She continued her HIV/AIDS activism, including serving with the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center (TARC). In the mid 90’s, Miss Major moved to San Francisco. The silver lining for the epidemic, Miss Major later recalled, was that many transgender people - especially women - were able to find legitimate, legal jobs for the first time, even if that job was the heartbreaking task of providing healthcare to doomed queer people no one else wanted to touch. She started working at a food bank and attempted to help transgender people who were in prison or recovering from addiction, but as the AIDS epidemic began to ravage the queer community of California, Miss Major turned her attention to helping provide healthcare and performing funerals. This was the start of a growing chosen family that still rallies around Miss Major to this day. She would eventually adopted three other boys - runaways she met at a park. Miss Major decided the life she’d built in New York was not one well-suited for raising a child, she secured sole custody of Christopher and moved to San Diego. In 1978, Miss Major’s long-time girlfriend gave birth to their son Christopher. When she was finally released in 1974, she took those lessons to heart. She was paroled twice - but both times the parole was revoked when her parole officer reported her for deviant behavior (once was for adopting a more feminine appearance by shaving her face, and the second time was for “entering a deviant bar.”) While incarcerated, she communicated regularly with Frank “Big Black” Smith - who had been in charge of security at the Attica Correctional Facility Riots of 1971. She spent a good amount of time in solitary confinement - she was imprisoned with men, and every time a fight broke out between her and any other inmate, she was the one who was punished. He had a great deal of respect for Miss Major, and her gender identity, and he talked to her about how she could help her community. She was arrested in 1970 for burglary after a safe-breaking job went wrong, and spent four years at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. This was especially true of sex workers, who started trying to get their “johns” to exit the cars so that all of the girls could see them - just in case a girl never came back from a job. She realized that transgender women of New York could not depend on anyone but each other - she began to build a network so that they could help protect each other. Despite plenty of evidence, the police ruled the murder was a suicide. While she was in police custody, her jaw was broken.Īfter the riot, Miss Major was deeply changed by the murder of a Puerto Rican transgender friend of hers known as Puppy. She participated in the rioting on that first night, until she spit in the face off one of the police officers - he responded by knocking her out. She was there on the night of Jand stayed late enough to be present when the police raided the bar. She simply added the word “Miss” in front of it.Īlthough many of the gay bars would not let her in, Miss Major became a frequent customer at the Stonewall Inn - probably at least in part because of her and Stormé DeLarverie‘s shared association with the Jewel Box Revue. (As an aside, I’m definitely a 90’s kid because I definitely first thought that was “Powerpuff” but it isn’t.) During these years she experimented with a handful of names, but settled on the one her parents had given her: Major. She became a performer at the famous Jewel Box Revue, as well as the Cherries and the Powder Puff Revue. She briefly had a job as a secretary for the Mattachine Society, but even that didn’t last too long.Īfter a run in with the law, and a six month bout in a mental institution, Miss Major moved to New York City. She transitioned, using hormones she purchased on the black market - something that became a booming business following the very public transition of Christine Jorgensen. Her parents attempted to curb this, but eventually just kicked her out.Īfterwards, she was homelessness - getting by as best she could through sex work and the occasional theft. But they were, and Miss Major was fairly open about it. She later explained that, without the terminology we have today existing, she did not realize that she and her peers were questioning their gender identities. It didn’t last too long - while she was still fairly young, she discovered the drag ball scene and began participating regularly. She was assigned to the male gender at birth. Miss Major Griffin-Gracy was born in Chicago on Octoin the south side of Chicago at St. Miss Major - can’t find a date for it but this is such a fantastic picture
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