SF memorial for Miss Major Griffin-Gracy illuminates her lifelong actions

The pews at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood were packed with celebrants who paid tribute to transgender pioneer Miss Major Griffin-Gracy during a celebration of her life December 6. More than 200 people honored Miss Major, as she was known, who died two months ago in Arkansas.

Speakers and artists shared stories and recalled the life of Miss Major, also known as “Mama,” who once lived in the Bay Area. She had fought for more than 50 years for the trans, gender-nonconforming, and the LGB community – especially for Black trans women, trans women of color, and those who have survived incarceration and police brutality.

In San Francisco, Miss Major had served as executive director of the Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project. She co-founded TGIJP in 2004 with Alexander Lee, an Asian American trans man. The nonprofit works to end human rights abuses against trans, intersex, and gender-variant people, particularly trans women of color who are in California prisons and detention centers.

Speakers noted Miss Major’s social justice work and how she inspired them. 

“I am personally, deeply, thankful that I had the opportunity to be in her presence … and to know that over the last 17 years of our lives, we were truly sister-comrades,” said Angela Davis, a lesbian scholar and activist who co-founded Critical Resistance.

Miss Major, who was 78, had suffered health issues in recent years after moving to Arkansas. She had been in home hospice before her passing October 13. Her Bay Area ties were praised at the memorial. 

The event was set to run for two hours, but ran over by 30 minutes. Attendees included family and members of City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, of which Miss Major was a member, as well as those in the queer and trans communities who had never met her.

She was commemorated with song, dance, and drums. A slideshow of images and videos played overhead as children ran down the aisles. Her family and community cried and laughed during their remarks to the crowd.

Miss Major was an author and an activist, remembered for her actions at the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 that gave birth to the modern LGBTQ rights movement. She followed that with work across the country to promote the health and wellbeing of Black and Brown justice- impacted people, particularly transgender women like herself.

In 2023, Miss Major wrote a book with Toshio Meronek, “Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary,” that discusses her life as a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who had survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and a world that white supremacy has built, as the publisher, Verso, described. 

Janetta Johnson, a Black trans woman who is the current CEO of TGI Justice Project, also known as the Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Cultural Center , described herself as a daughter of Miss Major; someone who early on helped Johnson during her own transition after she moved to San Francisco in 1997. Johnson remembered Miss Major as someone who organized the people around her to get things done – regardless if she was given permission. Johnson shared a story about Miss Major mobilizing a handful of able-bodied men years ago to do some demolition work, without waiting for a permit.

“That’s my mama,” Johnson said proudly.

In an email message before Miss Major’s death, Johnson told the B.A.R., “Mama Major taught me and shared with me a lot of things that in her absence that she wanted me to accomplish, and, most importantly, to always keep a safe place for black trans ... queer nonbinary people.”

At the service, Miss Major was honored posthumously with a special congressional recognition by Congressmember Lateefah Simon (D-Oakland), as presented by Eden Chan, Simon’s district director.

A proclamation was also issued by the office of Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, which declared Griffin-Gracy’s birthday, October 25, as Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Day in Oakland.

Her eldest son, Christopher, accepted the proclamations. He shared his goal for Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Day to be recognized nationwide.

Lee, who was Miss Major’s business partner, warned against memorializing her in mythology. 

“She was a person,” Lee said, “and while she suffered no fools, she could forgive a fool, if a fool came to his senses.”

Miss Major’s friends and church community remembered her as a generous person, who gave them her clothes, her company, and her support.

Bay Area resident Shante, who asked to be identified by their first name, met Miss Major in San Francisco in 2004. Shante told the B.A.R. that Miss Major helped her understand that she could live a “lavish” and abundant life as a Black trans woman.

Luna, another Bay Area resident in attendance who asked to only be identified by their first name, didn’t know Miss Major personally but follows a similar path of advocacy and care working for her Black and Brown trans communities. She told the B.A.R. that funding for Black trans women’s health care is vital to continue the work that is still left to do.

Bishop Yvette Flunder, a same-gender loving woman who is pastor at City of Refuge, noted the church resolved to recognize Miss Major as a Prophet of Liberation.