One of our most influential and remarkable queer elders — Miss Major Griffin-Gracy — has died at the age of 78.  Her organization Tilfi/House of gg, which provides support and services for trans people in the South, wrote that Miss Major died surrounded by loved ones on October 13, in the comfort of her home in Little Rock, Arkansas, noting: “Her enduring legacy is a testament to her resilience, activism, and dedication to creating safe spaces for Black trans communities and all trans people–we are eternally grateful for Miss Major’s life, her contributions and how deeply she poured into those she loved.”

Last month, Miss Major had been admitted to the hospital with sepsis and was ultimately sent home to begin hospice care.

She leaves behind a tremendous legacy of courage and spirit and hope and fight, of humor and love and devotion. She is the very best of us.

Miss Major was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, coming out to her parents around the age of 12. This was over seven decades ago, at a time when, she recalled to SF Weekly, Christine Jorgensen was really the only out visible trans woman in the media. “After Christine Jorgensen got her sex change, all of a sudden there was a black market of hormones out there,” she said. On the North Side of Chicago, for example, there was a fortune teller in an amusement park who clandestinely sold oral hormones from behind her crystal ball.

Miss Major forged community wherever she could find it and mostly lived openly, despite the significant limitations of the time. She was kicked out of college in Minnesota for wearing feminine clothing — and then kicked out of school again in Chicago. It was through the Chicago ball scene, which has been around since at least the 1930s, that Miss Major really started to build roots, people who felt like home.

It was during those coming-of-age teenage years when she met her friend and mentor Kitty, who helped her with clothes and makeup — and also helped her embrace being over six-feet-tall. “If it wasn’t for Kitty, I wouldn’t be here,” Miss Major told The Guardian in 2023. “She gave me me. I saw I was beautiful, and there was no turning back.”

Miss Major briefly worked as a receptionist for Mattachine Midwest, an early gay rights organization founded in Chicago in 1965. As a Black, trans sex worker, she suffered relentless police abuse in Chicago as well as after moving to New York. There, she was an instrumental element of the historical moment she is perhaps most associated with: the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Inn is where Miss Major had found community in New York, telling Mey in a 2015 Autostraddle interview:

“…the thing that’s important is that this was a club the girls went to when we would do prostituting in the street uptown or over in the East Village. It was somewhere where we could sit with friends, talk about what had happened, celebrate the good things, work on the bad shit until we went home. It was the place where girls who did shows would come to after they did their show at some local club, where they would go and sit afterwards and have some peace of mind. To be around like-minded people. You know, people who are from your area, know who you are, share your same thoughts and feelings. A sense of belonging. We had that there.”

Mainstream attempts to portray the Stonewall Riots, including its place in the public imagination, have consistently whitewashed and cis-washed the movement and all of its context, sidelining or altogether erasing the contributions of trans women of color like Miss Major, Marsha P. Johnson, and Sylvia Rivera.

At the time of her Autostraddle Interview, the community was reacting to the 2015 film Stonewall, which was both terrible and historically inaccurate, centering the journey of a white gay man and ultimately flopping at the box office and critically.

“It’s so disappointing. They keep doing this!” Miss Major told Autostraddle in response to these fictionalized accounts of the riots writing out Black people. She also lamented the white statues commemorated as part of the Stonewall Monument, calling on folks to redo them to more accurately reflect the clientele who frequented Stonewall leading up to and during the riots:

Someone should smash those motherfuckers up and turn them into the white dust that they are and put a couple of statues of people of color and at least make one of them an overly obnoxious transgender woman 6’5″, three inch heels, blond/red hair, lashes, beads, feathers and put one of those fine white boys next to her, now that I can handle! [laughter] And let’s have two lesbians at the end with luggage because they’re moving in together! [laughter]

Shortly after this incredible rant in Autostraddle, anonymous activists indeed painted the Stonewall statues brown and gave them wigs, flowers, and bright accessories.

After Stonewall, Miss Major spent time in prison for theft, where she was mentored by the Attica prison rebellion leader Frank “Big Black” Smith, who implored her not to leave anyone behind in her organizing. She was released from prison in 1974, ready to take on the world. A longtime girlfriend gave birth to her son, Christopher, in 1978, and after their breakup, she moved with her son to California, retaining full custody. She also adopted three other sons around his age.

During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, Miss Major’s Angels of Care organization sent a group of trans girls to care for dying gay men in the San Francisco bay area. “No one wanted to take care of those gay guys when they first got AIDS,” she told SF Weekly. “and a lot of my transgender women stepped up to the plate to do it.” She facilitated a mobile needle exchange and organized against an AIDS non-profit leader who tried to break up her drop-in center fror trans sex workers. In the mid-2000s, she became executive director of the Transgender Variant Intersex justice Project, continuing her advocacy around gender non-conforming people in prison.

She landed in Arkansas a little under a decade ago, falling in love with the area after visiting for a screening of MAJOR!, a documentary about her. That’s where she built tilfi, a save haven for trans people that boasted a guest house, pool, hot tub, 80 palm trees and a merry-go-round. In 2021, Miss Major and her partner, Beck Witt, announced the birth of their first child, Asiah Wittenstein Major. Last year, her book Miss Major Speaks was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

It’s only in recent years that the true story of Stonewall and who participated in it has started to become part of the event’s known narrative — but, as of 2025, every reference to trans people has been removed from the National Park Service website about the Stonewall National Monument. After a hopeful chunk of years that saw incremental progress for trans people in the media and politically, we are now governed by an administration amongst a cultural shift that is attempting to erase trans people from public life and history. It’s heartbreaking to consider Miss Major’s death in any context, but this specific one feels especially tragic. It is on us to keep her story and her memory alive — the erasure of trans activists and denial of trans people hasn’t just come from the government, it’s consistently come from within. Gay and lesbian leaders have historically and continue to turning their backs on the trans community when it’s politically convenient, and it has never been more politically convenient than it is right now.

Miss Major built a life around seeing a problem and having the confidence and trust in her community to develop a solution outside of traditional systems of power and capital. When a sex worker friend was murdered and the police did nothing, she and a friend developed a system for the girls to track each other, recording license plates whenever anybody wa picked up. When she saw children who needed homes, she took them in.

“People have to organize and get it together, and we also must vote.” she told the Guardian. “I know the world I would like to live in. It’s in my head, but I try my best to live it now.”

Miss Major’s sanctuary in Arkansas featured a portrait centering her mantra: “I’m still fucking HERE.” She boasted often of outliving her critics and opponents, daring to live a long and beautiful life, surrounded by love and family. “A lot of women treat getting older as if it’s a bad thing. But when younger people call me mother, or grandmother, I feel as though it’s an honor,” she said in Miss Major Speaks. “To them, it’s like, Here’s an older trans woman who survived, and who’s out there raising hell. Elders can teach the younger people to pick up the right. In my mind it’s what they must do. When you are constantly under attack, especially if you’re in this community, you can’t just retire and walk off into the sunset. You’ve got to stay and teach young people to fight.”

“All these people who challenged and fought me – where are they?” she told the Guardian. “They’re gone. I’m here.”

She is no longer here. But we are. What will we do to honor her legacy? We engage meaningfully with all that history, with first-hand accounts, with her book and the memories of people who love her. It’s all right there. Ultimately, perhaps direction is best sought from how she concluded her wishes for community support in that aforementioned Autostraddle interview, with her trademark blend of wit and hope: “I hope a lot of people read this,” she said. “And get their heads out of their ass.”

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On the morning of July 4, the conductor approves my digital Long Island Rail Road ticket, this ticket that will take me first to Jamaica in Queens and then to Sayville on Long Island. From there, I will transfer to a shuttle bus that will take me to the Sayville Ferry Service, where I will then get on said ferry to Cherry Grove. It’s quite a bit of travel for this Independence Day, a holiday it feels even more suspect to celebrate this year than usual, but for the Invasion of the Pines, it is always worth it.

The Invasion, as it’s known, began in 1976 and celebrated its 50th edition this year. In 1976, beloved drag artist and trans woman Teri Warren was denied service at the Fire Island Pines restaurant The Blue Whale because she was in drag. At that time, the Pines had been known for its high-end, often closeted, clientele. The Blue Whale’s owner, John Whyte, also frowned on both drag and any “flamboyant” displays, barring them from the premises. Fuming after Teri’s mistreatment, on July 4, 1976, Thom Hansen —who also performed in drag as Panzi —and several friends dressed in drag and took a water taxi over to the Pines. They arrived, the boat’s horns blazing, and “blessed” the crowd at the Pines, much to the simultaneous delight of onlookers and the chagrin of the aforementioned hotelier. The tradition carried on for nearly 50 years, with people in drag filling up the ferry (sometimes even more than one) year after year. Whyte and Panzi eventually found harmony, and Whyte became a supporter of the event.

It’s possible that this year, 2025, is the last time the Invasion will take place. When I interviewed Panzi for Phillip Gutman’s photography book Invasion of the Pines last year, she mentioned that many young people who come love it but don’t know why the event happens; still, she said, the point of the event was never to be a classroom, it was to have fun. “[Young people] are creating their own generation,” she said last year. “Just let them have fun.” So in 2025, the plan was to go “out with a bang,” as Panzi wrote in an email this year, unless in the following year someone else takes up the mantle. It felt important to go, to bear witness to this final in the series of great drag protests, this act of resistance embodied as a celebration of color and life and glamour and self-expression. The Invasion was also chronicled recently in another photography book, Fire Island Invasion: Day of Independence by Anderson Zaca, for which Panzi wrote the forward.

While I can only imagine that seeing scads of people in drag parading from a massive ferry onto a dock in the Pines is itself delightful, it’s when these drag denizens start their day in Cherry Grove that I find most divine. At Cherry Grove’s legendary Ice Palace, multigenerational scores of people line what’s usually the dance floor in drag costumes of every kind, from the intricate to the shake-and-go, the ridiculous to the sublime. There’s everything from $10 Party City wigs to opulent, feet-high feather and rhinestone constructions one might otherwise expect to see on a Las Vegas stage. There are puns (“Burned-to-Death Peters”) and a full-blown Mona Lisa behind a red velvet museum rope; a “Busted Brigade” all dressed like the beloved local drag artist of the same name; a “Spirit of 76” group attired like icons from the 1970s, like Rocky and Charlie’s Angels. People mill about chatting, sipping on cocktails, encircling the pool, dancing to the sounds of lauded DJ Ana Matronic. Sashes are given out for the likes of “Best Group” and “Most Political” and “Most Tragic,” among others, all with humor at its core. This is not a day of taking oneself too seriously: We’re here to have fun and be ourselves, and we’re not asking for your permission.

While the ferry to the Pines awaits, crowds have gathered along the path to the dock. They stand, sit on patios, or perch at a restaurant high above with their cameras held aloft, waiting for people to exit the Ice Palace’s long wooden ramp. It’s at once pageantry and parade, the crowd cheering and applauding as each bedragged babe makes their way to the ferry. I snap pictures like a wild woman. People adjust their wigs, smoke cigarettes, wait in line. One of the ferry captains offers me cheese from a charcuterie platter.

Entering the ferry, people duck to make room for their wigs and headdresses and high-standing capes. You’re never too far from a handheld fan or bottle of water or tube of sunscreen. There are friendly reminders to stay hydrated and seek out shade (from the sun) if you need to. On top of the ferry, bodies are nestled together as the sun beams overhead, wigs and sequin leotards are adjusted. At the edge of the dock in Cherry Grove, there’s a giant American flag, a giant trans flag, giant Pride flags.

As the ferry full of drag denizens arrives at the dock in the Pines from Cherry Grove, drag artist Lola (attired as Madonna a la Marie Antoinette) and singer Seth Sikes (in a red and blue Speedo) regale the crowd with a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” A collective of dancers will spray confetti into the sky and introduce Panzi, who will later have a ferry named after her, and party upon party of people in drag will exit onto a pink carpet and wave to the crowds. It’s hot, but I barely feel it, snapping away at my camera as each person leaving the ferry smiles a real, true, genuine smile. I am witnessing joy, and this is its power, its triumph over adversity, its reclamation of space, its assertion of positivity. And while I wish I could witness it every year, I’m grateful for the almost 50 that have come before, for Panzi’s work in organizing, for the people who have shown up in drag and to watch.

I think of a conversation I had with my uncle recently, where he asked me what I think when I see an American flag pasted on someone’s car or home now. Without pausing I responded, “Republicans.” And what a sad thing to think, that for some the flag would come to represent the blind nationalism, exclusion of others, repression, closed-minded thinking, and conservatism the party has become known for, in addition to the suppression of queer and trans rights and even the suppression of drag.

But that America is not my America. Rather, this is my America, the Invasion of the Pines. It is this America that was founded on protest and freedom of expression, as much in 1976 as 1776, as it dances and glitters in the face of oppression. The Invasion of the Pines is a celebration of what America means to us. It is the only America I am interested in, and if I cannot have a day where freedom is celebrated with wigs and lipstick and mustaches and feathers, then I don’t want it.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

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