By Kelly M. Marshall
Transgender women of color have often been left out of the narratives of the collective LGBTQIA+ experience, especially when it comes to our history of liberation. It’s only recently that Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major Griffin-Gracey, Stormé DeLaverie, and others have been featured in the spotlight and honored for the sacrifice of their blood, sweat, tears, and even lives during the Stonewall Riots and the ensuing decades of our uprising for queer rights. This June will mark 51 years since the Stonewall uprising. Our collective awareness of these unsung and underrepresented firebrands has a long way to go in terms of their contributions to our queer history and legacy. Let’s take a deeper look at a few of these trailblazers.
Marsha P. Johnson was an LGBTQIA+ rights activist and is most recognized for her involvement with the Stonewall Riots and her continued activist work for the community, up until her mysterious death in 1992. Known as “the shot glass heard around the world,” Johnson is credited with throwing a shot glass at a mirror in the burning Stonewall Inn, shouting, “I got my civil rights!” With that, she galvanized the movement for queer liberation forward with her righteous anger, along with her sister-in-arms Stormé DeLaverie.
Sylvia Rivera was a Latina American LGBTQIA+ liberation and transgender rights activist. She was close friends with Marsha P. Johnson and, together, they founded the Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries group (STAR). After a 20 year hiatus, Rivera returned to the helm of STAR during the last five years of her life. She fought for the New York City Transgender Rights Bill and for a trans-inclusive New York State Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. She was catalyzed to return to STAR in order to advocate for Amanda Milan, a transgender woman murdered in 2000. Rivera publicly attacked Human Rights Campaign and Empire State Pride Agenda as organizations that were standing in the way of transgender rights. Rivera was instrumental in including transgender rights into the cultural fabric of LGBTQIA+ liberation.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracey is a transgender rights activist who specifically focuses on the rights and liberation of trans women of color. She is the executive director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project. According to the website, the organization “is a group of transgender, gender variant, and intersex people—inside and outside of prisons, jails, and detention centers—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom.”
Janet Mock is an author, a television writer/director/producer, and a transgender rights activist. Her most notable achievements include her New York Times bestselling memoir, Redefining Realness, and writing, directing, and producing the hit series Pose on Netflix. She was also a keynote speaker at the 2017 Women’s March, which marked a turning point for transgender women of color’s inclusion and visibility in the feminist fight for all women’s rights and equality.
Laverne Cox is an actress, producer, and an LGBTQIA+ activist and advocate. Her most notable achievements are her groundbreaking role as Sophia Burset in the hit show Orange is the New Black on Netflix, appearing on the cover of TIME magazine in the issue entitled, “The Transgender Tipping Point,” and being the first openly trans actor/producer to win a Daytime Emmy for her work producing the transgender documentary, The T Word.
Bamby Salcedo is the founder of the TransLatina Coalition, an advocacy group that “is an organization formed by Trans Latina leaders who have come together in 2009 to organize and advocate for the needs of Trans Latinas who are immigrants and reside in the US.” Her most notable achievements are being awarded a Lambda Legal West Coast Liberty Award for her work with Angels of Change and for speaking at the Los Angeles rally for the #FamiliesBelongTogether National Day of Action, demanding justice for detained migrant families separated by the US government at the US/Mexico border.
Imara Jones is an award-winning journalist and creator/producer of TransLash, a multimedia project aimed at “shift[ing] the cultural understanding of what it means to be transgender in order to foster social inclusion and reduce anti-trans hostility.” Her notable article in The Nation further explores the contributions of trans women of color. In it, she shares the parting words, “The only way forward is to return the [LGBTQ] movement to its roots. By placing trans women of color at the center of the LGBTQ movement, we will center their issues. And by building this intersectional fight, we will actually advance the interests of the majority. After five decades, it is past time.”
Trans women of color continue to give tirelessly and thanklessly to our continued queer liberation through the work of Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Bamby Salcedo, Imara Jones, and others. It’s thanks to their bold and unapologetic voices, writings, art, movements, and collective strength that we have come as far as we have.
