Remembering the Late, Great Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Where do I even begin? Black Trans Revolutionary? Trailblazer? Stonewall Veteran? Author? Activist? Pioneer? Producer? I could talk all day listing who she was. And somehow, I think it still wouldn’t be enough to describe how major Miss Major was. Miss Major never asked for permission. Generally, she said what needed to happen and somehow, whatever that thing was... shortly after she said it.... You were watching it come to fruition. Some people are born as nouns. Well, Major Griffin-Gracy was a verb. When she was told she couldn’t create a space in an empty building next door to a resource center where she worked in San Francisco, she took a sledgehammer and knocked a hole in the wall so the Trans Gurls in the Tenderloin could come in from off the streets and have a place to be safe, freshen up, and rest. She knew she was going to be fired, but she did it anyway because that was Miss Major being “Major.” Always on task with her mission: you only had to be around her a little bit to realize that mission was as focused at almost 80 years old as I can imagine it was when she was organizing the girls on the streets of New York City in her twenties. The mission was to care for her Trans Gurls of color.

Today, as we approach the anniversary of her earthly passing, I think about the person whose life was so large; the fact that she’s not physically with us anymore may seem like a loss to some... but she lived her life so legendary that her own words will forever be true: Miss Major will always be “Still Fucking Here!”