#Happy Birthday Marsha!

[sbrown82]

Marsha Hunt, circa 1970.

[jerzwriter]

Happy Heavenly Birthday!

Her accomplishments and bravery helped pave the way for the LGBTQIA community to be where we are today. There may be miles to go, but the landscape is far less bleak than the one Marsha was born into and we are better because of her fight and sacrifice.

Never tell a Jersey Girl that they can’t change the world! 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

[littlequeenies]

Why do we Love...

Marsha Hunt

We found out about Marsha Hunt when we were searching for Marc Bolan, and in an editorial website (retna I think it was), there was a very beautiful photo or Marsha, so we were curious and we wanted to know more about this beautiful girl.

[Marsha Hunt pictured by Justin de Villeneuve in 1969]

We fell in love with her round face, her make-up, her beautiful lips, her perfect afro, her skin colour... everything on her was just beautiful!! so we decided to search for more pictures and we also wanted to discover whick link she had with Marc Bolan (a musician we discovered through our dad).

[Marsha photo from Disc & Music Echo, 1st February 1969]

We discovered Marsha had a very interesting life since she was young, she was born in the States and went to University, and then, she went pennyless to England were everything seemed possible, she started modelling, singing and in the end, she had a small part in big musical HAIR. Her beautiful features and her perfect afro went headlines to lots of newspapers and lots of photographers wanted her, so she started a successful modelling career.

[Marsha Hunt pictured by Lord Patrick Lichfield in 1969]

We inmediately felt that Marsha was a very creative, strong and hard-working woman, and we were right. Marsha fought for her dreams to come true in England, she left her family and friends behind just to make some new ones as she was open-minded and with great ideas from her own. She had to fight for the recognition of her daughter Karis as while she and Mick Jagger agreed to have her, he didn't aknowledged as his daughter when she was born, so Marsha found herself bringing up a special-gifted child on her own and without any help from the father. Time gave reason to Marsha and Mick Jagger, eventually aknowledged Karis as his own.

[Marsha and her baby Karis pictured in August 1971]

Marsha was a total artist, having a successful modelling career, she also build a solid musical career, and a great acting career with films and acting on theatres and in her mature years she gained a solid carrer as a writer. To write her books she did some research in black communities, but also within her family and finally she wrote two memoirs, Real Life and Undefeated, writing her experience with breast cancer, a battle that she won.

[Marsha pictured again by Lord Patrick Lichfield for her book "Undefeated", 2005]

Today, for celebrate Marsha's 77th birthday we want to show you why we love and admire this strong woman.

Here we share:

OUR GOOGLE PHOTO ALBUMS SEPARATED IN DECADES: 1946-69, 1968-69 HAIR, 1970s, 1972 DRACULA AD, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s & 2020s

OUR BIOGRAPHY OF HER WITH GREAT LINKS

HER POSTS IN OUR BLOG

HER ACTING CAREER

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STRONG AND UNIQUE WOMAN

[aaliyahunleashed]

Happy Blessed Birthday to Clifford Joseph Harris Jr., better known by the stage names T.I. and Tip, born September 25, 1980.

DID YOU KNOW: T.I would sample Aaliyah's Grammy nominated hit song "Rock The Boat" in his song "Dope" (in 2016). The late singer's voice is the first that we hear on the track: "I feel like I'm on dope," she opens the song, "Boy, you really get me high." followed by T.I's raps. The song features singer Marsha Ambrosius and is produced by Dr. Dre.

When the promotion of the video was launched, images of TI wearing a white Aaliyah shirt (by photographer Eric Johnson/ Upstairs With Eric) was circulated, followed by video of the shirt being blurred out before ultimately displaying TI only wearing a white shirt for the same scenes.

This left some fans wondering if the original circulated images (of him with an Aaliyah shirt) were real or photoshopped and/or if TI needed to remove the shirt due to copyright (if the images were real). It was never cleared up and Eric Johnson would show gratitude of a reposted image of TI wearing his shirts in one of his IG storied May 2022.

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Marsha P. Johnson! (August 24, 1945)

An influential figure in the early LGBT rights movement, Marsha P. Johnson was born in New Jersey to a working class family. Johnson first began dressing as a girl as a young age, but chose to suppress her desires and identity for many years due to bigoted harassment. After graduating high school, Johnson left home for New York City, where she finally allowed herself to come out. She began performing as a drag queen and frequenting the Stonewall Inn. She was involved in the Stonewall Uprising, though denied accounts of being one of the leaders of the rising, and continued to play a major role in the gay rights movement afterward. Johnson organized with the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization which sought to provide food and shelter to homeless LGBT youth. Unhoused herself for much of her time in New York, Johnson often relied on sex work in order to get by. In 1992, Johnson's body was recovered from the Hudson River; she had evidently been murdered in a hate crime. The police ruled her death a suicide despite the evidence against this, and Johnson's friends and allies fought for years to have the case reopened and investigated as a homicide.

[ew-selfish-art]

Dp x Dc AU: Bruce has a 'if you can't beat them, join them' mentality about the tabloids claiming he adopts too many kids- Developing foster homes that are paid for through the Wayne inheritance, personally vetted by the Bats, they're the leaders in the space for child health outcomes and family placement. Insert Danny.

---

Bruce has too much wealth, too many rumors and not enough reach into the abhorrent foster homes around Gotham to improve them. Tim ends up being the one to suggest it- He's the one who buys up their real estate for their safe houses after all- and Bruce is more than ready to pull the metaphorical trigger to get new clean welcoming spaces, Bat-background checked fosters and a new era of adoption in Gotham underway.

He's lobbied the state and the federal government for reforms of course, but this is a project he can micromanage. He spends time with every kid that comes through, talks with all the families that want to adopt and makes sure that these miniature homes are provided only the very best. Alfred personally hires all the staff, and with Barbara more than happy to help relocate the unhoused children she spots while they patrol, the project is a glowing success.

Occasionally, spots in their houses fill up, and those are the weeks were Cass takes on the Cowl of Batman- Bruce Wayne will personally invite a child in need to his home. He always has one of his kids present (they rotate on a pre-determined schedule) and he does his best to try and get them to understand that they deserve the world, have all the potential that anyone else has and can achieve a bright future. That he will personally aid them in their ambitions.

PR goes crazy for it of course, but Bruce and all of his children know its genuine. Almost too genuine, because a betting pool 'WILL THEY BE ADOPTED' regularly circulates between the siblings and the entire JL when someone spends time at the manor. And not just the black-haired, Blue-eyed kids get picked as favored outcomes- but obviously the running joke gets passed around.

It's a Thursday night when Bruce gets the call that the houses have once again filled up, and that there is a child in need of a home. The social worker (he knows her as Marsha and he has flowers planned to be sent on her birthday next week, like he does for all of his employees) (Say micromanaged one more time) explains that the kid is a bit cagey but has opened up with some humor. She explains that he has a few strange... mannerisms. She's not sure what to make of him, a non-gothamite for sure but something is, well, distinctly 'not from around here' about his energy.

Danny arrives at the house, meets Duke and Alfred, and by the time Bruce meets him at the dinner table it seems as though Marsha had it all wrong. This kid was laughing, he was teasing, he was totally playing along like he'd gone through nothing. Bruce is glad he's in high spirits but its just so... so different from all the other children he's taken in.

Bruce re-focuses on the conversation when Duke mentions something flashing, and its the first time that Danny goes quiet. Entirely still.

"...you noticed that?" Danny quietly asks, a bit of disbelief in his tone.

"You don't have a flashlight on or something do you? It was super bright whatever it is that you had in your hand a second ago?" Duke tries to sound chill but he's looking very much not chill. Bruce saw nothing, and that puts him further on edge.

"Look... I uh, I've been though... I've been through a lot lately. And the last lab I was in kind of, messed with me. I'm normally much better at dealing with it all, I promise." Danny sounds nervous, and the room seems to chill.

"Ah shoot, sorry." Danny notices something and frantically apologizes.

"Sorry for what Danny? You've done nothing wrong but I am worried about you- You said you were in a lab?" Bruce is desperately trying to calm him down while not slipping into Batman interrogation mode.

"Uh, yeah, like a lot of labs. It should get warmer in a second, its just cause I startled, I promise."

"You're a meta." Duke speaks softly and with hope in his voice- Danny is looking between them with wide eyes filled with fear.

"I mean I don't technically have the gene-"

"Danny, have you told any of your case workers where you were? Do any authorities know what you've been through?" Bruce needs to know, desperately, that who ever gave this young boy super powers is brought to justice. Danny goes quiet.

"I'm really sorry." He says softly, but he doesn't leave them.

Duke and Bruce try to ask a few more questions but the silence that meets them declares the conversation over, even with Duke admitting he himself is a meta. Danny didn't even look up from his plate. They watch a movie after dinner, and Danny seems to get back to the smile-y happy guy he had been before dinner.

Each of the bat-fam have their own interactions with Danny- And even if they're getting along amazingly, Danny won't open up. He doesn't open up to his provided therapist. Doesn't talk to Alfred. No one knows what's up.

So when Marsha calls Bruce back explaining they now have a spot for Danny and he can move out of the Manor... Bruce replies that he'd like to get started on Adoption paperwork, so long as Danny is fine with it.

---

Turns out, Danny is fine with it. he's both the newest Wayne and their newest case. (And godamnit, his new family is going to avenge him. If only he'd let them try.)

Danny figures out that Duke= Signal early on because of that dinner, and if he's going to keep his parents out of jail, he needs to be as close to the investigation as possible. He knows that he shouldn't protect the Fentons, but he feels the upset in his core at the thought of letting them befall any harm. He has to protect them. Has to protect Jazz and her hiding spot as a mole within their lab. Has to.

Even if it meant lying to his new family who loves him, and who he loves in equal return. Even if it means lying to The Bats.

---

Tabloids go crazy about the black-haired blue-eyed thing of course, but no poll was ever taken by the batfam or the JL who know the whole story.

[happybirthdayxalbum]

happy 4th birthday to...

The Normal Album by Will Wood!!

tracklist: suburbia overture / greetings from mary bell township! / (vampire) culture / love, me normally - 2econd 2ight 2eer (that was fun, goodbye!) - laplace's angel (hurt people? hurt people!) - i / me / myself - ...well, better than the alternative - outliars and hyppocrates: a fun fact about apples - blackboxwarrior- OKULTRA - marsha, thankk you for the dialectics, but i need you to leave - love, me normally - memento mori: the most important thing in the world

[queerasfact]

Happy birthday Marsha P Johnson!

Born on 24 August 1945, drag queen and activist Marsha P. Johnson was a well-known face in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where she lived on the street for many years. She is best remembered for her generosity and kindness, happily giving away her belongings, or spending her last two dollars on cookies to share around.

In 1970, along with fellow activist Sylvia Rivera, Marsha founded STAR - the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - which aimed to provide food, housing, legal aid, and other necessities to homeless trans youth. Marsha was assigned male at birth, but described herself as living life as a woman, and worked tirelessly to support her trans community.

Check out our podcast on Marsha if you'd like to learn more!

[Photo taken by Randy Wicker]

[campgender]

Implicitly and explicitly, Tourmaline’s freedom dreams are always dreams of radical accessibility. As antipolicing protests spread through New York in May 2020, she laid out, “If you’re Black and disabled and feel like you’re missing the revolution cuz you can’t be in the streets, just remember it’s not revolution if it doesn’t include us!”

Marsha and Sylvia, the freedom-dreaming ancestors whose work Tourmaline lovingly, literally carries on her own body, were disabled revolutionaries. “Marsha P. Johnson would sometimes get picked up by the police for walking naked down the street, talking incoherently about her father and Neptune, and be ‘taken away’ for a few months. She would return implanted with Thorazine and ‘would be like a zombie’ for a month or so before returning to ‘the old Marsha,’” Anole Halper notes in a careful consideration of these foremothers’ “mental health challenges.”

“Sylvia Rivera, according to her, had ‘a drinking problem,’ used heroin, and attempted suicide at least twice in low periods. Even though these facts are well-documented, they seem omitted from the mythology that is emerging about these remarkable people.” Tourmaline’s films are jewel-toned exceptions to this pattern of omission. Visualizing transfemme ancestors’ neurodivergence as a “privileged relationship to the immaterial,” Happy Birthday, Marsha! and Salacia take seriously Marsha’s proclamation, “I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong.”

In Tourmaline’s films, Marsha’s and Sylvia’s disabilities are neither hidden nor romanticized. Her characters wear “crazy” neither as a cloak of shame nor as a crown of glory, but in the everyday, intimate, creative ways Black women wear headscarves.

from The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley (2022)

[cosmic-pr1nce]

happy birthday Marsha P Johnson!

[sbrown82]

undefined

Marsha Hunt rehearsing “White Boys / Black Boys” for the legendary rock musical Hair at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London (1968).

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Celebrating Black Queer Icons:

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (formerly known/credited as Reian Gossett)is a trans woman that actively identifies as queer, and is best known for her work in trans activism and economic justice. Tourmaline was born July 20, 1983, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Tourmaline's mother was a feminist and union organizer, her father a self defense instructor and anti-imprisonment advocate. Growing up in this atmosphere allowed Tourmaline to explore her identity and encouraged her to fight in what she believes in. Tourmaline has earned a BA in Comparative Ethnic Studies, from Colombia University. During her time at Colombia U, Tourmaline taught creative writing courses to inmates at Riker's Island Correctional Institute, through a school program known as Island Academy. Tourmaline has worked with many groups and organizations in her pursuit of justice. She served as the Membership Coordinator for Queers For Economic Justice, Director of Membership at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and as a Featured Speaker for GLAAD. Tourmaline also works as a historian and archivist for drag queens and trans people associated with the 1969 Stonewall Inn Uprising. She started doing this after noticing how little trans material was being archived, saying that what little did get archived was done so accidentally. In 2010 Tourmaline began her work in film by gathering oral histories from queer New Yorkers for Kagendo Murungi's Taking Freedom Home. In 2016 Tourmaline directed her first film The Personal Things, which featured trans elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. For the film Tourmaline was awarded the 2017 Queer Art Prize. Tourmaline served as the Assistant Director to Dee Rees on the Golden Globe nominated historical drama, Mudbound. Tourmaline has co produced two projects with fellow filmmaker and activist Sasha Wortzel. The first was STAR People Are Beautiful, about the work of Sylvia Rivera and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The second was Happy Birthday, Marsha, about Marsha P Johnson. Happy Birthday, Marsha had all trans roles played by trans actors. Tourmaline's work is featured or archived in several major museums and galleries. In 2017 her work was featured in New Museum's exhibit Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. In 2020 the Museum of Modern Art acquired Tourmaline's 2019 film Salacia, a project about Mary Jones. In 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired two of Tourmaline's works for display in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. Tourmaline is also the sibling of:

Che Gossett

Che Gossett is a nonbinary, trans femme writer and archivist. Gossett specializes in queer/trans studies, aesthetic theory, abolitionist thought and black study. Gossett received a Doctorate in Women's and Gender Studies, from Rutgers University, in 2021. They have also received a BA in African American Studies from Morehouse college, a MAT in Social Studios from Brown University, and a MA in History from the University of Pennsylvania. Gossett has held a fellowship at Yale, and currently holds fellowships at Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. Gossett's writing has been published in a number of anthologies and they have lectured and performed at several museums and galleries of note, including the Museum of Modern Art and A.I.R. Gallery. Gossett is currently working on finishing a political biography of queer Japanese-American AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya.

I originally intended to do separate profiles for Che Gossett Tourmaline, but could not find sufficient information about Che Gossett, beyond their credentials and current academic activity. That means that this will be the last of these write ups for a bit. I plan on picking it back up in October for the US's LGBT History Month and UK's Black History month. With time to plan ahead and research more I hope to diversify my list geographically and improve formatting. I plan on starting to include cis icons as well, like Rustin Bayard. If you come across this or any other of these posts Ive made this month I would love feedback and suggestions for figures you would like to see covered.

[cosmicanger]

Happy Birthday, Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) 🎉

📸: Marsha P. Johnson on Christopher Street & 7th Avenue during the Pride March in New York City. June 27, 1982. Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images.

[nightcourtcaps]

Wishing the wonderful Marsha Warfield a happy 70th birthday! 💖

[night-vale-daily]

Good evening listeners, this is Marsha Capgras (please, don't thankk me for the dialectics) from FM 77.6 on the Mary Bell Community Radio! Remember to tune in at 8 PM! We have a brief notice for you: There have been reports that people are going missing from Mary Bell Township. We do not yet know who the culprit is. If you see something, say "something," and keep your Recorder on you at all times. On a lighter note, today is someone or something's birthday! It was not specified who or what it was, just that it was "Normal". Happy birthday, Normal Thing! Also, the Mary Bell Campsite is open now until August 23rd! Sign your child (aged 5 to 17) up, ages 12 and under get a discount! There are also plenty of activities for the entire family to enjoy, as well. Finally, this is your nightly reminder to boycott Nature Tapes Late Morning Live! I heard today that the host kidnapped Sketches and forced them to be on a game show! How cruel. ...Well, that's all the time we have! Goodnight, dear listeners, and goodnight, Mary Bell Township.

[yellowskinnedwackyman]

"Happy birthday, Creed Darling!" Marsha kissed his lips softy. "I have a few things planned for you big day but I am going to grant you one wish. All you have to do is name it. Tell Marsha your hearts desires..."

@dimxndsareforever

Creeper melted into the kiss. he was so surprised and happy hearing her say she had plans. "Let's get to my wish later, I'm never good at making those so fast! You being here with plans for me is one hell of a start!"