Hidden Figures: Miss Major Griffin Gracy #BlackHERstoryMonth 26/28 (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Miss Major Griffin Gracy #BlackHERstoryMonth 26/28

If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting! CashApp: $SerenSensei Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei All Patrons get access to the Discord server! NEW MERCH SHOP: https://the-bheezebake-project.creator-spring.com Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a transgender activist against police brutality and advocate for trans women, especially Black trans women that are incarcerated. Griffin-Gracy was born in the South Side of Chicago on October 25, 1940. She participated in drag balls during her youth, and came out as a transgender woman as a teenager in the late 1950s. After having been kicked out of two colleges for the outward expression of her identity, she moved from Chicago to New York City, becoming a regular at the famous LGBT Stonewall Inn bar in Greenwich Village. On June 28, 1969, Griffin-Gracy was in the Stonewall Inn when the bar was raided by police, leading to the Stonewall riots. The Stonewall Riots are considered the birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement. Griffin-Gracy was a leader in the riots, along with her friends Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Storme DeLarverie, but was knocked out by a police officer and taken into custody. She reported that a corrections officer broke her jaw while she was in prison. Griffin-Gracy took note of the prison conditions, such as beatings and strip searches, particularly for Black incarcerated trans youth. While imprisoned at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, she met Frank Smith, who had led prison riots at Attica. Smith became a mentor to Griffin-Gracy, encouraging her to fight back against police brutality and the prison state, and to educate herself about Black history to address the root causes of racism, inequality, and oppression. After being released, she moved to San Diego in 1978 and began organizing anti-prison community efforts and grassroots movements to address community issues before police become involved. She initially started with work at a local food bank, and later provided direct services for trans women who were incarcerated, suffering from addiction, or homeless. Griffin-Gracy then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid 1990s, where she served on multiple HIV/AIDS organizations, including the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center. In 2005, she began working at the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) shortly after it was founded. She served as the Executive Director of the project, leading direct service efforts and personalized care to incarcerated Black trans women, including writing letters, meeting with prisoners, helping newly released individuals enroll in college and rehabilitation programs, and find jobs. After retiring from the organization in 2015, she founded the Griffin-Gracy Historical Retreat and Educational Center, known as the House of GG, as a safe haven and retreat house for the Black transgender community in Little Rock, Arkansas. A documentary on her life, titled 'Major!,' was released in 2015 and portrays Griffin-Gracy's role as an activist and mentor in the transgender community since the 1960s. In 2018, she was honored with the Susan Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement. In 2021, she served as executive producer on the documentary series ‘Trans in Trumpland.’ Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is 82 years old and still living and working in Little Rock, Arkansas. #HiddenFigures #MissMajorGriffinGracy ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren https://www.shophouseof950.com/embroidery-tees/theblackamericans https://www.shophouseof950.com/embroidery-tees/dacs?rq=d.a.c.s Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com Snapchat: sssseren GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: https://missmajor.net/ https://www.missmajorfilm.com/ https://www.transintrumpland.com/ TransVisionaries - How Miss Major Helped Spark the Modern Trans Movement: https://www.them.us/story/transvisionaries-miss-major Miss Major Griffin-Gracy: https://standwithtrans.org/miss-major-griffin-gracy/ What Trans Elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Wants You to Know: https://www.advocate.com/transgender/2021/2/23/what-trans-elder-miss-major-griffin-gracy-wants-you-know Miss Major: https://theoutwordsarchive.org/subjectdetail/miss-major