Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
| Miss Major Griffin-Gracy | |
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Miss Major at San Francisco Pride in 2014
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| Born | October 25, 1940 |
| Residence | Oakland, California |
| Occupation | Executive Director |
| Organization | Transgender GenderVariant Intersex Justice Project |
| Known for | Transgender activism |
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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, often referred to as Miss Major, is a trans woman activist and community leader for transgender rights, with a particular focus on women of color. She serves as the Executive Director for the Transgender GenderVariant Intersex Justice Project, which aims to assist transgender persons who are disproportionately incarcerated under the prison-industrial complex. Griffin-Gracy has participated in activism for a wide range of causes throughout her lifetime, including the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.
Griffin-Gracy was born in the South Side of Chicago on October 25, 1940, and was assigned male at birth. Griffin-Gracy participated in drag balls during her youth, and described her experience in Chicago in a 1998 interview:
[The drag balls] were phenomenal! It was like going to the Oscars show today. Everybody dressed up. Guys in tuxedos, queens in gowns that you would not believe— I mean, things they would have been working on all year...And the straight people would come and watch, they were different than the ones who come today. They just appreciated what was going on.
Griffin-Gracy also believed that, at the time, she and her peers were unaware they were questioning the gender they were assigned at birth, and noted that much of the contemporary terminology surrounding gender identities did not exist. Miss Major reported that she came out as a teenager in the late 1950s.
As a teenager, Griffin-Gracy was met with a lot of criticism and maltreatment from her peers. In a radio interview, she recalls the need for someone to always be by her side in order to avoid situations where her peers could single her out and violently attack her.
During her period of transitioning, Griffin-Gracy relied on the black market for her hormones. Over twenty years, she suffered from homelessness and participated in sex-work. She also participated in other illegal activities, including theft, in order to support herself.
Griffin-Gracy has four sons. Christopher was born in 1978. Her three others sons were adopted into her family after meeting them in a California park. The boys were runaways, and had meals together with Griffin-Gracy and her biological son.
After having been kicked out of two colleges for the outward expression of her identity, Griffin-Gracy moved from Chicago to New York City. While some organizations, including gay bars in the city, would deny entry to trans women, she established herself within an LGBT community associated with the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village. She recounted, "We could go to Stonewall and everything would be fine, we didn't have to explain ourselves."
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