MISS MAJOR GRIFFIN-GRACY (b. 1940s)
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, often referred to as Miss Major, is an American author, activist, and organizer for transgender rights. She has spent the last 50 years fighting for her trans and gender noncomforming community.
Miss Major was born in Chicago, IL in the 1940s and assigned male at birth (AMAB). She came out to her parents as transgender around the age of 12 or 13. Her parents responded to the news by sending Miss Major for psychiatric care and took her to church more.
Miss Major graduated from high school at the age of 16 and enrolled in college. Because she still presented as male at the time, she lived in the men’s dorms. Her roommate discovered her dresses and outed her to all the male students on the floor. A week later, she was expelled.
After being expelled from another college for the same reason, she moved to New York City. She made money as a sex worker and considered it to be a profitable and pleasurable line of work.
In NYC, Miss Major got involved in drag shows and started performing as a showgirl. She found support in the local LGBTQ+ community and was accepted for who she was. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for the world at large, as Police often raided drag shows and LGBTQ+ friendly bars.
Miss Major was present at the Stonewall Inn on the night of the infamous Stonewall Uprising in 1969. Miss Major and a group of fellow transgender women were on the front lines of the crowd that finally fought back, following a police raid. A cop knocked Miss Major out, but the revolution had begun.
In 1970, Miss Major was arrested for robbery and sent to Sing Sing prison. She was released on parole twice and twice went back to prison for wearing make-up and entering a bar known to cater to “deviants.” While incarcerated at Dannemora prison — a prison that housed some of the most infamous criminals — she met Frank Smith, who encouraged her to educate herself about Black history and to address the causes of racism, inequality, and transgender oppression.
Upon moving to California in 1978, she began to work in community services. She worked at a food bank and then in direct community services for trans women. Her work expanded to home health care during the peak of the AIDS epidemic.
In 2004, Miss Major began working at the TGI Justice Project and became the executive director. Her work included visiting trans women and men in California prisons to help coordinate access to legal and social services. She spoke at the CA State Assembly and UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva about human rights violations in prison.
Miss Major currently runs House of GG, a retreat center in Little Rock, Arkansas dedicated to fostering connections between trans youth and community elders. Her recent creative projects include executive producing the series Trans in Trumpland, and Miss Major Speaks (affiliate link), a book on her life’s activism.
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