In Memoriam: Trans Rights Activist and Community Organizer, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

The NTBA mourns the loss and celebrates the life of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. On October 13, 2025, Miss Major died in her home in Little Rock, Arkansas, surrounded by loved ones.

It is hard to overstate Miss Major’s impact on the transgender community. From fighting at Stonewall to launching San Francisco’s mobile needle exchange to acting as the first executive director of TGI Justice Project—and many other things in between and beyond—Miss Major served our community for over fifty years. She strengthened our movement, kept our friends alive, and modeled what compassion, hope, and ferocity could look like.

On the evening of her death, I revisited her memoir Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary, co-authored by Toshio Meronek, and felt moved by this quote: 

I’m in my seventies. Why didn’t I stop? Number one is community. My gurls. I’ve had moments of thinking about stopping, but I didn’t. I made sure I would step back, rejuvenate myself, and then got back out there, and that’s how you make a way. Our stories are not all the same, but the destination is: to get some place where we have some peace and harmony, and we can be at ease with ourselves and the people around us. You make the best of it all and hope you can help make it a little better for the gurl after you.

May her work continue in us all through service to our community and a dream of liberation. Rest in power, Miss Major.