October 15, 2025
The legendary transgender activist died at residence surrounded by household and family members on Oct. 13.
Revolutionary transgender rights activist and writer Miss Main Griffin-Gracy died on Monday, Oct. 13. She was 78.
A submit shared to her Instagram account introduced that Griffin-Gracy, who took half within the historic Stonewall rebel, died peacefully at residence in Little Rock, Arkansas, surrounded by family members.
“Her enduring legacy is a testomony to her resilience, activism, and dedication to creating secure areas for Black trans communities and all trans folks–we’re eternally grateful for Miss Main’s life, her contributions and the way deeply she poured into these she cherished,” the submit learn.
Identified affectionately as “Mama” and regarded as a surrogate mom to the trans neighborhood, Griffin-Gracy spent over 5 a long time advocating for Black trans ladies, gender-nonconforming folks, and trans ladies impacted by incarceration, police brutality, and the AIDS disaster. She based the Home of GG (The Griffin-Gracy Instructional and Historic Heart) to supply secure areas for these dealing with transphobia, racism, sexism, poverty, ableism, and violence.
As the primary government director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Venture, Griffin-Gracy supplied essential assist to transgender, gender-variant, and intersex people in jail. Her work included visiting incarcerated trans folks in California to attach them with authorized and social providers, in addition to talking earlier than the California State Meeting and the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva about jail human rights violations.
The Chicago native remained steadfast in her advocacy for the trans neighborhood properly into her later years, utilizing motorized scooters and wheelchairs to journey nationwide and converse out towards the rising wave of anti-trans laws. She met with younger LGBTQ+ folks in native homosexual bars on the 2024 Democratic Nationwide Conference whereas campaigning for former Vice President Kamala Harris, and through her third go to to the White Home in 2023, urging them to take motion.
“We’ve acquired to face up and battle,” she informed one crowd. “Don’t be complacent now. Don’t step again and be within the shadows…you’ve acquired to do it. You’ve acquired to, as a result of I can’t do it alone. And I made a decision to return round and allow you to know that you just’ve acquired to face up and transfer on this. We will’t afford to not transfer.”
In Could 2023, she revealed her memoir, Miss Main Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary, a group of reflections, together with her participation within the 1969 Stonewall rebel and mentorship beneath Frank “Huge Black” Smith, a pacesetter of the 1971 Attica jail rebellion. The ebook additionally detailed her a long time of activism and neighborhood organizing.
“There’ll by no means be sufficient phrases to totally describe the influence Miss Main had on the LGBTQ+ folks, on leaders throughout actions, on these she cherished and have been touched by her work and her phrases,” Nationwide LGBTQ Activity Drive President Kierra Johnson mentioned within the assertion, in line with CNN. “She was a revolutionary, a visionary, a legend—a foundational mom of our motion and an inspiration to these preventing for liberation. She was a pointy and unyielding reality teller.”
Griffin-Gracy is survived by her longtime accomplice, Beck Witt Main, and their little one, Asiah Wittenstein Main, born in 2021. All through her life, she additionally raised different kids via adoption and previous relationships, together with her son Christopher, born in 1978 to Deborah Brown. The legendary activist can be survived by Janetta Johnson, her successor on the Miss Main Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Heart, in addition to her sisters, Tracie O’Brien and Billie Cooper.
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