By Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri
Drive down Houston’s I-10 highway, and you’ll see a newly erected billboard with a simple, yet powerful statement: Protect Black Trans Women. An effort by the Transgender Ally Collective (TAC), this billboard relays a crucial message in a time when Black trans women are being murdered at alarming rates.
Even amidst the global, ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the murder rate of trans people in the United States, especially of Black trans women, has continued to increase. Only eight months into the year, 28 known trans deaths, results of anti-trans violence, have been recorded, surpassing 2019’s total of 26 documented murders. Texas has emerged as the epicenter of these murders. In response, the Transgender Ally Collective aims to bring the need for the protection of Black trans lives to the forefront of public consciousness.
The Transgender Ally Collective is a new, grassroots social advocacy group composed of various Houston LGBTQ organizations—Impulse Group Houston, the Mahogany Project, Inc., the Normal Anomaly, and Sister to Sister Support Group. Created by Ian L. Haddock, executive director of the Normal Anomaly—a Houston-based organization working to end the discrimination against LGBTQ and Black people—and inspired by the lived experiences of Sister to Sister Support Group’s Mia Porter, TAC’s primary focus is to promote safety for and the protection of Black trans women, as well as to uplift and empower the Black trans community.
In 2019 the Dallas Morning Times named Texas the “Trans murder capital of the world.” Between 2018 and 2019, the state saw more than two dozen trans murders, with the majority of those slain being Black, trans women from the South.
Those attacks hit particularly close to home in Houston. In December 2018, Porter, the founder of Sister to Sister Support Group—a Houston-based social organization for Black trans women—was brutally attacked. A few months later, Tracey Single, a Black trans woman, was murdered by her boyfriend in Houston. Upon hearing of Porter’s attack and Single’s murder, Haddock was called to action. “I can remember sitting in the back of the Montrose Center during the vigil for Tracy Single,” he recalls. “I felt helpless and came to the realization that this could be any number of my [trans] sisters.” Haddock began to connect with other LGBTQ organizations in hopes of magnifying awareness surrounding the murders of Black trans women. Together, those organizations formed the Trans Ally Collective.
Verniss McFarland III, founder and executive director of the Mahogany Project, Inc.—a Houston organization aimed at reducing the stigma, social isolation, and acts of injustice against LGBTQ communities of color—has been involved with the Collective since its formation, with one question driving McFarland’s advocacy: What can we do to support trans people? McFarland says, first and foremost, through allyship. “To me, an ally is someone willing to stand in the gaps and occasionally put their body on the line to advocate, uplift, and make space for individuals living in marginalized communities,” McFarland says. “These individuals also know when to step aside and let those living the experience lead.”
Allyship comes in many forms. It can look like supporting and empowering Black trans leaders and Black, trans–led organizations that are already doing advocacy work. Allyship can also mean using your resources and connections to start or continue vital conversations about Black trans lives—conversations that Haddock hopes the billboard will spark. Allyship is also about actively unlearning and re-evaluating learned societal norms. “[Allyship comprises] the actionable steps one takes to use their privilege for equity of communities that they are adjacent to,” McFarland says. “It is the sacrifice that requires for you to be willing to lose something in order for the world to be a better, more welcoming place for all.” That “better place” is one where Black trans women are not merely surviving but thriving and flourishing safely, freely, and without fear. Only once that is achieved will we all be liberated and free.
