Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a beloved Black transgender elder, was a tireless and revolutionary figure in the fight for trans liberation for over five decades. A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, she quickly realized the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement often excluded the most marginalized—Black trans women, sex workers, and those who were incarcerated.
This intersectional experience of oppression became the driving force behind her activism. As the former Executive Director of the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), Miss Major provided critical legal and emotional support to her “gurls” in prison. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, she mobilized care for the sick, establishing one of San Francisco’s first mobile needle exchanges.
Her later work included founding the House of GG, a retreat center dedicated to the healing and leadership development of trans people in the South. Miss Major’s lifelong resilience, humor, and refusal to be erased, encapsulated by her mantra “I’m still f–ing here!”, cemented her status as a matriarch and towering figure of the movement. She died on October 13, 2025, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at the age of 78. After a life of powerful activism, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy has earned a blessed rest.
