NCTE Memories: Marisa Richmond
By: National Center For Transgender Equality
Tags: LGBT Rights, Nctemem, LGBTQ, Tennessee, Transgender

Tell me a little bit about yourself: who are you? Where do you live? What do you do?

I live in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m a professor at Middle Tennessee State University — I teach both history and women’s and gender studies here.

Were you involved with trans advocacy before you became involved with NCTE?

Oh, yes. For starters, I was involved in starting the Tennessee Vals in 1992. Then in the mid-’90s, I joined the board of AEGIS, the American Educational Gender Information Service — in fact, I was board chair of AEGIS from 1996 to 1999. And then after that I served briefly on the board of International Foundation for Gender Education and the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition before joining the board of NCTE.

Marisa speaking on behalf of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition at Nashville’s Legislative Plaza, April 13, 2016. Photo credit: AP

We started the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition in 2003, where I served as president for 10 years and then continued as the lobbyist for an additional four years after that. We were fighting on local, state, and federal issues, working on the federal issues with NCTE.

We were trying to do a lot here in Tennessee to move forward, because Tennessee, to put it bluntly, is a very conservative state. So we were trying to do what we could here to move the ball forward in the state as part of a coordinated national strategy.

How did you come to be involved with NCTE, and when was that?

I had met Mara at Southern Comfort — she has to tell you the exact year. I’d been out a while and at Southern Comfort when she was just coming out of the closet, so we got to know each other. We both shared an interest in politics, so I joined NCTE in 2007 or 2008.

Why did you want to get involved with NCTE?

Well, for starters, she asked me! I was impressed with the work NCTE was doing and it matched my interests. My field is political history, but I’ve always had a very strong interest in politics and was already doing this work with other organizations. So after I left those organizations, NCTE was an opportunity to stay involved and kind of get back in, especially at the national level.

What’s an especially good or particularly vivid memory that you have from your time working with NCTE?

I think we’ve had some very successful lobby days — certainly especially during the Obama years, which coincided with my service. Doors were opened and we were changing policy, especially at the federal level. The staff was doing that, mostly, rather than the board, but I was still pleased to be part of some of that effort.

I guess I had rolled off the board by the time Loretta Lynch announced the Department of Justice’s support for the trans community, but I think that was a really important moment, even though that victory turned out to be short-lived. I believe we will get it back. But like a lot of people listening to that speech, I was watching it live at home. It was a really important moment to hear her words, and they were so strong and emphatic and certainly helped highlight the work we were doing and how far we had come as a community.

What do you think is the biggest change that you’ve seen in the trans community over the last 15 years?

If you go all the way back to 2003, we were at ground zero. We had no laws, no federal policy, no access, no appointees, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

At least now we have two laws, we have a whole bunch of policy wins — which we’re obviously now trying to hold on to — and we had a number of appointees — like Amanda Simpson, of course, who’s a former NCTE board member herself.

We had access, including my meeting with President Obama at the LGBT pride reception in June of 2011. Thirteen of us were taken aside to have a one-on-one, and I was the only trans person. I was later informed that I was the very first trans person to have such a meeting.

Then-President Barack Obama at the White House Pride Reception, June 29, 2011.

When I talked with him — I only had a minute or so — I used the opportunity to use the word “transgender” twice, to thank him for his service to the transgender community, and to say, “We need you to keep working for transgender people.” It was important to have him meet face-to-face with a trans person and to hear directly from a trans person.

So we got a lot. For those of us who’ve been around a long time, to think back on where we were at the beginning of this century, it doesn’t seem that long ago — but it’s a lifetime ago in the sense of how much has changed, and — when we can reverse things — what’s possible for us as we look forward to the future.

On that note, what do you think the next 15 years are going to bring?

Well, the next two and a half years are going to continue to be a nightmare, to put it quite bluntly. But I think as we monitor these challenges we’re facing now that we’re going to be better organized and more focused than we were in the last go-around. And I think we’re going to get more laws passed — we’ll make sure we codify what it is we want and what we need.