Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, activist since Stonewall, has died

[Jessica_Rose]

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, activist since Stonewall, has died

https://www.advocate.com/news/miss-major-griffin-gracy-obituary 🔗

Trudy Ring (13 Oct 2025)

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a legendary transgender activist who had been in the movement since Stonewall, died Monday at age 78.

Her death was announced by the House of GG—Griffin-Gracy Retreat and Educational Center, which she founded. She died "in the comfort of her home and surrounded by loved ones in Little Rock, Arkansas," says a statement from the center. "Her enduring legacy is a testament to her resilience, activism, and dedication to creating safe spaces for Black trans communities and all trans people — we are eternally grateful for Miss Major's life, her contributions and how deeply she poured into those she loved."

Miss Major had suffered from health problems for some time and had recently begun receiving hospice care.

She spent more than 50 years fighting for the "trans, gender-nonconforming, and LGB community — especially for Black trans women, trans women of color and those who have survived incarceration and police brutality," the statement continues. Major's fierce commitment and intersectional approach to justice brought her to care directly for people with HIV/AIDS in New York in the early 1980s, and later to drive San Francisco's first mobile needle exchange. As director of the TGI Justice Project, she'd return to prisons as a mentor to her 'gurls' inside."

[Jessica_Rose]

Trans rights activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracey passes away at age 78

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/10/trans-rights-activist-miss-major-griffin-gracey-passes-away-at-age-78/ 🔗

Faefyx Collington (14 Oct 2025)

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, trans rights advocate and veteran of the Stonewall Riots, passed away yesterday at 78, according to a statement from her non-profit, the Griffin-Gracy Educational and Historical Center, commonly known as the House of gg. Miss Major spent over 50 years fighting for trans rights and prison reform, helping people suffering with HIV/AIDS, and providing spaces for trans people to exist safely.

Born in Chicago in 1946, Miss Major came out to her parents at 12 or 13, she told SF Weekly in 2015. After telling them that "this existence that I had, it just didn't feel right," her parents took her first to a psychiatrist, and then to a church to have "the demon excised from me." In her memoir, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations With a Black Trans Revolutionary, written with Toshio Meronek, she claimed to love her parents "despite their recurring attempts to smack the queen out of her."

"Then they waited for me to grow out of it," Miss Major said. "I'm still waiting to grow out of it myself."

... She moved to New York City in the 1960s, where she found work in a hospital morgue and performed in drag shows in the Jewel Box Revue, but made most of the money she lived on from sex work.

In those years, Miss Major also became a regular at the Stonewall Inn, which led to her being in the bar on June 28, 1969, when the establishment was raided by police in riot gear. Miss Major explained to SF Weekly that her experiences with police and jail in Chicago had taught her that it was better to be knocked out quickly than to enter a prolonged fight with police and be beaten further.

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This is a much longer article article about Miss Major's life. Her life made a difference in ours.

Love always -- Jessica Rose