Celebrating a ‘Long Lost History’ of California’s Black Trans Trailblazers

View the full episode transcript.

For the last few weeks, The California Report Magazine has been sharing conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them — a series called Love You for You.

Now, we’re shifting the lens toward intergenerational stories — young people in their twenties in conversation with transgender elders whose lives trace the long arc of LGBTQ+ activism in California.

These bonus episodes carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the family conversations featured earlier in the series. They offer deeper context to the ongoing fight for safety, dignity and self-expression.

This week’s story brings together Zen Blossom, a 26-year-old Black transgender rights activist at TGIJP, or the Miss Major Alexander E. Lee Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project in San Francisco, and Andrea Horne, a San Francisco-based actress, model and jazz singer who was a part of legendary disco artist Sylvester’s entourage in the 1970s.

Now a historian working on her forthcoming book, How Black Trans Women Changed the World, Andrea reflects with Zen on those who came before them and those who will come after.

Episode Transcript

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Sasha Khokha: Hey, you’re listening to the California Report Magazine. I’m Sasha Khokha. And as you may know, it’s Transgender Awareness Month. For the last few weeks, we’ve been bringing you conversations between gender-expansive kids and the people in their lives who love and support them so they can thrive. We called the series called, “Love You for You.”

And now we’re bringing you two bonus episodes of young people in their 20s interviewing transgender elders who are trailblazers when it comes to LGBTQ+ activism here in California.

Just a heads up, these intergenerational conversations carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the ones we’ve been diving into with the family conversations in Love You for You. So parents, you might want to listen before deciding whether to share with your kids.

This episode, we’re gonna meet Andrea Horne, an actress, model and singer who also spent decades as a social worker. And Zen Blossom, who works at TGIJP, a Black trans cultural center and services organization in San Francisco.

Zen Blossom: Peace, everyone. My name is Zen. I use she-her pronouns. I am currently 26 and I reside in Oakland. I am born and raised in Los Angeles, six generations my family’s been in California.

Andrea Horne: Well, my name is Andrea, and my pronouns are Her/she, like the chocolate candy bar.

Zen Blossom: Love that.

Andrea Horne: I’m a woman of a certain age.

Zen Blossom: Period.

Andrea Horne: Period. And I’m originally from L.A. myself, but I lived in San Francisco longer than I lived in L.A. But I still feel like I’m from L.A., even though I’ve lived here over 40 years in San Francisco.

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Sasha Khokha: Andrea moved to San Francisco in part because she was friends with Sylvester, the disco artist and singer who’s become a queer icon. These days, Andrea’s a historian, working on a book called How Black Trans Women Changed the World — focused on women who lived from 1836–1936. Andrea shares some of that history and her own history in this conversation with Zen.

They start by talking about how they both left Los Angeles because they had unsupportive families. Andrea was only 15 when she ran away from home.

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Zen Blossom: I felt like there has been a long-lost history in a sense of the connections between Los Angeles, San Francisco and trans people migrating up and down. I just love hearing about your story, you being from L.A. and self-determining for yourself that you need to get out and figure out some other things for yourself at such a young age, 15.

Andrea Horne: Well, I was just following behind the girls that came before me, and I feel, since I’ve been working in the social work field with trans people for the last 25 years, I realized that I was lucky to have what we call a drag mother, someone to help me see my way through. I love your lips, by the way. (Laughs)

Zen Blossom: Thank you.

Andrea Horne: Yeah, so I could tell you a little bit about my background, I guess. My mother’s people are from Louisiana and my father’s people are from Texas. And they moved to California during World War II. And my mother’s father was a Pullman porter. I don’t know if you know about the histories of the Pullman porters in America, but the Pullman porters created the black middle class.

Zen Blossom: What was their role for people who don’t know?

Andrea Horne: Pullman porters were like flight attendants on trains.

Zen Blossom: Yes.

Andrea Horne: And it was all handsome black men. I know that was some probably gay guy during the hiring or something, because they were all handsome, educated black men.

Zen Blossom: My family is from Texas, too. My grandma got here in the ‘20s with her mom and her grandma. They took the 66 all the way up to like the northern middle part of California and then came down to Los Angeles. But they stopped in Delano for a second. But a lot of the folks that she worked with were like in the factories and things and doing the canning and the industries, especially during the world wars and stuff, she was doing the canning and stuff. So it’s just interesting to see, like, how, regardless of different class backgrounds, too, that the migration affected like black people as a whole still. There’s a type of racism that happens that doesn’t allow people to escape.

Andrea Horne: Interestingly, the Black people that stayed in the South are like runnin’ it. You know, they’re in every office, everything, which I find amusing. They stayed there. My mother’s from New Orleans, and she went to Xavier College, which is a black Catholic, HBCU Catholic. My whole family went to those. My father, too.

Zen Blossom: OK. I was gonna ask my next question was like, what was that process trying to invite them into your life, as you, or maybe not invite them into your life?

Andrea Horne: They’ve never been in my life since I transitioned.

Zen Blossom: I think that’s why it’s really important to speak to like, chosen family too. And like why it important that you had your drag mom there around you to support you in these really difficult times. What was the name of your chosen mom?

Andrea Horne: Her name is Duchess.

Zen Blossom: Duchess? OK.

Andrea Horne: And then there was Eva, her best friend, my kind of drag auntie.

Zen Blossom: And how old were you when you met them?

Andrea Horne: I was 15. And Duchess was in her 20s. And Eva was in her twenties as well. And they kind of took me in.

Zen Blossom: How did y’all meet?

Andrea Horne: Well, it’s an interesting story. It was summer vacation. I was 15. And my mother had become kind of a psycho about my transgenderism. It drove her mad. I was with my friends from high school, and my friends are like saying you don’t have to take that from her. You know, you’re be your own person.

So we were at Venice Beach and when it got dark, they all went home for dinner and left me sitting at Venice Beach. And so that empty feeling of having nowhere to go had stayed with me. So anyway, I sat there an hour not knowing what to do. I just had on. I didn’t even have a jacket. It was summer in L.A. One of my friends came back. Thank God. And. Said, let me take you to my cousin. And so my trans girlfriend from high school brought me to her cousin, named Duchess, who ended up being my drag mother. And we looked similar, so we could say we were sisters. And the moment I met her and she looked me up and down and she said, “Do you want titties?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” And she reached in her pocket and she pulled out this hormone pill, a premarin pill, purple. It was like bitten in two, and it had lint and dust and grease and tobacco all clinging to it, and I didn’t care. I just inhaled it. And in the morning, I thought I was gonna be Dolly Parton. But I wasn’t. (Laughs) Dolly Parton takes years, but I didn’t know that at the time. However, my drag mother, we’ll just call her Duchess. She did sex work, survival sex work. That’s all she knew. She got kicked out of her house when she was my age. And after I met her, I think probably within an hour, I was doing sex work. But not real sex work because Duchess’ thing was to not turn the trick, to get the money and run or something like that.

Zen Blossom: Right.

Andrea Horne: And so we did a lot of times that I learned how to run in five-inch heels from the tricks, from the police, jumping over back fences.

Zen Blossom: Changing outfits.

Andrea Horne: Changing outfits. It wasn’t it was it was quite wild. It’s a miracle I survived it. However, duchess like me, during the quiet moments, we just sat around and read. And she liked to read, I liked to read. From 1987 to 2007, I read a book a week. That’s 30 years. I read a book a week. You know, I mostly read biographies and autobiographies from people that I admired to see how they did it. Not how they did stardom, but how they got from where they started to becoming a star. That fascinates me. But as soon as I got my first laptop in 2007, I stopped reading a book a week, so.

Zen Blossom: Thank you to the internet.

Andrea Horne: Yes, thanks to the internet. So you asked me about my family, what about yours? How did they support your transition?

Zen Blossom: Oh my goodness. Absolutely not.

Andrea Horne: Are they church people?

Zen Blossom: Yes, very much so. Grew up in the church. Grew with a lot of that, a lot of reading the Bible. I read the Bible multiple times. I still hold it dear to me in certain ways, aspects. And in other ways, I push it very, very far away. I definitely identify with growing up with my grandmas a lot more than my immediate parents. I felt like my grandmas kept me safe a lot better and they knew what was happening. And so I was with them until they both passed away, unfortunately, when I was 10. And then it was pretty rough, and then I ended up leaving and going to college away from family at 18, and that’s when I was able to like really be myself, explore myself. Do those things, and that was my way out.

Andrea Horne: Where’d you go to school?

Zen Blossom: I went to school on the East Coast. I wanted to get as far as possible. I was very fortunate that I got a full ride because I also got a full ride for high school to also get away from my family and went to a private school.

Andrea Horne: So, do you talk to your family?

Zen Blossom: I’m not in connection with them, besides my great-grandma. And that was a really cool thing for me because during the pandemic, when I stayed with her for a little bit, we were discussing and talking about, like just all the things. And she was teaching me how to sew. And when we were sewing, she was like, “Oh, do you want,” um, it was a dress that you would match. It was a robe, essentially, so you would either put the buttons on the left side or the right side. And she was like, ‘Which side are you gonna put it on?’ And for her, you know, depending on which side you have it on, that’s cross-dressing, you know, against the law. So she was trying to ask me what my tea was, essentially.

Andrea Horne: Yeah.

Zen Blossom: Because she did my measurements and it said, like, you know, 40-36-42, you know, so I had the, I had a figure. And so she was already like, no, clocking certain things here and there with me. She was like, “OK, so you have breasts. OK. So which side is this supposed to go on?” And then when we were sewing it together, she was just like, “You know what, this reminds me. Of when I was growing up, off of Central, and there’s someone that you remind me of,” and it was Lady Java.

And so that was a really powerful moment for me to know that we’ve always been here, and that there’s also points for people, especially the older generations, to still connect with us, because people think … That, oh, just because you’re older, that means you don’t have exposure to it. And it’s just very interesting for me that the older people in my life actually had more experience with transness than the people who were closer to me in age.

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Zen Blossom: I thought it was really cool that my great grandma had an understanding of what could be read as transness with Lady Java without having the exact words for it. And so I would love for you to share more about the prolific work of Lady Java.

Andrea Horne: Well, her stage name was Sir Lady Java, and she was incredibly important to me, and incredibly important to all the other sort of black trans women in Los Angeles, because she was the queen. And why was she the queen? Well, she was a glamour girl associated with celebrities. And I know in L.A., that’s important. But she’s really famous for her activist work that kind of goes unrecognized.

But she was performer, a showgirl. And she kept getting arrested as a female impersonator because that was illegal. And it gave the police the right to arrest you if they perceived that you may be trans in quotation marks. And so you had to, one had to wear three clothes, if you were a trans woman, you had wear three pieces of men’s clothing. And I remember Java told me that she wore a man’s wristwatch and a T-shirt under her mini dress and men’s socks, but she had them rolled down like Mary Jane’s. And so that’s how she could not get arrested. But she did get arrested whenever she appeared at Black clubs. Yeah.

Zen Blossom: Off of Central.

Andrea Horne: Yeah, off Central. And so, but she fought in the courts with the ACLU, so that cross-dressing quote was not illegal any longer. And she fought, and it took years, and I think she lost the first couple of times, but they kept at it. And the law was changed, and it made an incredible difference for trans people everywhere.

It set a precedent, a nationwide precedent, that cross-dressing or drag was OK. The police, when it became legal, they had to kind of back up off black trans women who they normally harassed on a regular basis. And so her activist work changed the lives of all queer people.

Now, a white gay man might not know that it was Sir Lady Java that did that, but it’s always been black trans woman leading the call. I guess that’s just our karma. and now we can be who we want to be. But as a little trans child growing up in L.A., I would see her name, Sir Lady Java, up in marquees, theater marquees. And so I knew what she was.

Yeah, so Java passed away this year, actually late last year. And I went to her memorial service in Los Angeles, but she was important. I realized that’s another privilege I had. I didn’t realize I didn’t grow up in isolation in a small country town where I had no point of reference. I grew up in the city and I saw her name in marquees, so.

Zen Blossom: Even like growing up in a rural town or something. ‘Cause for me, I like, I grew up in Los Angeles and I still didn’t have access to Lady Java until after the fact, you know, after. And so it was just like, that’s also a really big thing that is like, that I feel like people need to understand about California that it’s like a golden state. Like it’s this progressive place, but also it can be very unsafe. For trans kids at homes that are unsupportive. I wish I knew about Lady Java and everything growing up because if I did, I probably would have invited more people into my life a lot earlier on. But you know. (Dog barks) But that’s not how life goes.

Andrea Horne: And Mei Mei, sitting here, my little five-pound mocha chocolate little Pomeranian, she’s sitting in my lap, she just barked a little bit.

Zen Blossom: She’s really cute, y’all.

Andrea Horne: Yeah, she is really cute. It’s been five minutes since someone told her she was cute, so just like her mother. Right, right.

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Andrea Horne: I find that since I’ve been doing the research for a book I’m working on about black trans women called, the working title is How Black Trans Women Changed the World, I’ve found that people were so much more tolerant about queer issues before World War II. Right, and it changed after World War II with the sort of the conservatism of the 50s and the civil rights movement. I think really kind of turned the tide for trans people, we’ll just use that word.

Zen Blossom: In quotations.

Andrea Horne: In quotations because there was no such thing as trans people a few years ago. My drag mother and auntie still don’t let me refer to them as that. They just live their lives as women. But yeah, it flipped, the script flipped from tolerance to being really intolerant and even violent towards us. But before World War II, we were considered just part of the community. As long as you stay in your lane.

Zen Blossom: And what were those lanes?

Andrea Horne: The lanes were a hairdresser.

Zen Blossom: OK.

Andrea Horne: Sex work.

Zen Blossom: OK.

Andrea Horne: Work in a bar of some sort, a show girl and housewife. You know, that’s kind of, that’s it. That was all available to us. I remember a girl from my crowd. She got a job at the phone company. I was astounded. I didn’t know that.

Zen Blossom: The girls could do that.

Andrea Horne: The girls could get jobs.

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Andrea Horne: So you were asking me about my book and I’m kind of focusing on three black trans women that were born before 1900.

Zen Blossom: Mm-hmm.

Andrea Horne: But I’ll talk about Lucy Hicks Anderson the most, because she’s my favorite. And she was accomplished. And her story is super unique, I think. She was born in 18, circa 1890. She told her family that her name was no longer Tobias, that her name was Lucy and to call her Lucy. And remarkably, her parents brought her to the doctor, two doctors, and both doctors said, “Just call her Lucy.”

Zen Blossom: Right. And this speaks back to what you were saying earlier, how there was a lot more tolerance for us back in the day and awareness around us possibly.

Andrea Horne: Well, people seem to understand that trans is part of the human condition. But now they’re trying to sell it as something weird that just kind of happened in the 21st century.

Zen Blossom: Yeah, the trans turning point with Laverne (Cox).

Andrea Horne: Well, now they’re trying to sell the public that transgenderism is something new. It wasn’t called that before. So when I was growing up, the girls called themselves drag queens. But now drag queens is the domain of gay men.

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Andrea Horne: And so Lucy, getting back to Lucy, love her. She was a gourmet chef and a madam, and then she met her husband, her second husband, and they moved to Oxnard because she always wanted to move to California.

Zen Blossom: Makes sense.

Andrea Horne: So she decided on Oxnard, which is about midways between Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, coastal. And she stayed there for 35 years and she ran a catering business and a brothel. And she was a bootlegger during the ‘20s. And she was a fashion plate and so she became the darling of the wives of the heads of studios.

Someone knew her from her past and told that she wasn’t assigned female at birth. They ran her out of Oxnard. But she was smart with her money and she’d bought a couple of houses over by Central Avenue in Los Angeles. And that’s where she moved to and she spent her last days there quietly. But she did so much that she changed people’s minds.

And that is why I admire her so much, that she had the wherewithal to sort of just live her authentic life. In retrospect, it takes courage to live your authentic life, which is why I think a lot of non-trans people hate trans people, because we have the courage to live our authentic lives. And a lot of people are envious of that ability.

Zen Blossom: She was a philanthropist too, right?

Andrea Horne: During World War II, she gave $50,000 in war bonds, which is a couple million dollars today. So she loved America and she loved her life, but they wouldn’t let her just live her life out. So I wanna tell her story because it needs to be told.

Zen Blossom: It does. She was stealth. What does that mean?

Andrea Horne: Stealth is a relatively new term. And I think it’s a white term, but it means being a trans person living in your true gender without people knowing about it. Passing, as they call it. That’s what stealth is. And I myself lived stealth from age 15, from that first hormone pill I told you about, until I was 50. I never denied my transness, but it just wasn’t on display. It wasn’t open for discussion. Yeah, it just wasn’t opened for discussion and I just had a regular little job and a husband and so I was just living my life like that.

Something happened like that to me in San Francisco in the ‘90s. I was working in an office downtown. And someone I know, I saw in the building. I don’t know who he told, but he told my tea. And when I came back from lunch, the police and the building security guards were standing at my desk. And they handed me my paycheck and escorted me out. No words were spoken, and they escorted me out.

And the girl I had just had lunch with, she was screaming at the top of her lungs, “I just had lunch with it. Arrrh!”

Zen Blossom: Hmmm.

Andrea Horne: Now, that was over 30 years ago, and that wouldn’t happen today.

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Andrea Horne: So when I first met Sylvester.

Zen Blossom: Right. How old were you?

Andrea Horne: I was 15. Sylvester was in his early 20s. And I went to my first kind of queer party and there were lots of trans women and men there.

Zen Blossom: OK, yeah.

Andrea Horne: And I thought that Sylvester, or Dooney, was a real woman, which is so fascinating, because years later, you would think it’s impossible. But I’ll show you a picture on my phone, he was flawless. But I moved here partly because of Sylvester, because I knew him in L.A. And I just kept coming up to visit and I got a modeling job through Sylvester. So I had to get an apartment, and that was in 1979. I got my first apartment in San Francisco.

Zen Blossom: How much was rent?

Andrea Horne: My rent was $200.

Zen Blossom: A month?

Andrea Horne: Hmm-mm. But yeah, Sylvester kind of changed the world. Sylvester sort of invented this sort of non-binary genderqueer thing that’s very popular right now. But Sylvester was the first one sort of publicly doing that. You know, he was a boy one day and a girl the next and a mustache the next and smooth shaving the next. And, you know, eventually became a star, really.

Zen Blossom: No it’s so cool hearing about your story, especially with Sylvester at such a young age, holding you down, because really Sylvester is prolific here in San Francisco: huge musician, queer icon and a lot of folks don’t know this history about their gender queerness, possibly like non-binaryness and we can’t erase that and be simple in how we see gender or our community.

Andrea Horne: You know, I agree with you on that. It’s just that gay men have claimed Sylvester. But he also started as a trans woman, and I think that should be part of his story also, because that’s what really happened.

Zen Blossom: Right. You talked a bit about the conversation around just having to be stealth and not wanting to disclose because it’s honestly not people’s business, so.

Andrea Horne: True.

Zen Blossom: How do you think that’s similar to now? Versus then.

Andrea Horne: I think that for all the trans people that are out professing their transness, there’s just as equally as many trans people who are still living stealth. And I don’t think they have any plans on coming out, especially now, with the political climate the way it is. I want to go back stealth.

Zen Blossom: You would, or would not?

Andrea Horne: I want to, but I’m on the internet now, so I can’t, but, you know, it’s scary times for us now, and things have gotten better for trans folks, but black trans women are still getting (beep) over.

Zen Blossom: Mm-hmm.

Andrea Horne: And are restricted and precluded from resources.

Zen Blossom: Even here in San Francisco.

Zen Blossom: Even here in San Francisco, yes. San Francisco is fabulous if you’re a white gay man. It is Disneyland with the A-ticket and the Matterhorn and all of that, but for the rest of us, it’s just America. M-E-R-K-K-K-A. Oh, I forgot an I in there somewhere.

And so just know that as many trans people that you see on TV and Pose and everyone’s twerking and all that, there’s just as many people that are living stealth lives in the suburbs married. So when you hear people say, “I’ve never used the bathroom with somebody trans!” You probably have. They probably have, but.

Zen Blossom: Many a times.

Andrea Horne: Many a times. Yeah.

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Zen Blossom: What advice do you have for Black trans girls today, especially for like building sisterhood?

Andrea Horne: Stay in school, that’s that’s your way out.

Zen Blossom: Blossom: Mmm-hmm.

Andrea Horne: Yeah, that’s my message to young Black trans women, stay at school. And if you’re a teenager and they’re bullying you at school because you’re trans, you’re not gonna remember those (beep) in five years. You won’t even remember their names or their faces or anything. The people that bullied me when I was in high school, I wish somebody had told me, you’re not even going to remember them. But when you’re a teen, the present is everything.

Zen Blossom: Blossom: Yes, yes.

Andrea Horne: And you haven’t yet developed the ability to kind of foresee in the future. And so it’s all immediate. And the message is it will pass, you’ll survive it, and you won’t even remember them. Just stay in school, educate yourself. That’s undeniable. Stay in school.

Go as far as you can in school and my dream, my lottery-winning dream is to have a scholarship fund for black trans women. I had a dear friend named Dana Turner, who was a Black trans woman who went to Georgetown Law School, which is pretty impressive. I want to have it in, in her name.

Zen Blossom: Dana Turner.

Andrea Horne: Dana Turner.

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Zen Blossom: Well, it’s been rewarding at the very least to get immersed in the history and the knowledge and the lineage of the work. And also that we have so many different folks to look to and different possibility models there’s ones as philanthropists, we have people who are cooks. We have people who are going to law school. We have who read books every week for 30 years. We have our different miniature worlds that we can create for ourselves and curate. It takes a lot of investment, but in the long term, it’s worth it.

Andrea Horne: Well, I think, Zen, it’s important that we have conversations like this, because America teaches us not to really care about our old folks. As trans folks, we want to start a new model, an intergenerational model, an interaction where we really support and help each other. I want to see us moving in that direction.

Zen Blossom: For the culture.

Andrea Horne: For the culture.

Zen Blossom: For us.

Andrea Horne: Yeah, for the girls. We’re saving lives here. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve got to save lives, and we got to let people know that transgender is nothing new. It’s always been part of the human condition.

Zen Blossom: All the way back to Africa.

Andrea Horne: All the way back to Africa, all the way to Africa. It’s interesting how contemporary Africans say that there’s no queers, there’s no African queers. But of course that’s not true. But Europeans brought, they didn’t bring queerness, they brought …

Zen Blossom: and Andrea Horne together: homophobia and transphobia.

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Zen Blossom: It was good continuing to build with you, Andrea, and you, Mei Mei. I will never forget. Don’t worry.

Andrea Horne: Well, I hope this is just the first conversation of many, because we really just scratched the surface.

Zen Blossom: We really did.

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Sasha Khokha: Transgender elder Andrea Horne, in conversation with Zen Blossom, a 26-year-old transgender activist from Oakland who works with the TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center. The center was founded by Miss Major, a trailblazing Black trans activist and who passed away this fall.

And that’s it for TCR Mag for this week. This interview was produced by me, Sasha Khokha with Srishti Prabha and Suzie Racho with help this week from Gabriela Glueck. Our senior editor is Victoria Mauleon. Our engineer is Brendan Willard. Special thanks to Tuck Woodstock, host of the Gender Reveal podcast for his help on this episode. And to KQED’s Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ana de Almeida Amaral and Anna Vignet.

And by the way, if you didn’t catch our series on trans and nonbinary youth and people who love them, check out our Love You for You series on our podcast.

The California Report Magazine. Your State, Your Stories.

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