Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Trans Liberation Activist, Dies at 78

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a legendary activist who spent decades fighting for incarcerated transgender people in San Francisco and beyond, has died. She was 78 years old.

Born in Chicago, Miss Major spent her young adulthood in New York City, where she participated in the 1969 riots against police brutality at Stonewall Inn, a flashpoint that kicked off the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement. After surviving sex work and incarceration at men’s prisons, Miss Major became a tireless advocate for trans women living on the margins due to family, job and housing discrimination.

During the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, as the government looked the other way, Miss Major helped organize hospice care and support systems for trans and gay people dying from the disease, including at the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center in San Francisco. Also in San Francisco, she founded an early needle exchange program and ran support groups for trans women, dozens of whom have considered her a mother figure over the decades.

“We have to look out for one another because we’re all we’ve got,” Miss Major said in a documentary about her life, Major!, directed by San Francisco filmmaker Annalise Ophelian. “When the dust settles, I want a whole bunch of transgender girls to stand up and say, ‘I’m still fucking here.’”

In 2004, Miss Major and Alexander L. Lee co-founded the Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project, a San Francisco nonprofit that offers crucial support to currently and formerly incarcerated trans people. She served as the executive director there for 11 years before retiring in 2015. After relocating to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she spent her final days surrounded by friends and family, Miss Major founded the House of gg, a healing retreat for trans people of color.

“She was a world builder, a visionary, and unwavering in her devotion to making freedom possible for Black, trans, formerly and currently incarcerated people as well as the larger trans and LGB community,” reads a statement from the House of gg. “Because of her, countless new possibilities have been made for all of us to thrive — today and for generations to come.”

Miss Major is survived by her partner Beck Witt; her sons Asaiah, Christopher, and Jonathon; her many daughters including Janetta Johnson, who now leads TGIJP; and innumerable friends and family members.

Many prominent transgender artists and activists, including author and Pose writer-director Janet Mock, consider Miss Major a role model.

“For decades, Miss Major — with little resources, no pay or accolades — has taken care of our sisters behind bars, our sisters working on the streets, our sisters looking for mothers,” Mock said at San Francisco Pride in 2014, when she and Miss Major both served as Grand Marshals. “She is the blueprint for our liberation and has ensured that the path I walk on, that we all walk on, is less rocky because she exists.”

In 2023, Miss Major and Toshio Meronek published a book about her life, Miss Major Speaks.

“We want everyone to know her journey was filled with challenge, laughter and unshakable love,” reads a statement from TGIJP. “She stayed blessed and strong until her final breath.”