Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Stonewall veteran and longtime trans activist, dies at 78
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a longtime trans activist whose decades of LGBTQ activism included participating in the Stonewall Uprising and serving as a grand marshal at the 2024 New York City Pride March, died on Oct. 13 at the age of 78. Commonly known as Miss Major, the longtime activist’s death was announced by the organization … Read More
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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a longtime trans activist whose decades of LGBTQ activism included participating in the Stonewall Uprising and serving as a grand marshal at the 2024 New York City Pride March, died on Oct. 13 at the age of 78.
Commonly known as Miss Major, the longtime activist’s death was announced by the organization she founded, House of gg, also known as The Griffin-Gracy Educational and Historical Center, which is based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and works to create safe spaces where community members can heal from trauma. Miss Major was surrounded by loved ones when she died at her home in Little Rock.
“Miss Major — known as ‘Mama’ to many — was a Black trans activist who fought for more than 50 years for trans, gender non-conforming, and LGB community — especially for Black trans women, trans women of color and those who have survived incarceration and police brutality,” the House of gg said in a written statement. “Major’s fierce commitment and intersectional approach to justice brought her to care directly for people with HIV/AIDS in New York in the early 1980s, and later to drive San Francisco’s first mobile needle exchange.”
In an interview with SF Weekly in July of 2015, Miss Major recalled pulling a mask off a police officer during the Stonewall Uprising and spitting on his face.
"He knocked my ass out," she said. "That's the last thing I remember. When I woke up, I was in the Tombs [holding cell], and the next day they just let us all out."
In a separate 2019 interview with VICE News, Miss Major said, “When I think of Stonewall, I think of the horrific beatings that we took that night on a whim of just being set up, you know. It was three nights of total pandemonium. It was like when someone throws a grenade. You don't know where the grenade came from or who threw it. All you know is, boom.”
In discussing the events of Stonewall, Miss Major was critical of those whose historic accounts glossed over the role of people of color in the uprising.
Born in Chicago, Miss Major faced discrimination in college in Minnesota due to her gender expression and returned to Chicago before subsequently moving to New York in 1962 to work in a hospital morgue and perform in drag shows.
Miss Major also stepped up to help those in need during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, initially in New York and then in San Diego, where she and her son, Christopher, launched a home health care agency to help individuals living with AIDS, according to the Advocate. She was also involved in the AIDS movement in San Francisco, where she worked with the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center and started a drop-in program called GiGi's Place.
Among other community roles, Miss Major served as the first executive director of the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project, which was founded in 2004 to provide legal services for trans and gender non-conforming individuals — particularly in California prisons, jails, and detention centers. Miss Major remained there until retiring in 2015.
Miss Major remained active until the end of her life. Last year, she was a grand marshal at the New York City Pride March, and this past summer, she met with community members and shared stories in an event at Card Carrying Boos and Gifts in Corning, New York, which is west of Elmira in the state's Southern Tier region.
She is survived by her longtime partner, Beck Witt; her children, including Asaiah, Christopher, Jonathon, and Janetta Johnson; and sisters Tracie O’Brien and Billie Cooper, among others, according to the House of gg.
