowers gone from Marcia.

Over the days, more flowers, plants, candles, and photos accumulated.

Randy talked to some of the people who helped set it all up.

So the next morning when I came out, that's to blocks and I put them around, and I put.

The crush in and put a Randy started by chatting with just one person on the pier, but others kept coming over to share what they loved about Marcia, her great sense of humor, how fabulous she was.

Marsha was so full of life, right.

Marcia used to dance and dance, and she would never leave the dance.

Cross would just how she helped people.

Still a lot of good things.

One person tells Randy to pan out to show how many people Marcia was still bringing together Black people, white people, Puerto Ricans.

They say they didn't want to lose the sense of community.

And I hope it's not another thing like this to bring us together again.

A lot of people are going to miss so that's for sure.

You've given Marsha a wonderful, wonderful memorial here, you really have.

I'm sure mars should be more touched by this than the fanciest mass of Saint Patrick's.

The people's memorial was immediate and profound, and it's just one of many expressions of grief and adoration for Marcia.

We're going to look at the many ways she was honored, big and small.

There really were some amazing celebrations for her, but not everybody knew about them.

The street queens may have gathered to honor Marsha, but the bustle of the village, it didn't stop Broadway, didn't demon's lights.

She was a legend while she was alive, but in a certain circle, she wasn't the International Icon.

She is today.

She was one death in a time when there were so many deaths.

I lived in the West Village.

All my friends lived in the West Village.

They're all dead all.

Jimmy Comitia founded the Hot Peaches.

When I asked him how he felt after Marcia died, he struggled to answer.

They're looking for something to be there when there isn't something there.

I mean, you get to a point where, I mean, what does it matter?

After John, Mary, Angelou, Jean and Jack all died that Mary dies.

Jimmy says this, but he tells me that when he walks around his neighborhood he thinks of where they all used to live.

He might struggle to put into words how he felt about Marcia's death.

Yes, but he showed up to our interview wearing a T shirt with her face on it and with a watch on his wrist that she bought him over thirty years before we were in London.

She went out and bought this watch that she gave it to me as a thank you, I guess, and no one had ever done that.

Jimmy said he didn't even really want to do this interview, but Marsham would have told him to just sit down and help us out.

It took some convincing, but he did, and he told us so many stories of Marsha's generosity in his own way.

I see that he carries her memory.

That's why it was so important for me that night when we performed and Jimmy said, sing tighter for Marsha, we did.

Michael Lynch tears up remembering the night he found out about Marcia's passing.

He was on tour with the Hot Peaches in Hamburg at the time.

He spent the day wandering around with tears in his eyes, raising eyebrows among locals and other tourists.

That night, he knew what he needed to do.

He put on a dress that Marcia had sent him off with right before they left for the tour.

It was powder blue with ruffles all over and sparkles too.

When the light hit it shimmered.

And I don't think I ever want to dress again.

That was such an emotional night because we were waiting to go on and we didn't get on till about two o'clock that morning, and Hamburg was a place that when you came out of the theater at like what four in the morning, it was like daylight, so the sun was shining when we came out of the theater that night.

He left it all on the stage for Marcia.

I say, it's giddy Tyler.

Every day anyway is nothing giddy light up in any way Wayyay, just cannot be meeting, just cannot.

Be for ree.

From overseas to the streets of New York, people were finding ways to express what Marcia made them feel deep in their soul.

Somehow, in a world that didn't accept her, Marcia found so many places she belonged.

Her absence was felt in each of them, on the streets, on the stage, of course, within her family, her siblings organized a service in her hometown of Elizabeth.

Randy and a few friends were there too.

A couple weeks after that, the biggest memorial of all was held and Marsha's beloved Greenwich village.

This was the most awesome spectacle I've ever seen in my life.

Her nephew Al remembers it all so vividly.

We go to this church and this church is packed to the gills, packed, and there's a line of people outside and around the corner, and I'm like, what's going on here?

What is this a dignitary diet?

What's going on?

This is when I knew Marsha P.

Johnson was somebody for real.

She was an icon.

Al knew all her stories from over the years were true.

She had lived a life bigger than he could fully imagine.

It just boggled my mind.

I'm like, what is going on?

Everybody got a story?

Oh your aunt, your aunt, your aunt, Marsha Marshall Wasshington.

This is the service you heard at the beginning of the episode.

The church was packed with people who knew Marsha or had been witnessed to her magic, all paying tribute.

There were runaway teenagers and the executive editor of the Village Voice.

There were stonewall veterans and stargirlies.

There was her chosen family and her family of origin.

After the whole church.

Saying Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, a queue of people stood up to speak.

The ideal was to go in chronological order, starting with stories from Marsha's childhood and spanning to speeches by friends she'd met throughout her life.

That way, everyone experienced a full snapshot of who Marsha was.

A couple of Marcia's siblings started it off, including her brother Robert.

Many of the memorial goers didn't know Marsha's family, but their stories of Marcia's generosity were recognizable to everyone there, like how she'd give away clothes that weren't really hers.

Was coming from my house, Marco give us on screen.

I know some of the tape is pretty hard to hear.

It was recorded on an old camera in a big space, but person after person stood up in front of the crowd.

One friend acknowledged her role at the Stonewall riots and said her death marked the end of an era.

Another sums up her impact.

She was history, she was all insperience.

Her old friend and fellow star, Sylvia Rivera, was there too, fiery as ever, hurting so much as the injustice of this loss.

She's been around her, going down and around.

Or she hadn't over home to go.

But she says, even though they've lost her in another way, in a spiritual sense, Oh, they'll be getting Marsha back.

Because this is a beautiful show turnout and she's gonna be stot crowd.

My god, a neighbor keep her.

At one point, someone from the mayor's office came to read a letter about this longtime activist who brought so much to the streets of New York.

She led the spirit to live and tonight, to survive the neighbor.

A true citizen of the city.

She would be a sincerely dating fantasy.

After people had their saying, the group walked down to the pier like a big parade.

Now we go out to church and we're going to march.

That's what're marching, is this procession.

And I mean you look back and it's just people and it's filling the whole street.

So now as we're marching, the cops are out there to come up stop and they're like, what's going on?

What's going on?

And to whoever telling Marsha he talks to cop is like, who wait a minute, wait a minute.

They stopped right all the traffic.

They stopped all the traffic.

Hard as it is to believe, I've heard that story from multiple people.

It's true.

The NYPD stop the traffic from Marsha P.

Johnson.

When the contingent made their way to the river, they released her ashes into the water.

They laughed and cried.

And hugged and said goodbye.

It's exactly what Marcia would have wanted.

Time and I die.

I hope nobody cries.

Don I hope they thing and dance to have a great big party.

And I'm just home and I die and I get cremated.

My ashes found the Hudson mit with all of that to those girls.

Marcia said it herself in the interview with her friend Tony.

Weeks before she passed.

She never saw her life as limited to her body, and this body needed a break.

Cause, don I'll just be starting to live my life over again.

This old body had just had worn out dog and a new one and just be on its way.

Here you get to the next disc gallentime.

I mean, at least that's the way I feel.

Marcia's does, and the uncertainty around it is so hard to sit with to accept it wasn't fair.

But Marshall didn't fear death.

She felt fulfilled by.

Her life, and she trusted that her spirituality would carry her onwards.

No, I wrote this cute little song It's told when I die.

When I die, please don't cry, because I'm going to be with my Lord and thank him for all the days and nights he had watched over me, hurt all my prayers and answered them.

Dance party, eat, drink and be happy and marry.

Hope all your hopes and dreams come true for you, like most of mine.

Thank you Lord for all the blessings and love you've always given me.

Next time on After Life, Marcia has never been more alive than right now.

Every day, every moment, she's getting bigger.

Let's say I went to heaven and man into Marcia.

I'd say, Marsha, you became very famous.

That is Marcia's legacy is giving black trans kids the freedom to exist.

Grab your transistor's hand, grab your butcher's hand, grab all the hands you can grab and hold tight.

The tailor legged fucking is exactly the choos.

Thank you so much for listening to Afterlives.

You can find this episode in future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Please leave us the rating and review to let us know what you think.

Afterlives is a production of The Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts in partnership with School of Humans.

I'm your host and creator, Rock Willis.

Dylan Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter.

Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering by Jess Crinchich, Story editing by Julia Urlaan, fact checking by Carolyn Talmage.

Score composed by Wazi Muring.

Our production manager is Daisy Church.

Executive producers include Me, Raquel Willis and Jess Crinchich from The Outspoken Podcast Network, Amelia Brock, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley from School of.

Humans and The Cavs Company.

The image of Marsha and our show art is provided by the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art Founder's gift p.

Fifteen dot six nine nine dot one oh six.

A special thank you to everyone who provided archival tape, including Marsha nineteen ninety two by Michael Cassine and Marcia at Tony Nunziatis by Michael Casino courtesy of Michael Casino, the Randy Wicker and Marsha P.

Johnson papers at the LGBT Community Center National History Archive, and Bob Kohler Papers, Box five Videotape eleven the LGBT Community Center National History Archive,