Stonewall Veteran and Legendary Trans Activist, Miss Major, Dies At 78

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a Stonewall veteran and one of the most influential figures of the modern LGBTQIA+ liberation movement, has died aged 78.

A post from the House of GG confirmed her death at her home in Little Rock Arkansas on Monday 13 October, surrounded by her family.

“It is with profound sadness that House of GG announces the passing of our beloved leader and revolutionary figure in the TLGBQ liberation movement, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy,” they wrote.

“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 been admitted to hospital with a blood clot and sepsis in September, and was released into at-home hospice care earlier this month.

Born in Chicago to a middle-class Catholic family, Miss Major was one of three children. She came out to her parents at 12 or 13, who sent her to psychiatric institutions and religious organisations to “get the gay outta me”, as she recalled in her 2023 memoir Miss Major Speaks, a series of conversations with her assistant and writer, Toshio Meronek.

Miss Major was kicked out of college in Minnesota at the age of 17 for wearing women’s clothing, and again later in Chicago. She began a part-time job at Mattachine Midwest, considered one of the first successful gay rights groups in Chicago, but turned to sex work as the most accessible and steady form of income for transfeminine people at the time.

She began meeting other trans people in Chicago’s thriving and established ballroom scene, where she met friend and mentor, Kitty, who she says helped embrace her transness.

“If it wasn’t for Kitty, I wouldn’t be here,” Miss Major told The Guardian in 2023. “She gave me me. I saw I was beautiful, and there was no turning back.”

Foundational activism

As a Black trans sex worker, Miss Major faced extensive police abuse, both in Chicago and her new home of New York. It was on June 28, 1969, that Miss Major was visiting Stonewall, one of the few trans-inclusive gay bars in the city, when a riot broke out in resistance to a police raid.

“All I know is all of a sudden you were fighting for your fucking existence,” she told SF Weekly.

The riots would go on to mark the beginning of the contemporary gay liberation movement, and were commemorated by what would become New York City Pride, an event that spread across the globe in the ensuing years to celebrate and fight for queer rights.

Miss Major spent time in prison for theft, where she met and was mentored by the Attica prison rebellion leader, Frank “Big Black” Smith, whom she credits as “the instrument for my politicisation.”

When she was released, she moved to California, where she founded Miss Major’s Angels of Care, an organisation of trans girls who cared for dying gay men in the San Fransisco Bay Area.

“No one wanted to take care of those gay guys when they first got AIDS,” she told SF Weekly, “And a lot of my transgender women stepped up to the plate to do it.”

Miss Major also facilitated the city’s first mobile needle exchange, as well as a drop-in centre for trans sex workers.

In the mid-200s, she and Alexander Lee co-founded the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project, to stand against the prison industrial complex, and aid in combatting the extensive transphobia in the carceral system.

A legacy of care

Despite repeated challenges to her health, Miss Major created the Griffin-Gracy Educational and Historical Center in 2019, more popularly called House of GG, which she also nicknamed Telling It Like It Fuckin’ Is (TILIFI). The organisation saw her open up her Arkansas guest house, named the Oasis, as a place for trans leaders to rest and relax.

“I’ve gotta make joy here, because it doesn’t exist in the normal world,” she told the Guardian. “They want us to live in the 1950s. No. Get off our fucking backs and let us live … I know the world I would like to live in. It’s in my head, but I try my best to live it now.”

Over her decades of work, Miss Major became not just an organiser and figurehead of trans liberation, but a mother, grandmother, and spiritual elder to dozens of trans people, particularly trans women.

“A lot of women treat getting older as if it’s a bad thing. But when younger people call me mother, or grandmother, I feel as though it’s an honour,” she said in Miss Major Speaks.

“To them, it’s like, ‘Here’s an older trans woman who survived, and who’s out there raising hell’. Elders can teach the younger people to pick up the right. In my mind it’s what they must do. When you are constantly under attack, especially if you’re in this community, you can’t just retire and walk off into the sunset. You’ve got to stay and teach young people to fight.”

Miss Major is survived by her longtime partner, Beck Witt; her three sons, Asaiah, Christopher, and Jonathan; and generations of daughters and granddaughters.

“She was a world builder, a visionary, and unwavering in her devotion to making freedom possible for Black, trans, formerly and currently incarcerated people as well as the larger trans and LGB community. Because of her, countless new possibilities have been made for all of us to thrive – today and for generations to come,” the House of GG.

“While her physical presence has shifted, we have gained an immensely powerful ancestor and there is no doubt that she is and always will be with us – guiding, protecting and reminding us that she is ‘still fucking here!’”