It’s Friday, Oct. 10, and I’m on a airplane flying from Little Rock, Arkansas, speeding dwelling to Atlanta, Georgia, as Pleasure weekend begins. I’m on my option to the TS Madison Starter Home to satisfy with Kelly Nik and Torey from the Human Rights Marketing campaign group — to sit down with my sisters Monroe Alise and Toni Bryce, and to launch our new marketing campaign collectively.
And though I’m excited — filled with anticipation for what this subsequent second means — I’m additionally grieving.
I’m grieving as a result of I do know I’ve laid eyes on Miss Main for the final time. I’ve held her hand for the final time. I’ve cried my tears. I’ve walked the yellow brick highway on the Home of GG. And I do know, deep in my spirit, that after I return, her bodily physique will not be right here.
There’s one thing poetic — and painful — about heading dwelling for Pleasure, an exercise that will not even be potential with out her management, energy, and sacrifice. Each flight I take, each panel I communicate on, each program I construct is standing on the bottom she cleared for us.
After I take into consideration Miss Main’s transition, I don’t simply take into consideration the lack of a girl or an elder — I take into consideration the setting of a North Star that guided generations of us towards freedom.
For a lot of, the headline will say she was a trans icon, a Stonewall veteran, a trailblazer. However for me — for us — Miss Main was a guiding mild within the galaxy of Black management. She was as important to our motion as Dr. King, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, or Fannie Lou Hamer. She was our revolutionary mom — the girl who proved you possibly can survive a world not constructed to your physique and nonetheless select to find it irresistible sufficient to combat for everybody else in it.
What occurs when the final North Star from the start of our revolution transitions — proper once we want one other one?
At 7:02 PM Japanese Normal Time, Muriel Tarver, Government Director of The Home of GG, one in all Miss Main’s closest confidants and my huge sis, despatched me a textual content message that merely mentioned:
“She’s gone, Woman.”
And with that, the journey of official grieving started — a course of that will unfold not solely in my physique, however inside the broader queer, trans, and most significantly, Black neighborhood.
She Was By no means Simply A “Queer Icon” — She Was A Black Revolutionary
To inform Miss Main’s story solely by the lens of queerness is to make her smaller than she ever was. She didn’t merely lead a motion for trans folks; she led a motion for freedom.
Her life stretched throughout each period of Black resistance — from civil rights to jail abolition, from the AIDS epidemic to Black Lives Matter. Miss Main stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the identical ethical energy that fueled the sermons of Dr. King and the marches of John Lewis. She confirmed us that resistance wasn’t solely in coverage or protest — it was in care, in neighborhood, within the audacity to nonetheless present up when the world didn’t.
If Martin confirmed us tips on how to march, Miss Main confirmed us tips on how to mom a motion.
Rising up in Omaha, Nebraska, I didn’t have the expertise of being related to that constellation of Black revolutionaries who gave their lives in order that I might stay freely. For a very long time, these names and faces felt distant — folks in books, not folks in rooms. So after I opened Lydon Home, the primary housing program within the nation for queer and trans folks coming back from incarceration, Miss Main’s presence wanted to be seen in that house.
After I served as Government Director of Black and Pink Nationwide, I needed everybody who walked by our doorways — particularly the Black trans girls — to see her and know what was potential. As a result of Miss Main’s journey to management mirrored my very own: a previously incarcerated Black trans lady who was informed, at each step, that what she believed her folks deserved was unrealistic, inappropriate to want, or a waste of time to combat for.
And but, within the face of that disbelief, Miss Main made it unequivocally clear: Black trans girls deserve the sort of love, care, and funding that provides us function — that sparks our will to stay and our proper to have fun life.
The Revolution She Constructed — Brick by Brick, Physique By Physique
Born in 1946 on the South Facet of Chicago, Miss Main realized early what it meant to stay exterior society’s approval. She was expelled from faculty for expressing her fact. She spent years surviving criminalization and incarceration — methods which have at all times focused Black trans girls for merely current. But even in these areas, she was main.
Inside Attica Jail, she started organizing. On the streets of New York after Stonewall, she was defending her neighborhood. By way of the Transgender Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Mission (TGIJP) and later Home of GG, she constructed sanctuaries when the world supplied none.
Miss Main’s management was by no means theoretical — it was bodily, tangible, and infrequently dangerous. Her daughter within the motion, Janetta Johnson, now the Government Director of TGIJP, as soon as informed me a narrative that stays with me.
Miss Main was working at an company in San Francisco that claimed to serve the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. She noticed that the constructing had unused house that will have been excellent to deal with programming for Black trans girls — the identical girls being pushed to the margins by everybody, together with a few of their very own. However the company’s management, principally white and Black homosexual males, refused to share the house.
So when a type of leaders went on trip, Miss Main took issues into her personal palms. She paid native development employees to come back in and actually break down the brick wall separating that house. She labored alongside them — transferring particles, directing the redesign, and adorning the rooms that will quickly serve her folks.
When Janetta requested her about it, Miss Main laughed and mentioned,
“They’re gonna fireplace me, however you’re gonna keep right here and ensure the ladies get what they want.”
That story defines who she was. Miss Main didn’t await permission to do what was proper. She constructed freedom together with her personal palms — even when it price her every thing.
I’ve at all times felt comfy placing my physique on the road and utilizing no matter privilege I’ve to get my folks what they want. What impressed me most about Miss Main was her unapologetic readability about that. She knew that the accolades had been good, however the actual reward lived within the lives of the folks she served.
The revolution she constructed wasn’t crafted in convention rooms or suppose tanks. It was constructed within the rubble of a wall she refused to let stand between her folks and their freedom.
The Blueprint She Left Us — The Galaxy She Shaped
If you happen to hint the sunshine of our neighborhood, you’ll discover that nearly each beam leads again to Miss Main. Her fingerprints stay within the applications, the artwork, the actions, and the audacity that outline queer and trans life at the moment. She wasn’t merely a part of historical past — she was the soil, the seed, and the daylight that allowed a complete ecosystem to bloom.
With out Miss Main, there isn’t a me.
There isn’t any Laverne Cox.
No TS Madison.
No MJ Rodriguez.
No Cherry The Increase.
No Bryanna Jenkins.
No Diamond Stylz.
No Iya Damons.
No Aria Stated.
No Monroe Alise.
No Toni Bryce.
And past these of us immediately in her lineage, her spirit reverberates by the broader material of tradition — by the storytellers, visionaries, and creators who embody the liberty she fought for.
Lee Daniels. Coleman Domingo. Dylan Mulvaney. Jordan E. Cooper. Lena Waithe.
Each one in all them exists in a world Miss Main helped make potential — a world the place queer and trans brilliance can take up house in movie, tv, artwork, and storytelling; the place we are able to construct corporations, lead actions, form conversations, and have fun our fact publicly.
What Miss Main started at Stonewall was by no means only a riot. It was an act of creation. She and her sisters broke the concrete, planted seeds within the cracks, and watered them with their very own sweat, tears, and defiance.
Her legacy shouldn’t be a straight line of succession. It’s a galaxy — Black, brown, queer, trans, radiant — spinning outward from one lady’s refusal to let any of us disappear.
She didn’t solely go away us inspiration. She left us infrastructure — a manner of constructing, loving, and main that claims: if the world gained’t make room for you, make it your self.
The Loss To The Complete Black Neighborhood
Miss Main’s passing is not only the lack of a trans elder — it’s the lack of one in all our nice Black revolutionaries. Her work was not a sidebar to the story of Black liberation; it’s one in all its central chapters.
For many years, she moved by the world in a physique that was each sacred and politicized — a Black lady, a trans lady, a survivor, a frontrunner. She constructed buildings of care and safety whereas the remainder of the world debated whether or not her existence was even legitimate. She didn’t simply train trans folks tips on how to survive; she modeled for all of us what it seems like to like our folks so fiercely that you simply construct freedom from the bottom up.
Once we lose somebody like Miss Main, we lose greater than an individual — we lose a blueprint for tips on how to be human whereas constructing revolution.
Her vitality might be felt within the methods Black tradition has developed. The unapologetic self-expression we see in music movies, on phases, and in vogue — the boldness of Black pleasure, the refusal to shrink — all of it carries her imprint. Once we have fun the rise of ballroom tradition, when Beyoncé fills a stadium, when Lil Nas X dares to be totally himself, when a Black baby places on glitter and feels divine — Miss Main’s spirit is there.
And but, our collective reminiscence typically forgets to say her identify. We raise up our heroes — Dr. King, Malcolm, Rosa, John — however too hardly ever the ladies like Miss Main who constructed the emotional and religious infrastructure that held us all collectively.
If our historical past can maintain Malcolm’s anger and Martin’s dream, it may possibly additionally maintain Miss Main’s care — the revolution of a Black lady who refused to cease loving her folks, even after they wouldn’t love her again.
Her legacy reminds us that Black freedom can’t be selective. A liberation that excludes Black trans girls shouldn’t be liberation in any respect.
Miss Main’s demise asks us to stretch our mourning broad sufficient to incorporate the moms of actions we had been too afraid to assert. To say her identify not simply in queer areas, however in each room the place Black freedom is being deliberate, preached, or carried out.
As a result of she was there first — loving us earlier than we knew tips on how to love ourselves.
The Loss To Black Trans Folks
When the world loses a frontrunner, it holds press conferences and writes headlines. However once we lose a mom, we really feel it in our bones.
For Black trans folks, Miss Main’s passing is not only a historic loss — it’s a private one. She wasn’t an icon from afar; she was our elder, our protector, our blueprint for surviving and nonetheless laughing.
The broader world will keep in mind her as a pioneer. We keep in mind her as the girl who confirmed up with meals, with lease cash, with hugs and onerous truths. We keep in mind the best way she checked out you — seeing your ache, sure, but additionally your chance.
Miss Main’s existence dismantles one of the harmful lies about Black trans folks — that we’re new, that we simply “appeared,” that our presence in Black life is a contemporary anomaly or a model. Too typically, folks inside and out of doors our neighborhood talk about us as if we’re the shiny ornamentation of Black tradition slightly than its architects.
However Miss Main is information. She is proof. She is an 80-year dwelling report of the reality that Black trans folks have at all times been right here — shaping the rhythm, language, and survival methods that outline who we’re as a folks. She’s proof that our our bodies and brilliance have lengthy been a part of the equipment that strikes our tradition ahead.
Her transition adjustments one thing within the proof. With out her bodily presence, many will now look to the subsequent most seen names — Laverne Cox and TS Madison — because the face of Black transness. Laverne’s breakout on Orange Is the New Black and Madison’s groundbreaking reign on digital platforms flipped the world’s understanding of what trans visibility might seem like. However these moments stand on Miss Main’s shoulders. She constructed the likelihood for that degree of visibility, energy, and cultural respect to even exist.
The lack of Miss Main shifts the proof that so many individuals ask for once we discuss in regards to the significance of Black trans lives — not simply our significance as human beings, however our significance to the tradition itself.
A changemaker who lived and led on this land for greater than eight a long time has transitioned. Meaning our collective grief and loss now transforms into obligation — into motion, into the second revolution Miss Main spent her life getting ready us for.
The Second Revolution
The primary revolution — the one which carried us by civil rights, by Stonewall, by the AIDS disaster — taught us tips on how to combat. It gave us our voices, our marches, our actions, and our visibility. However this subsequent one — the one Miss Main left in our palms — calls for one thing deeper. It asks us to combat not just for survival, however for security. Not simply to be seen, however to be sovereign.
Miss Main used to say that visibility with out safety is simply publicity. She knew that the world can watch you and nonetheless need you gone. The second revolution requires us to construct what she constructed: networks of care, methods of mutual assist, communities that love folks in actual time, not in memoriam.
This revolution is not going to be televised, not as a result of it isn’t taking place, however as a result of it’s already underway — in our houses, our artwork, our organizing, our insistence on pleasure. It’s taking place in the best way we refuse to desert each other, the best way we create security in cities that by no means deliberate for our survival.
The second revolution seems like Black trans girls main organizations, constructing faculties, writing coverage, producing movies, elevating households. It seems like neighborhood refusing to commerce visibility for security. It seems like all of us — queer, trans, cis, straight, Black — realizing that our collective future will depend on defending the folks this world has made most susceptible.
If the primary revolution bought us seen, the second should make us protected.
And Miss Main has already drawn us the map. It’s within the applications she constructed, the folks she mentored, the braveness she taught us to hold.
That is the revolution of care — the one the place we don’t await permission to construct freedom, the one the place we mom the motion the best way she mothered us.
The Constellation She Leaves Behind
The sky seems completely different now. The brightest star has set — however stars like Miss Main don’t merely disappear. When a star reaches the tip of its life, it erupts in a supernova — a burst of vitality so highly effective that it releases stardust throughout the universe. That stardust turns into the uncooked materials for brand spanking new stars, new mild, new worlds.
That’s what Miss Main has accomplished. Her transition isn’t an ending; it’s an enlargement. Her brilliance didn’t dim — it multiplied. The power she carried in her physique, her phrases, and her work has been launched into all of us.
Proper now, her mild remains to be transferring — scattering by our communities, by our conversations, by the areas we construct and the methods we love one another. That is the second for us to pause, to really feel it, to soak up what it means for her star to alter type. As a result of this vitality — her vitality — shouldn’t be meant to be mourned quietly. It’s meant to be activated.
That is our name to motion: to coalesce as a neighborhood and turn out to be the supernova that takes us into the subsequent section of freedom and liberation — not only for Black queer folks, not only for Black trans folks, however for Black folks, interval.
Miss Main didn’t simply present us tips on how to survive oppression. She confirmed us tips on how to remodel it — tips on how to flip ache into chance, and loss into legacy.
She didn’t go away us in darkness. She left us in orbit, illuminated and prepared.
The North Star has set, however the galaxy she created nonetheless glows — brighter, wider, extra infinite than earlier than.
If you happen to search for tonight, you’ll see her there — not watching, however working — scattering her mild so that each technology that follows can discover its manner dwelling.
Miss Main taught us tips on how to survive.
Now it’s our flip to turn out to be the explosion that births the subsequent technology of stars.
Dominique Morgan, Sexual Well being Professional, Adolescent Well being Educator and Advocate, is an award-winning artist, philanthropist, and the Founder & CEO of Starks & Whitiker Consulting. Her work has been featured in Forbes, MTV, Essence, and extra. Comply with her on TikTok @thedominiquemorgan.
SEE ALSO:
Between Freedom and Hearth: About Black and Queer Survival
A Story About Restrooms, Respect, And Simply Wanting To Be
When The Final North Star Units: The Life And Legacy Of Miss Main Griffin-Gracy
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