On Oct. 13, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy died. That a Black transgender woman was able to live to 78 years of age and to die of natural causes, surrounded by loved ones, in a violently racist, transphobic, capitalist society like the United States, is itself a cause for celebration. But Miss Major’s life represented so much more: she was a revolutionary, a visionary, a mother, and a mentor to generations of LGBTQ people who dream of a better world.
Born and raised in Chicago and out as trans in the 1950s, Miss Major’s life took her to San Diego and San Francisco, among other places. In New York City, she participated in the June 1969 uprising at the Stonewall Inn, fighting back against police violence in what became the catalyst for a more militant LGBTQ liberation movement. However, she credited her own political radicalization to when she met Frank “Big Black” Smith, one of the leaders of the 1971 Attica Prison Uprising, while they were imprisoned together at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Miss Major was locked up in isolation cells alongside participants in the uprising and bore witness to the violent torture the prison inflicted on people in the aftermath. Frank talked to Miss Major about solidarity and never leaving anyone behind in the struggle for liberation.
Throughout her life, Miss Major was repeatedly imprisoned for trying to find ways to survive on the margins of society. As such, she spent much of her life supporting trans women of color in the U.S. prison system, where they face appalling levels of brutality and oppression. A study by Advocates for Trans Equality (formerly known as the National Center for Transgender Rights) and the National LGBTQ Task Force found that almost half of Black trans women in the U.S. have been incarcerated. Through organizations like the Trans, Gender Variant, and Intersex People’s Justice Project, Miss Major helped provide legal services for imprisoned trans women and to advocate for their civil rights, such as access to gender-affirming medical care and to wear affirming clothing while being housed in a men’s prisons, as well as support services like pen pal programs and support for trans women after they’re released from prison.
In 2019, Miss Major founded the Griffin-Gracy Educational Retreat and Historical Center, more commonly known as the House of gg, in Little Rock, Arkansas. This became a space for trans people — particularly trans women of color — to have respite and to organize. She spent her final years organizing through the Center, including fighting back against the wave of discriminatory anti-trans policies sweeping the country.
“There is a definite connection between that kind of stuff [the root causes of imprisonment for trans women of color] and the prison industrial complex … from the moment we decide to be a transgender person, we are living outside the law,” Miss Major told Jayden Donahue for a chapter of the 2011 book “Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex,” edited by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith.
“The thing about trying to get rid of the system, we can’t just snap our fingers and the bitches are gone,” Miss Major continued. “While we tear down the walls and let everybody go we have to figure out what we can do to make society accept this and figure out how to negotiate a coexistence … We are working on dismantling this system from the inside out, to show how it’s not working, to show how it’s hurting everybody and at the same time, building toward something else. My hope is that in the future, there won’t be any prisons.”
Miss Major’s advocacy was not limited to trans and queer people. She was known and beloved for speaking out against injustice everywhere, including denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza and urging people to support a free Palestine and stand with Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation. “Make sure you do something! Give something to them. Help them fight this fight,” she said in December 2023.
Up until her passing, Miss Major continued to speak unabashedly for trans liberation and inspire trans people to take the road of liberation work rather than the easy road of assimilation.
“Change the status quo and make life really fucking annoying for the powers that be,” Miss Major once said. Miss Major did far more than just that – she helped make life into something worth fighting for, for countless Black trans people across the U.S.
We salute Miss Major and pledge to continue her work, until full liberation for trans people!
