'You’ve got to fight for what you want:’ Miss Major on the future of trans liberation

From Stonewall to the AIDS crisis to present day struggles, Black trans elder and activist Miss Major has seen it all. Here, the legend of the movement discusses her new book on her life.

Of course I have regrets – who doesn’t have regrets? But I’ve out­lived them. I’m still fuckin’ here,” Miss Major says.

Miss Major’s life is a sto­ry of strug­gle and sur­vival. A Black trans elder and activist for more than five decades, she’s been through it all, from being arrest­ed for sex work to steal­ing cars and protest­ing against police vio­lence at the 1969 Stonewall riots, to car­ing for gay men aban­doned by their fam­i­lies dur­ing the 1980s AIDS cri­sis. Along the way, she’s become a moth­er and men­tor to count­less queer and trans peo­ple. And after a life­time of fight­ing for jobs, health­care and safe­ty for trans women of colour – or the gurls,” as she calls them – Miss Major is now right­ly regard­ed as a liv­ing legend. 

In her new book, Miss Major Speaks: Con­ver­sa­tions With a Black Trans Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, she is out­spo­ken about the fail­ures of the mod­ern LGBTQ+ move­ment to improve the lot of trans women of colour, and the need for trans peo­ple to fight for lib­er­a­tion by any means nec­es­sary. The book traces Miss Major’s life path over three-quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry, from a mid­dle-class child­hood to a polit­i­cal edu­ca­tion in soli­tary con­fine­ment, and offers – with sage wit – advice to younger gen­er­a­tions of mar­gin­alised peo­ple fight­ing for liberation. 

Speak­ing to Huck over Zoom from her home, the House of GG – the Grif­fin-Gra­cy Edu­ca­tion­al Retreat & His­tor­i­cal Cen­ter – in Lit­tle Rock, Arkansas, Miss Major says she wrote the book part­ly because she felt that younger trans peo­ple need the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know me,” and hopes that read­ers will come to their own con­clu­sions, and then call me, you know?” Friend and co-author Toshie Meronek, who’s sit­ting beside Miss Major on the call, asks if we should print Miss Major’s phone num­ber. The two erupt into laugh­ter. Before she became ill fol­low­ing two strokes in 2019, Miss Major spent most of the time talk­ing on the phone” to peo­ple she freely gave her num­ber out to – her gurls – pro­vid­ing love and sup­port, or email­ing them. The book’s title is cribbed from her old email address, missmajorspeaks@​gmail.​com, which is wide­ly avail­able and was often pub­lished in queer media sto­ries about her.

The book takes the form of an inti­mate back-and-forth fire­side chat. I had been record­ing her con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er peo­ple for a long time, and final­ly just start­ed record­ing ours – some over the phone and some when she moved to Arkansas from Oak­land,” Meronek explains.

I love Arkansas,” Miss Major adds. It’s a red state but they mind their own busi­ness with peo­ple here, so they don’t give me any has­sle. I’m very com­fort­able here. And now I have the grounds set up and I have flow­ers all over, I’m going nowhere.”

Born in Chica­go in 1946, Miss Major Grif­fin-Gra­cy was sent to a pri­vate col­lege in Min­neso­ta after grad­u­at­ing high school at 16. She left a few months lat­er when her roo­mate dis­cov­ered her suit­case of femme cloth­ing and returned to her par­ents in Chica­go, leav­ing again at 19 when her moth­er declared the city wasn’t big enough for both of them. Miss Major and a friend stole a car and head­ed for New York, but were arrest­ed for speed­ing before leav­ing Chica­go. She spent six months in prison, though that wouldn’t pre­vent her love of cars from becom­ing a life­long obses­sion. Today, she has a 70 Cadil­lac that’s cur­rent­ly in a shop get­ting fixed up.”

When Miss Major final­ly arrived in New York, she got a job in a morgue. The expe­ri­ence didn’t go to waste,” the book notes, as her famil­iar­i­ty with make­up increased with the body count.” She even­tu­al­ly wound up work­ing at the Jew­el Box Revue, a drag col­lec­tive, meet­ing oth­er trans women who showed her how to nav­i­gate sex work. It was a more viable finan­cial option than per­form­ing, but came with its own draw­backs: name­ly, police vio­lence and harass­ment. Miss Major is frank about the choice they often made between spend­ing a night in a cell or suck­ing off a cop, and even more so when she com­pares sex work to LGBTQ+ non-prof­its: There was a lot more hon­esty in hook­ing than in the last cou­ple of Gay Prides I did.”

Miss Major is a sur­vivor of Belle­vue Hos­pi­tal, a psy­chi­atric asy­lum that many trans women of colour were dumped in dur­ing the 1960s after being picked up by the cops for the crimes of being gen­der non-con­form­ing or sell­ing sex to sur­vive. She writes in the book about how the trans women inmates would share tips for count­ing the num­ber of books on a shelf while their gen­i­tals were hooked up to elec­tri­cal probes – a crude ear­ly form of con­ver­sion ther­a­py that attempt­ed to iden­ti­fy and then erase same-sex sex­u­al desire. Miss Major also spent five years inside the Clin­ton Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty at Dan­nemo­ra for a bur­glary con­vic­tion. It was there she met Frank Big Black” Smith, a Black Pan­ther who’d been one of the lead­ers of the Atti­ca Prison Riot in 1971 (a thou­sand-pris­on­er strong, four-day rebel­lion that end­ed with the high­est num­ber of pris­on­er fatal­i­ties in the his­to­ry of US pris­on­er upris­ings). She describes Big Black in the book as My men­tor. My love”. The two man­aged to become friends through their cell walls in the soli­tary con­fine­ment block, and Big Black gave Miss Major the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about the sys­tems of pow­er that she had been fight­ing against her entire life. 

The sta­tis­tics prove that we suf­fer hard­er than any­one else in the prison sys­tem,” Miss Major says. Can’t have trans lib­er­a­tion with­out prison abolition.” 

Big Black also showed her the impor­tance of role mod­els and how she could help the gurls’ – trans women of colour who’ve been incar­cer­at­ed, suf­fered police bru­tal­i­ty, or both – fight oppres­sion by lead­ing them. This for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence shaped the rest of Miss Major’s life.

Miss Major has her­self has been a cru­cial source of hope and sup­port to many trans peo­ple. I want to hold them and let them know that there’s some­body who cares about whether they make it or not, whether they sur­vived or not, whether they have the things they need to con­tin­ue on,” she says. That’s the most impor­tant.” But, since becom­ing ill, it’s been hard­er for her to talk on the phone. In some ways, this book is a new ver­sion of the com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and emo­tion­al sup­port that is Miss Major’s life’s work.

“There was a lot more honesty in hooking than in the last couple of Gay Prides I did.” Miss Major

Although the stroke, and grow­ing old­er, has changed the way she com­mu­ni­cates, Miss Major is sur­round­ed by vis­i­tors and friends at the House of GG. When asked her favourite thing about age­ing, she responds, Noth­ing! It’s not favourable at all. But we have to [grow old­er]. I can’t think of any­thing favourable about it, oth­er than, well, I’m com­fort­able, I don’t leave this house that I have here, so that’s nice. And peo­ple have a ten­den­cy to like me, so they take care of my needs.”

In Miss Major Speaks, she out­lines how younger gen­er­a­tions of trans peo­ple can fight the Pow­ers That Be, from build­ing com­mu­ni­ties by and for trans peo­ple of colour to vot­ing out Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton. What good are they doing?” she says. They’re not doing any­thing to help our com­mu­ni­ty to sur­vive and now they decide to attack the younger kids. That’s just wrong.”

You’ve got to fight for what you want,” Miss Major tells Huck. This stuff isn’t free, it doesn’t come from divine inter­ven­tion. You’ve got to work for it, and in some cas­es it means you’ve got to fight.”

The open­ing chap­ter of Miss Major Speaks offers a refresh­ing­ly damn­ing indict­ment of the LGBTQ+ non-prof­it sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Human Rights Cam­paign (HRC), the largest LGBTQ+ lob­by­ing organ­i­sa­tion in the US. HRC did some­thing that won’t be soon for­got­ten among trans peo­ple,” Miss Major explains, and for the first time in our con­ver­sa­tion, which has been punc­tu­at­ed with laugh­ter and her beam­ing smile, she is solemn. In the ear­ly 2000s, HRC was doing all this work on an unem­ploy­ment non-dis­crim­i­na­tion bill, and then, at the last minute, dropped trans peo­ple from the bill,” she says. It just showed that, for this organ­i­sa­tion – which was, of course, run by most­ly white gay men – trans peo­ple were dis­pos­able when it felt like it wasn’t polit­i­cal­ly pop­u­lar to include them.”

While it’s struc­tured as a wide-rang­ing series of con­ver­sa­tions, cov­er­ing her thoughts on vis­i­bil­i­ty pol­i­tics, cops at Pride, prison abo­li­tion, Mar­sha P John­son and Sylvia Rivera (“we looked up to them because they were try­ing to get all the gurls to unite”) and the AIDS epi­dem­ic, the book is also a his­to­ry tour through mod­ern Black and queer his­to­ry from some­one who lived – lives – through it. When it comes to lib­er­a­to­ry strug­gles, it’s not a sit­u­a­tion of win or lose,” she tells Huck. You have to deal with things as they are and get over it.” Refer­ring to the Stonewall riots and the gay movement’s fail­ure to help trans women, she adds: Did we win in 69? No, we didn’t win in 69. Those moth­er­fuck­ers took it from us.”

Against seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able odds, both inside and out­side of the move­ment, I ask how it is that Major man­ages to keep hold of hope. I nev­er let it go,” she replies. In the face of all the hard­ships life can throw at you, hold­ing on to hope depends on some­thing inside [you],” she adds. For me, it was when I first got my son. Now I have anoth­er son, and he’s two years old. That keeps me going.”

What real­ly brings me joy is the sound of my laugh­ter,” she con­cludes. And that lit­tle kid, Asi­ah. He just fills my heart up with hope and belief that this will work out. And walk­ing in the park and being bare­foot and feel­ing the grass and see­ing my toes. Those kinds of things. Stuff that you can’t buy. A sense of free­dom that you have to feel your­self, enjoy yourself.”

Although her life has been one of endurance, it’s also filled with love and hope. Sit­ting next to Toshio for this inter­view, the sound of Miss Major’s laugh­ter was fre­quent and joy­ous. While she’s clear in her role as a trans elder impart­ing wis­dom for younger gen­er­a­tions, she doesn’t let this respon­si­bil­i­ty weigh her down. It’s an hon­our, she says, that younger trans women trea­sure her so much.

But when it comes down to it, Miss Major is very clear that what peo­ple must do is to fight against their oppres­sion and that of oth­ers. The cru­cial thing, she says, is to act – in the hope that you can make things a lit­tle bit bet­ter for the girl after you.”

Miss Major Speaks: Con­ver­sa­tions with a Black Trans Rev­o­lu­tion­ary by Miss Major and Toshio Meronek is out now with Ver­so Books.

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