Legendary activist and Black transgender woman Miss Major Griffin-Gracy has advocated for LGBTQ+ people for more than five decades. Many in the queer community call Griffin-Gracy “mother.”
After telling her parents she was transgender, Chicago-born Griffin-Gracy was thrown out of her home. She set out for New York City in the early 1960s, where she found a bustling queer community on 42nd street. Not long after her move, young Griffin-Gracy began her activism or, what she called it in an interview with Them magazine, “protecting my girls.”
“My friend died, Puppy. She was murdered in her apartment, and we knew at the time that someone who knew her had murdered her,” Griffin-Gracy told The Advocate. “And the police did not care. It didn’t matter to them at all. And so that started my activism.”
The Stonewall Uprising, a seminal moment in queer history that kickstarted the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, began when the NYPD raided Stonewall Inn, a queer club, in 1969. In a spontaneous act of rebellion, the queer civilians revolted against the police—Griffin-Gracy among the rebels. A police officer assaulted her, and Griffin-Gracy was knocked out cold.
She was sent to men’s prison soon after on robbery charges, then she was radicalized.
During her imprisonment at Clinton Correctional Facility, Attica Prison Rebellion leader Frank “Big Black” Smith influenced Griffin-Gracy “to educate herself about Black history, and to strive to address the causes of racism, inequality, and transgender oppression,” according to OUTWORDS, an LGBTQ+ archive.
Griffin-Gracy went on to become the first executive director of Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project, an advocacy group dedicated to the struggles of imprisoned TGNC people. She retired from the position in 2015.
In the spirit of NYC houses for transgender women of the past, Griffin-Gracy founded the House of GG, officially named the Griffin-Gracy Historical Retreat and Educational Center. House of GG offers a place for trans women of color in the South to seek leadership skills and community.
Griffin-Gracy’s long history of advocacy was celebrated with the 2015 documentary “Major!” and her story will be further shared with the upcoming release of her autobiography “Miss Major Speaks: The Life and Times of a Black Trans Revolutionary.”
