Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (born 1940s), often referred to as Miss Major, is a
trans woman A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and so ...
author, activist, and community organizer for
transgender rights A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is inconsistent or not culturally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth and also with the gender role that is associated with that sex. They may have, or may intend to establi ...
. She has participated in activism and community organizing for a range of causes, and served as the first executive director for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project. Griffin-Gracy has contributed to
oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...
collections, including ''Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex'', ''The Stonewall Reader'', and ''The Stonewall Generation: LGBT Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging''. Her memoir, ''Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary'', was released by
Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...
in 2023.


Biography


Chicago

Griffin-Gracy was born in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
in the 1940s, and assigned male at birth. She was raised on the South Side of Chicago, while her father worked for the post office and her mother managed a beauty shop. She has said after she
came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
to her parents around age 12 or 13, they responded by enrolling her in psychiatric treatment and taking her to church. Griffin-Gracy came out in Chicago as trans in the late 1950s, and has described
drag ball Gay balls, cross-dressing balls or drag balls, depending on the place, time, and type, were public or private balls, celebrated mainly in the first third of the twentieth century, where cross-dressing and ballroom dancing with same sex partners was ...
s at the time as places where "You had to keep your eyes open, had to watch your back, but you learned how to deal with that ..We didn't know at the time that we were questioning our gender. We just knew it felt right." She has also described the influence of
Christine Jorgensen Christine Jorgensen (May 30, 1926 – May 3, 1989) was an American trans woman who was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery. She had a career as a successful actress, singer and rec ...
, who became well known in the 1950s for having
gender-affirming surgery Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a transgender or transsexual person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender, and alle ...
; according to Griffin-Gracy, "After Christine Jorgensen got her sex change, all of a sudden there was a black market of hormones out there," and she was familiar with how to obtain illicit hormones in Chicago. Griffin-Gracy has said she was expelled from college for having feminine clothes, and she lost her home with her parents after they refused to accept her gender. She has described working as a
showgirl A showgirl is a female dancer or performer in a stage entertainment show intended to showcase the performer's physical attributes, typically by way of revealing clothing, toplessness, or nudity. History Showgirls date back to the late 180 ...
at the Jewel Box Revue in Chicago and New York, and how she developed her name to add "Griffin" to honor her mother. She has also discussed how becoming a
sex worker A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.Oxford English Dictionary, "sex worker" According to one view, sex work is d ...
provided the steadiest available income. She recalls that after an incarceration in a psychiatric facility in lieu of jail in Chicago, she moved to New York.


New York

In a 2014 interview with the
Bay Area Reporter The ''Bay Area Reporter'' is a free weekly newspaper serving the LGBT communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the largest-circulation LGBT newspapers in the United States, and the country's oldest continuously published newspaper ...
, Griffin-Gracy said that after moving to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, she found the
Stonewall Inn The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall, is a gay bar and recreational tavern in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City, and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which is widely considered to be the s ...
"provided us transwomen with a nice place for social connection" and that few
gay bars A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clientele; the term ''gay'' is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT communities. Gay bars once served ...
otherwise allowed entry to
trans women A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and so ...
at the time. She has said she was a regular patron of the Stonewall, and that she was there on the first night of the 1969
Stonewall rebellion The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the LGBT community#Terminology, gay community in response to a police raid that began in t ...
. Police raids were common for LGBT bars, and Griffin-Gracy has said, "This one night, though, everybody decided this time we weren't going to leave the bar. And shit just hit the fan." Griffin-Gracy has described the impact of the death in 1970 of her friend Puppy, a trans woman who was determined by authorities to have died by suicide while Griffin-Gracy strongly suspected she was murdered by a client. She has said, "Puppy’s murder made me aware that we were not safe or untouchable and that if someone does touch us, no one gives a shit. We only have each other. We always knew this, but now we needed to take a step towards doing something about it. ..We girls decided that whenever we got into a car with someone, another girl would write down as much information as possible. We would try not to just lean into the car window but get a guy to walk outside the car so that everyone could see him, so we all knew who he was if she didn’t come back. That's how it started. Since no one was going to do it for us, we had to do it for ourselves." She has described this as the start of her activism. Griffin-Gracy has also discussed her years of experience in prison and her experience on parole, including after Stonewall, when she received a five-year sentence following a robbery arrest. She has described Frank "Big Black" Smith, a leader of the Attica Correctional Facility riots of 1971, as a mentor, after meeting him while incarcerated at the
Clinton Correctional Facility Clinton Correctional Facility is a New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision maximum security state prison for men located in the Village of Dannemora, New York. The prison is sometimes colloquially referred to as Dannem ...
at Dannemora. She says he encouraged her to learn about
African-American history African-American history began with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The ...
and politics, organizing, and the
prison industrial complex A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correcti ...
. She has recalled being released from prison around 1974. Over twenty years, Griffin-Gracy also experienced homelessness, received welfare, and mostly found hormones through the black market.


California

Griffin-Gracy began work in community services after moving to
San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
in 1978. She worked at a
food bank A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food direc ...
and then in direct community services for
trans women A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and so ...
. Her work expanded into home health care during the
AIDS epidemic The global epidemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2021, HIV/AI ...
in the United States. In the 1990s, Griffin-Gracy moved to the
San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
, and worked with multiple HIV/AIDS organizations, including the City of Refuge in San Francisco and the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center. In 2004, Griffin-Gracy began working at the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), shortly after it was founded by Alex Lee. She became the executive director of the organization, which is focused on providing support services to transgender, gender variant, and intersex people in prison. Her work included visiting trans women and men in California prisons to help coordinate access to legal and social services, and testimony at the
California State Assembly The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature, the upper house being the California State Senate. The Assembly convenes, along with the State Senate, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento. The A ...
and
United Nations Human Rights Committee The United Nations Human Rights Committee is a treaty body composed of 18 experts, established by a 1966 human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Committee meets for three four-week sessions per y ...
in Geneva about human rights violations in prisons. While she was the executive director, she gave an interview to Jayden Donahue that was published in ''Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex'', and described in a review by Arlen Katen in the ''Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice'' as "bluntly and powerfully stat ngthat being trans* is an extension of the prison-industrial complex; even if not all trans* people end up in prison, their gender identities are constantly policed through other social and state mechanisms." In an interview with Jessica Stern published in a 2011 '' Scholar and Feminist Online'' article, Griffin-Gracy described a sense of exclusion from the broader
LGBT movement Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements are social movements that advocate for LGBT people in society. Some focus on equal rights, such as the ongoing movement for same-sex marriage, while others focus on liberation, as in the ...
, described by Stern as for "herself and others, especially transgender people who are low-income, people of color, or have criminal records." In 2013, she was part of a campaign to revise wording on a Stonewall commemorative plaque; she advocated for "inclusive language to honor the sacrifice we as trans women displayed by taking back our power." In 2014, when she was honored as a community grand marshal for the San Francisco Pride Parade, she said, "We're finally getting some recognition. I'm proud it finally happened and I'm alive to see it because a lot of my girlfriends haven't made it this far. I'm trying to get as many girls as possible together at the parade so people can see we're a force to be reckoned with; we're not going anywhere."


Arkansas

Griffin-Gracy moved to Little Rock, Arkansas after visiting the city for a screening of ''MAJOR!'', the 2015 documentary about her. She developed a property she initially called the House of GG into an informal retreat center for trans people. The property includes a guest house, pool, hot tub,
merry-go-round A carousel or carrousel (mainly North American English), merry-go-round (List of sovereign states, international), roundabout (British English), or hurdy-gurdy (an old term in Australian English, in South Australia, SA) is a type of amusement ...
, various gardens, and over 80 palm trees. In 2023, she renamed the property to Tilifi, an acronym for Telling It Like It Fuckin' Is.


Documentaries

A documentary titled ''Major!'' was released in 2015 and portrays Griffin-Gracy's role as an activist and mentor in the transgender community since the 1960s. Griffin-Gracy was also the subject of the 2016 film ''Personal Things'', by
Tourmaline Tourmaline ( ) is a crystalline silicate mineral group in which boron is compounded with elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium. Tourmaline is a gemstone and can be found in a wide variety of colors. The ...
. She is an executive producer for the 2021 docu-series '' Trans in Trumpland''.


''Miss Major Speaks''

In May 2023,
Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a left-wing publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review''. Renaming, new brand and logo Verso Books was originally known as New Left Books. The ...
published ''Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary'', a memoir composed of interviews with Griffin-Gracy by journalist Toshio Meronek. Meronek is Griffin-Gracy's former assistant and also wrote a biographical overview of her for the book. In the memoir Griffin-Gracy reflects on her early life, education, experience as a sex worker, the 1969
Stonewall rebellion The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the LGBT community#Terminology, gay community in response to a police raid that began in t ...
, incarcerations, knowing Frank "Big Black" Smith as a mentor, and her years of activism and community organizing, including during the
AIDS epidemic The global epidemic of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2021, HIV/AI ...
in the 1980s, as well as her work as the director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP). In a review for '' Gender & Development'', Haley McEwen writes, "Beyond an opportunity to learn about the life of a leader and elder in the Black transgender community through vivid personal accounts of activism and survival, listening to Miss Major speak is to subvert systems that have worked to erase and silence Black transgender women throughout history and in present reality." According to Vic Parsons in '' Huck'', "Miss Major has herself has been a crucial source of hope and support to many trans people. ..In some ways, this book is a new version of the community building and emotional support that is Miss Major’s life’s work."


Selected works

* * * * * *


Honors and awards

* 2013 Social Justice Sabbatical Award,
Vanguard Public Foundation Vanguard Public Foundation was an American social justice foundation focused on providing grants to social justice nonprofits. One of the first of the "rich kid foundations," Vanguard was a model for a new generation's philanthropy. Vanguard rose ...
* 2014 Bobbie Jean Baker Memorial Award, Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center * 2014 San Francisco Pride Parade, community grand marshal * 2019 Acey Social Justice Award, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice * Women of the Year 2021, '' The Advocate''


Personal life

Griffin-Gracy has five sons. Her eldest son was born in 1978, and she later adopted three more sons. In January 2021, Griffin-Gracy and her partner announced the birth of their son.


See also

*
Stormé DeLarverie Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to Stormé and many eyewitnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall uprising, spurring the cro ...
*
Marsha P. Johnson Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) also known as Malcolm Michaels Jr., was an American gay liberation''I've been involved in gay liberation ever since it first started in 1969'', 15:20 into the interview, Johnson is quoted as ...
* CeCe McDonald *
Sylvia Rivera Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist September 21, 1995. Accessed July 24, 2015. who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag q ...


References


External links


Read an Excerpt from ''The Right Side of History: 100 Years or LGBTQI Activism'': Miss Major Griffin-Gracy's Reflections on the Stonewall Riots
(''Lambda Literary Review'', July 21, 2015) *
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
(Interviewed by Mason Funk, July 27, 2016, ''
OutWords ''OutWords'' was a Canadian magazine, published in Winnipeg, Manitoba for the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. Launched in November 1994 as ''Swerve'' by a collective that included Carol Philipps, Stephen Lawson, Ian King ...
'')
Black Trans Women Seek More Space in the Movement They Helped Start
(''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', June 28, 2020) {{DEFAULTSORT:Griffin-Gracy, Miss Major 1940s births African-American feminists American feminists American transgender people African-American LGBT people LGBT feminists LGBT people from Illinois American LGBT rights activists Living people Activists from Chicago Writers from Chicago Prison reformers Transgender women Transgender rights activists Transgender history in the United States 21st-century American women writers 20th-century American LGBT people 21st-century American LGBT people