Forsaken transgender pioneers recognised 50 years after Stonewall

LaLa Zannell, a New York-based transgender rights activist, poses outside The Stonewall Inn in New York, U.S., May 30, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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.