Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (October 25, 1946 – October 13, 2025), sometimes known as Miss Major, was an American author, activist and community organizer. She was known for her activism of transgender rights. She was the first executive director for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project.

Activism
Griffin-Gracy moved to New York City during her twenties and would go to the Stonewall Inn many times. She was there on the first night of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion. She spent years in prison and on parole, including after Stonewall, when she received a five-year sentence following a robbery arrest.

Griffin-Gracy began work in community services after moving to San Diego in 1978. She worked at a food bank and then in direct community services for trans women. She later focused on home health care during the AIDS epidemic in the United States. In the 1990s, Griffin-Gracy moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and worked with multiple HIV/AIDS organizations.

Over twenty years, Griffin-Gracy was homeless and mostly found hormones through the black market.

Personal life and death
Griffin-Gracy was born on October 25, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois as a male. 

Griffin-Gracy had five sons. Her oldest son was born in 1978, and she later adopted three more sons. In January 2021, Griffin-Gracy and her partner announced the birth of their son. 

Griffin-Gracy died under hospice care at her home in Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 13, 2025 at the age of 78. Before her death, she was being treated for sepsis and a blood clot.

References

Other websites

 Read an Excerpt from The Right Side of History: 100 Years or LGBTQI Activism: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy's Reflections on the Stonewall Riots (Lambda Literary Review, July 21, 2015)

 Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (Interviewed by Mason Funk, July 27, 2016, OutWords)
 Black Trans Women Seek More Space in the Movement They Helped Start (New York Times, June 28, 2020)

Category:1946 births
Category:2025 deaths
Category:American LGBT rights activists
Category:Transgender women
Category:LGBT people from Chicago
Category:American feminist writers
Category:Writers from Chicago
Category:Activists from Chicago
Category:Deaths from sepsis
Category:Deaths from blood clot