On November 20th, 1995, Chanelle Pickett was murdered in Watertown, a neighborhood in Boston, Mass. Barely three years later, on November 28th, Rita Hester was murdered in Allston, a mere 4 miles away from where Chanelle was murdered. Both women were Black and transgender. The two murders being so close to each, both temporally and physically, was too much for another local trans woman, Gwendolyn Ann Smith, who would go on to found Transgender Day of Remembrance, often shortened to T.D.O.R./TDOR., a yearly observance to honor the lives of transgender people lost to transphobic violence. But she wasn’t the only Bostonian taking a stand against the disregard for trans lives.
Transgender people, and in particular transgender Black and Latina women, face a double edged sword of hypervisibility and invisibility. They’re subject to transphobic violence in the streets, even more so if they’re sex workers, especially before the turn of the century, but their deaths were largely ignored by both police and media,. It was rare that a murder of a trans person made national news, like that of Brandon Teena in 1993, and it was basically unheard of for the murder of a trans woman of color to make national news. This drove Gwendolyn Ann Smith to create the website “Remembering Our Dead” in 1998.
The site collected and archived information about the murders of trans people, an onerous task in the early internet era. Even local news stations rarely acknowledged the murders of trans people. Even when reports or obituaries did make it into the paper, the victims were often misgendered, or their identity as a trans person was removed from the report, both of which created challenges for cataloging the violence towards trans folks. These challenges are smaller these days, but still present, particularly in rural areas and for victims who are people of color, poor, and/or sex workers. Despite these difficulties, Smith forged ahead, ensuring that the memory of the victims lived on.
Smith didn’t stop with her website, however. She, along with Penni Ashe Matz, another trans woman from Massachusetts, organized a protest on the first anniversary of Rita Hester’s murder - November 28th, 1999. This protest, the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, was held in both Boston and San Francisco, but quickly spread to other cities across the country, and eventually, the world.
Now, you might have noticed that I said the first TDOR was on November 28th, and if you’re already familiar with TDOR, you’ll know that today it’s observed on November 20th. After the first few years, it was decided that the date should be moved to the day that Chanelle Pickett was murdered, so that it wouldn’t fall in the middle of Thanksgiving celebrations here in the United States.
It was important that the date continued to be on the anniversary of one of the murders, not just to honor the victims, but because both Chanelle Pickett and Rita Hester represented the largest group of transgender victims of violence: Black transgender women. Every single year, no less than a third of all the victims recognized in the United States have been Black trans women, a percentage that widely outstrips their representation amongst all transgender people. They exist at the intersection of misogyny, anti-Black racism, and transphobia, an intersection called transmisogynoir by academics and advocates. The term came from the writer Trudy on the blog Gradient Lair, and is an expansion of the term misogynoir, coined by Black Queer feminist Moya Bailey to describe the unique mode of discrimination faced by Black women. Black trans women are also more likely than other trans groups to be sex workers, which adds to their vulnerability to violence. This is why activist groups like Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR, a group founded by Black and Latina trans women Marsha P Johnson and Silvia Rivera, advocated for the decriminalization of sex work. TDOR is, alongside being a day to recognize those lost in the last year, a day to consider what we can do to uplift those most vulnerable in our communities.
TDOR observances take different forms, but common types of commemorations include “candlelight vigils, marches, screenings of trans-related films, and educational events designed to raise awareness of anti-trans violence,” as reported by Smith. CAMP Rehoboth this year held screenings of trans-related films Kokomo City and Will and Harper, a performance of Voices from Stonewall, and a vigil with carnations which could be dedicated to those lost or given to those still with us, inspired by a quote attributed to transgender activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, popularized by Black transgender artist B. Parker. Miss Major asks her audience to “Give us our roses while we’re still here.” Which is to say, remembering those lost is critical, but we must also show our love to trans people who are still with us.
The murder rates for trans people increased during the first Trump administration, and advocates are already sounding the alarm that a similar spike might be coming in the next few years. As we stare down a federal government which is hostile to trans people and increasing legislative attacks against trans people on all levels of governance, allyship and community support matter now more than ever.
Thank you for joining us for the seventh episode of This Month in Queer History. Take care, and join us next month for our eighth episode, about the Kissing Doesn’t Kill campaign of 1989.
