Miss Major, trailblazing US trans rights activist and Stonewall veteran, dies aged 78 | LGBTQ+ rights
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a pioneer of the transgender rights movement, longtime community organizer and veteran of the Stonewall riots, died Monday, her representatives announced.
The acclaimed activist died at his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, surrounded by his family. gg house (The last organization he founded and managed) announced. He was 78 years old and the cause of death was not stated in the band’s statement.
Miss Major was one of the United States’ most famous trans rights pioneers and elders, and was at the forefront of the fight for trans rights for over fifty years. He spent his final years providing a service. shelter As he continues to travel the country, he supports transgender and gender non-conforming people in his conservative state. rally for trans rights young trans people et al LGBTQ+ organizers.
Known by her first name, Miss Major has gained a reputation as an outspoken and fearless advocate for the liberation of Black trans women, fighting for communities that have long suffered extreme discrimination and violence and been neglected by the gay rights movement.
She was seen as a mother to transgender women across the country; some of them were prominent community organizers. She told the Guardian in a 2023 interview that she stopped counting after having 20 girls.
Her “I’m still here!” her mantra captured the joy and humor she brought to her activism and became a rallying call for the resilience of Black transgender people; a call to live long, full lives in a society that forces the community to be marginalized and erased.
Miss Major was born in Chicago. Her parents, a postal service manager and a beauty salon manager, took her to her first drag show but did not support her when she identified with the performers. In his 2023 book, he explained that his family sent him to psychiatric institutions as a teenager and burned his mother’s clothes to “keep homosexuals away from me”: Miss Major SpeaksA series of conversations with writer Toshio Meronek.
She performed at the Jewel Box Revue, a drag show in Chicago, with the help of a mentor named Kitty, who gave her a wig, did her makeup, and taught her to embrace her identity.
Because she was trans, she had to drop out of college in Minnesota and ended up in New York, where she survived by working as a sex worker. Some of her early activism stemmed from networks of sex workers working together to protect themselves from police and violent clients, she told the Guardian in 2023.
Miss Major described being subjected to repeated police brutality, including on June 28, 1969, when the New York police department raided the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, a rare gay bar that she said did not shun transgender people.
He and others fought back, and Ms. Major recalled being knocked unconscious and taken to jail. “The cops beat you until you fell down. Everyone who stood up to them went through that. It wasn’t nice. It was an event.” rebel. We were fighting for our lives. It was very sad,” he said in a 2023 interview.
The Stonewall protests launched Pride and are considered the birth of the contemporary gay rights movement, but the black trans women who participated in the demonstrations were sidelined by the mainstream activism that followed.
“We fought for no reason. It’s a shame it turned out this way. We started the riots and what did we get? Nothing. Nothing.” Nothing” he said and reminded that gay and lesbian leaders “are ashamed to be seen with us.”
During a later stint in a New York prison, Ms. Major became a mentee of Frank “Big Black” Smith, who led a major prison uprising and taught her the principles of organization, recalling that “you can’t throw anyone under the bus,” a guide that informed her later work.
In the 1980s, Miss Major founded Angels of Care, a group of transgender women who served as caregivers for gay men dying in the Aids epidemic, with efforts in California and New York. In San Francisco, she became a successful community leader, operating the city’s first mobile needle exchange van and running a drop-in center for transgender sex workers, despite objections from the nonprofit Aids organization.
Miss Major went on to lead the Transgender Variability and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), a group that fights against the abuse of trans people of color in prison and provides support during prison reentry. One of his adopted daughters, Janetta Johnson, leads the organization now called the Miss Major Alexander L Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center.
In recent years, Ms. Major repeatedly suffered from health problems, but still continued her work through gg’s House, which she also called Telling It Like It’s Damned (Tilifi). The organization brings trans leaders to a colorful Little Rock guest house called the Oasis to provide a sanctuary for rest and relaxation.
“I need to create joy here because that doesn’t exist in the normal world,” Ms. Major said in a 2023 interview at her home. “They want us to live in the 1950s. No. Get it off our backs and let us live… I know the world I want to live in. It’s in my head, but now I’m doing my best to live it.”
Miss Major is survived by her long-time partner, Beck Witt; three sons, Asaiah, Christopher and Jonathon; and his “many daughters”, House of gg in question.
“He was a world-builder, a visionary, and unwavering in his commitment to making freedom possible for Black, trans, formerly and currently incarcerated people, as well as the greater trans and LGB community. Because of him, countless new possibilities were created for all of us to thrive — today and for generations to come,” the organization said in a post Monday. “While his physical presence has changed, we have gained an extremely powerful ancestor, and there is no doubt that he is and always will be with us, guiding us, protecting us, and reminding us that ‘he is still here!’
