New TransGriot Blog Links

left photo-Jackie
right photo-Angelica

Hey TransGriot readers!

Just a quick note about two of the blogs that I've linked to TransGriot.

Jackie's Things According To Me is one I discovered after she left comments on many of my posts. It's an enjoyable read on subjects ranging from her life in a long term committed relationship to current events, so check it out. I get a kick out of the fact that her partner's name is Monica as well ;)

Angelica Love Ross is a person I introduced you peeps to earlier this month. I wrote about her You Tube video imploring African-American transwomen to work on the internal part of transition. In addition to having a Chicago-based image consulting business Angelica has started a blog called The Transsexual Revolution. I'm pleased to announce that she has asked me to become a contributing guest poster on her blog.

One thing that you'll discover as you continue to peruse TransGriot is that there are many ways to transition. What makes it so fascinating is that it's a journey that can be universal in nature but it's also as individual as the person undergoing it. I hope that you'll enjoy reading the thoughts of a twentysomething transwoman that's traveling that road right now.

Janet Hill

,

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-transgender women who have qualities that I admire.


Janet Hill is one impressive sistah. She's the Vice President of Washington, D.C. corporate consulting firm Alexander & Associates, Inc. She sits on the boards of Sprint Nextel, Inc.; Wendy’s International, Inc.; Dean Foods, Inc., McDonald Dental Laboratory in New Orleans, the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and the Durham Literacy Council.

She is a former chairwoman of the bipartisan Women’s Campaign Fund, a national PAC raising money for women running for federal, state and local offices. She taught mathematics at the high school and collegiate levels and served during the Carter Administration as a Special Assistant to then Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander.

Oh, did I mention she's the wife of NFL Hall of Famer Calvin Hill and the mother of Grant Hill?

She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 23, 1947. She attended Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts as one of five African-American students on the entire campus at the time. An interesting footnote from her time at Wellesley is that her college roommate was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. She graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and also holds an M.A. in mathematics from the University of Chicago.

She's a no-nonsense parent that earned the nickname 'The Sergeant' from her son's friends that she upgraded to 'The General'. She considered it a compliment as she mentioned in a May 12, 2002 CNN interview.

"Oh, it's absolutely a compliment. You know, I was tough as a mother of Grant when he was a young child, but that all ended when he was 18 years old."

She also believes that you have to set high standards for your children and do more than spend quality time with them.

"We aren't challenging them to work hard at something other than perfecting their athletic ability," she said in a 1998 Jet interview.

Like myself, she believes in the importance of role models. She takes it a step further and hopes that youth would look at accessible role models, i.e. the people that are closest to them and who can touch them every day.

"I hope your role models will be your parents, or maybe your teachers, coaches, neighbors or minister."

Janet Hill reminds me in a lot of ways of my own mother and many of the women of her era. It's a level of excellence that I want to emulate as well.

Shilah Phillips-The First African-American Miss Texas

Congratulations to Shilah Phillips who made a little Black history of her own on July 8, 2006. She became the first African-American to win the Miss Texas pageant.

She finished first runner up in the 2007 Miss America pageant held on January 29 and narrowly missed joining Vanessa Williams, Suzette Charles, Marjorie Judith Vincent, Dr. Debbye Turner, Kimberly Aiken, Erika Harold and Ericka Dunlap as sistahs who've won the Miss America crown.

As of yet there hasn't been an African-American who has won the Miss Texas USA pageant, but I have to add an asterisk to that statement.

In 1995 Deer Park resident Chelsi Smith won Miss Texas USA. When she was asked by a reporter how it felt to become the first African-American to win it, she replied that she wasn't Black, she was white. She clarified her statement by saying she was biracial but she'd already angered many Black Texans in the process.

It was like rubbing salt in the wound when she captured the Miss USA and Miss Universe titles later that year. I was even more pissed because one of my homegirls, Crystal Dillard competed in the 1984 Miss Texas USA pageant. Crystal almost made history that night but finished as the 4th runner up.

Okay, I'm done venting now. Back to the story.

I'm happy to see a sistah finally break through in the Miss Texas pageant. Pageants are such a big deal in the Lone Star State this one and Miss Texas USA are televised statewide in prime time. The Texas state pageants are traditionally more competitive and tougher to win than the actual Miss USA and Miss America ones with up to 100 contestants.

Texas girls that win the local ones consistently place in the semifinals of both pageant systems. Three Texans have gone on to win Miss America. Eight Texans have won Miss USA with the aforementioned Chelsi Smith becoming Miss Universe. Halle Berry had the misfortune of competing during the unprecedented run from 1985-1989 in which Texans won Miss USA five straight years, otherwise she would have become the first African-American Miss USA in 1986.

Shilah, congratulations and continued success in all your future endeavors.

Tall Sistahs

photo-Sen. Barack Obama and his statuesque 5'11" wife Michelle.


In our society women are considered tall if they are 5'8' or taller. There's much debate as to how elastic that definition of 'tall' is. My personal belief is that if you're 5'7" or above you can consider yourself tall. Some people dispute my belief and state that tall status for women starts at 5'6".

One of my issues when I started transition was my height. I used to believe the hype despite the abundant evidence that there weren't a lot of women my height (6'2") and I would get read like a cheap novel.

A few things happened that changed my outlook. The rise of 5'11" Tyra Banks as a supermodel at the time I was beginning my transition, Dr. Cole drilling it into my head during my gender counseling sessions over time that women come in ALL shapes and sizes, my own observations of the world around me and the startup of the WNBA in 1997. I began to look at it with a renewed sense of pride that I am over 6 feet tall and most of my under 5'7" sisters would love to be walking in my pumps.

My fears turned out to be unfounded. The ironic thing is that most peeps when they see me on the street ask me if I'm a fashion model or a WNBA ballplayer. ;)

To help those who may be going through a similar thing, this is a list that I have compiled of sistahs that are 5'7" or taller. While there are other lists of tall women on the Net, many of them either don't have or list few of our African-American stars or peeps of note.

This post will be one that I'll continually update. There are tall women of all ethnic backgrounds and I'll be putting that together in a separate post.

The Tall Sistahs List

5'7"

Halle Berry
Eve
India Arie
Vivica A. Fox
Sanaa Lathan
Sade
Jackee
Tracee Ellis Ross
Florence Griffith-Joyner
Rosario Dawson
Dawnn Lewis
Beyonce Knowles
Dionne Warwick

5'8"

Aaliyah
Rihanna
Shari Headley
Ananda Lewis
Whitney Houston
Gabrielle Union
Jill Marie Jones
Pam Grier
Chudney Ross (Diana Ross' daughter and Tracee Eillis Ross' baby sis)
Maritza Correia (US women's team swimmer)
Zahra Redwood (2007 Miss Jamaica)
Jennifer Beals 5'8 1/2”

5'9"

Michael Michele
Mariah Carey
Ciara
Iman
Kelis
Kim Coles
Mo’Nique
Beverly Johnson
Toccara Jones
Garcelle Beauvais
Lela Rochon
Valarie Pettiford
Yoanna Henry (2007 Miss St. Lucia)
Renata Christian (2007 Miss US Virgin Islands)
Shakara Ledard 5'9 1/2" (supermodel)
Crystle Stewart (2008 Miss USA)

5'10"

Jayne Kennedy
Naomi Campbell
Serena Williams
Cynthia Cooper
Laila Ali
Queen Latifah
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Robin Roberts
Kenya Moore
Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth
K.D. (Karen Denise) Aubert
Lisa Fischer (Luther Vandross backup singer)
Naomi Sims
Micaela Reis (2007 Miss Angola)
Meleesea Payne (2007 Miss Guyana)
Flaviana Matata (2007 Miss Tanzania)
Gayle King
Veronica Webb 5'10 1/2"


5'11"

Tyra Banks
Grace Jones
Nikki McCray
Alek Wek
Marion Jones
Marsha Warfield
Michelle Obama
Anne Marie Johnson
Rachel Smith (2007 Miss USA)
Rosemary Chileshe (2007 Miss Zambia)
Wendy Williams 5’11 1/2”

6 feet

Phyllis Hyman
Aisha Tyler
Faye Wattleton (former head Planned Parenthood)
Sheryl Swoopes
Nona Gaye
Macy Gray
Kimora Lee Simmons
Maya Angelou
Stagecoach Mary Fields
Jamaica Kincaid
Octavia Butler
Carole Gist (first African-American Miss USA)
Yolanda Adams
Jewel Garner (2007 Miss Barbados)

6'1"

Wendy Fitzwilliam (1998 Miss Universe)
Tamika Catchings (Indiana Fever)
Swin Cash (Seattle Storm)
Jade Johnson (British long-jumper)
Venus Williams 6'11/2"

6'2"

Tamara Dobson (from the Cleopatra Jones movie)
Tina Thompson (Houston Comets)
Rev. Paula McGee (Twin sis of Pamela McGee and USC b-ball great)
Pamela McGee (Twin sis of Paula McGee and retired WNBA baller)
Oluchi Onweagba (Nigerian-born supermodel)
Flo Hyman (former US Olympic volleyballer)
Chamique Holdsclaw (LA Sparks)
Tari Phillips (former Houston Comet)
Tamika Whitmore (Indiana Fever)

6'3"

Cheryl Miller
Mistie Williams (Houston Comets center and daughter of Chubby Checker)
Cheryl Ford (Detroit Shock and daughter of NBA hall of famer Karl Malone)
Astou Ndiaye-Diatta (Indiana Fever)
DeMya Walker (Sacramento Monarchs)

6'4"

Carolyn Peck (former University of Florida women's Head Coach)
Candace Parker (LA Sparks)
Monique Ambers (former head coach of the Sacramento Monarchs)
Tangela Smith (Charlotte Sting)
Tammy Sutton-Brown (Indiana Fever)

6'5"

Lisa Leslie (Olympian and LA Sparks center)
Monica Lamb (former center Houston Comets)
Michelle Snow (Houston Comets center)

6'6"
Sylvia Fowles (Chicago Sky)

Black Transgender TV Characters

left photo-Flip Wilson as Geraldine Jones
right photo-Sheryl Lee Ralph as Claire on Barbershop: The Series


Back in 2000 when GLAAD was crowing about the TV show Ally McBeal having a transgender character, I pointed out the Edith Stokes character from The Jeffersons was missing from their list. As usual when it comes to matters of people of color GLAAD was silent about that.

And that ain't the only one.

African-American transgender characters are not a new phenomenon. They've been on television for a while and you can probably consider Flip Wilson's Geraldine Jones as the first one. On Thursday nights from 1970 to 1974 I would tune in to The Flip Wilson Show si that I could see the latest antics of the sassy wise-cracking Geraldine. I loved to see her utter her famous line 'what you see is what you get' and professing her love for her boyfriend 'Killer'.

Interestingly enough one of the shows that was on opposite Flip was All In The Family, which had the Beverly LaSalle character on for three episodes.

In 1977 came the 'Just A Friend' episode aired during The Jeffersons fourth season. We get to see George happily anticipating the arrival in New York of his old Navy buddy Eddie Stokes that he hasn't seen in 25 years.

He discovers when he arrives at the hotel that Eddie has transitioned and is now Edith (played by Young and the Restless actress Veronica Redd).
He initially thinks that it's a prank since Eddie has a rep as a practical jokester. But when he comes to the realization that Edith is not joking about this subject he rejects her and storms out of the room.

He gets in hot water with Louise who doesn't believe his story. She called the hotel and discovered that the room was registered to Edith Stokes and suspects that George is having an affair. Goerge goes to the desperate measure of having one of his employees dress in drag trying to impersonate Edie after he fails to locate her.

Edie shows up at his apartment and Louise is skeptical until Edie validates her identity by reciting a line from the letters that Louise used to write to George during his time in the Navy. They end the episode with Goerge accepting his friend and her playing a practical joke on George that results in him getting dunked with water.

That episode was groundbreaking at the time in terms of the accurately depiction of some of the emotions that transpeople deal with when Edie was explaining her transition. It shouldn't have been a surprise to me since it was a Norman Lear produced show and a spinoff from All In the Family. They were aware of the issues thanks to the Beverly LaSalle episodes. It was just the first time it was done with an African-American character.

RuPaul from 1996-1998 hosted a talk show on VH-1 and has done cameo roles on a few televison shows as well during the 90's.



The CW show All of Us during its first season featured Tyra Banks playing a transwoman in the 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' episode aired on February 24, 2004. It was an episode in which she played Dirk's estranged brother Tyrone. She shows up at the TV station and revealed that she was now Roni. I didn't like the way that one was handled because the Roni character came off as stereotypical and cartoonish.


Barbershop: The Series debuted on Showtime August 14, 2005 and for six episodes Sheryl Lee Ralph played Claire, a woman that Eddie meets in a local bar.

Things progress very quickly and Claire tells him not long after they would up in bed that she is a transwoman.
The delicious part about it was that Eddie was forced to confront the homophobic statements he'd been spouting from his barber chair. Over those episodes you get to watch Claire and Eddie attempt to resolve the issues that crop up in that relationship.

While Veronica Redd and Sheryl Lee Ralph have done the best job in my opinion of a realistic portrayal of what we go through, I'm greedy.

I want and need to see a show that's willing to do a realistic African-American transgender character. Additionally I'd like that character to not be a one shot deal, killed off in the first ten seconds and be part of a soap or drama series. Is that too much to ask for? Then again I may have to write that character on my own.

Yo Hollywood, hit me up on my e-mail when you're ready for a realistic transgender character with soul.

Professor Emeritus John Hope Franklin Helps Teach Us Who We Are

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
By: Michael H. Cottman
from BlackAmericaWeb.com

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey." -- JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN.

John Hope Franklin, the undisputed dean of black historians, turned 92 last month, but his landmark work studying the 300-year social evolution of African-Americans continues as professor emeritus of history at Duke University.

Franklin’s many publications have focused on the history of the American South and on the African-American contribution to the development of the United States.

His best-known book, the pioneering and now classic "From Slavery to Freedom (1947; 8th ed. 2000)" revolutionized the understanding of African-American history and changed the way the subject is taught throughout the United States.

Among Franklin's other works are "The Militant South: 1800–1860 (1956)," "Reconstruction after the Civil War (1961)," "Color and Race (1968)," "Racial Equality in America (1976)," "Race and History (1989)," "The Color Line (1993)" and "In Search of the Promised Land."

"It was necessary, as a black historian," Franklin once said, "to have a personal agenda."

Franklin also edited a number of books, including a 1997 autobiography of his father, an Oklahoma lawyer. Franklin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. His papers form the collection of Duke's John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African-American Documentation.

Darlene Taylor, who has researched the African slave trade for several national and international educational projects, said she frequently turns to Franklin’s work for accurate accounts of black history.

"We should celebrate Dr. Franklin’s contributions to African history and his contributions to understanding the history of people of African descent," Taylor, director of the Middle Passage Legacy, told BlackAmericaWeb.com Monday.

"When you look at history books, when you look at how children are learning about African history and African-American history, so much is left out," Taylor said. "But thanks to Dr. Franklin, he is keeping our history alive."

Taylor said she often referred to Franklin’s books while researching the slave trade when she lived in Egypt during the 1990s.

"It’s important to celebrate Dr. Franklin’s work as he continues to tell our history," Taylor said. "Dr. Franklin provides a special perspective that should be heard."

A renowned historian and Medal of Freedom recipient, Franklin was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 to chair the Advisory Board for the President’s Initiative on Race, created to begin "a great and unprecedented conversation about race" across America.

"We can't undo this part of our heritage," Franklin once said. "But what we can affect is where we are headed. I want to talk about multi-culturalism, because I think that's where we are headed."

Franklin was a co-recipient of the $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity, awarded by the Library of Congress last year. Professor Franklin shared the prize with Princeton professor Yu Ying-Shih.

It is how humanity has impacted black Americans -- from the Civil War to civil rights -- that Franklin has studied and debated.

"It's not so much Katrina as a phenomenon as it's Katrina as a metaphor for what our society has become," Franklin told reporters last year. "It reflects; it's a mirror of what we've become -- super-extraordinarily complacent."

In 2001, Duke University opened the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, which is dedicated to bringing together the nation’s social scientists.

Franklin was born on Jan. 2, 1915 in Oklahoma and was educated at Fisk and Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. He has taught at Fisk, Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago. In 1982, he was named James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke and was elected professor emeritus in 1985. From 1985 to 1992, he was professor of legal history in the Duke Law School.

Franklin's mother, Mollie, was a teacher, and his father, B.C. Franklin, was an attorney who handled lawsuits precipitated by the famous Tulsa Race Riot on 1921. A black man named Dick Rowland, stepped into an elevator in the Drexel Building operated by a white woman, Sarah Page. Rowland was accused of sexually attacking Page, which sparked the riots.

"When I was eight years old, people used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up," Franklin said in a speech at Duke University last year. "I said, ‘The first Negro president of the United States.’ "

In addition to his work as a historian, Franklin was involved in some of the key events of the civil rights movement. As an expert on Southern history, he was recruited by NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall in 1953 to help prepare the brief in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also accompanied Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965.

"He's been, in many ways, like an African elder, a repository of wisdom, of tradition, and just a solid good sense, and a remarkable sense of humanness," Archbishop Desmond Tutu said of Franklin in a PBS documentary.

In 1978, Who's Who in America selected Dr. Franklin as one of eight Americans who has made significant contributions to society. In 1996, Franklin was elected to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame, and in 1997, he received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. In addition, Franklin has also received honorary degrees from more than 100 colleges and universities.

"If the house is to be set in order," Franklin said, "one cannot begin with the present. He must begin with the past."

If Anna Nicole Smith Were Black, Would She Be Getting Such A Glorified Post Mortem? No

photo-Anna leaving the Supreme Court


Wednesday, February 21, 2007
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Maybe it's out of respect for the dead that Rush Limbaugh hasn't called ex-stripper and Playboy centerfold Anna Nicole Smith a "ho," the insult he leveled at the black stripper who accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping her in a bathroom.

But I suspect that when people like Limbaugh see white women who behave like Smith, they see her through the prism of quirkiness and outrageousness. With black women, they're quicker to turn the morality lens on us.

And when they look at us with that lens, they tend to freeze us in it.

First of all, let me say that it is always a sad thing to hear of anyone dying before their time, whether that person is a 19-year-old black guy who gets gunned down by gang bullets or a 39-year-old blonde bombshell like Smith, whose excesses finally caught up with her. Sadder still is that Smith leaves behind a five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn, who will never know her mother.

But when you strip away the spin and apply the morality standards to her life that black women, and especially poor black women, are lambasted for not living up to, you find someone who fell far short of those standards.

Yet in spite of that, she's being iconized.

Let's see. Smith began her climb to fame as a stripper. She posed naked in Playboy, and achieved her greatest fame as a Guess? Jeans model. She had no great artistic talent to dwarf those superficial beginnings, so she built her life on trying to find bizarre ways to stay in the spotlight.

By the end of her life, she had become a drug abuser and had given birth to a daughter out-of-wedlock. Three men are claiming to have fathered her daughter -- one of which includes a married man, Prince Frederick von Anhalt -- who claims they had an affair since the 1990s.

While no one will know, at least for a while, who Dannielynn's real daddy is, what is clear is that Smith was a tad promiscuous. She did triple the things that got Janet Jackson vilified for exposing a nipple ring at the 2004 Super Bowl, but even her death won't make her go away.

The headlines and newscasts have been dominated by her. Journalists are combing her old stomping ground in Mexia, Texas to uncover clues about her childhood. She's being dubbed as a "tragic beauty," and, laughably, being compared to Marilyn Monroe -- even though her closest brush with movie fame came in a "Naked Gun" spoof.

Yet when I think about how Smith lived her life, and all the empathetic airings of the circumstances surrounding her death, I have to wonder: If she were black, would there have been a rush to euphemize her? Would writers be struggling to find meaning in her life, a life that was basically driven by her need to be in spotlight?

The answer I keep coming up with is no.

Even a black woman as talented as Jackson wasn't able to make outrageousness work for her. Her wardrobe malfunction, for example, sent America into a tizzy for months. No one saw it as gutsy, or even accepted it as a mistake as much as they saw it as immoral, as all that was wrong with America.

She couldn't apologize enough for it. And people wouldn't let it go.

Some pundits even blamed her and "Nipplegate" for galvanizing morals voters and causing John Kerry to lose the 2004 presidential election.
Anytime she visited a new place, few media smart-alecks could resist admonishing her to keep her clothes on.

I wonder what those so-called morals voters are saying now, as the tawdry details of Smith's daughter's paternity continue to eat up much more air time than the 2004 Super Bowl did.

Now, none of this is to say that black women ought to be out there fighting to get famous for being loose or promiscuous. But as I constantly am bombarded with the details of Smith's life, I can't help but to think about how race and wealth is lived in this country. I think about how Smith receives adulation and empathy in spite of the way that she lived her life, and black women like Jackson, as well as the Duke stripper, receive only contempt and are held up as examples of black immorality if they take off their clothes in public or have babies out of wedlock. And while I'm all for black women holding themselves to high behavioral standards, I still don't like it when we're held to a double one.

One that makes the lower standards fine as long as they come in creamy blond packaging.

In New Orleans, Black Carnival Has its High-Society Side

The 2005 Bunch Club Gala attendees seven and a half months before Katrina struck. Photo by Lloyd Dennis

The Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS

Considering she says she's not a "girly-girl," Lynez Preyan has spent a lot of time dressing up, practicing the graceful wave of a scepter and working on her curtsy.

"They want us to sweep all the way to the floor," Preyan says, giggling as she demonstrates the move she employed as queen of the Young Men Illinois Club ball. "I'm a little shaky, especially in high heels."

Preyan _ who's older sister Lynesia made her debut with the club in 2002 _ is carrying on family and New Orleans traditions that are an important thread in the social fabric of the city's black community.

After Hurricane Katrina, Carnival clubs to which prosperous black New Orleanians have belonged for generations were lost, their members scattered by the storm.

Last year the Young Men Illinois Club, and its parent, the Original Illinois Club, founded in 1895 by Pullman porters, canceled their balls. The Black Pirates, Plantation Revelers, Bon Temps, Beau Brummels and the Bunch Club also canceled.

This year, many of the clubs are making a comeback.

Mardi Gras in the black community happens on several strata. There are the blue-collar Mardi Gras Indians, whose marches in Native American regalia are highlights of the season, and the middle-class Zulu organization, whose float parade is a local favorite. But the upper crust of New Orleans black society _ doctors, dentists, lawyers or skilled professionals _ debuts its daughters in the private setting of the traditional, invitation-only Carnival ball.

"People only talk about the poor people that were displaced by the hurricane," said Dr. Willard Dumas, a dentist and member of the Bunch Club. "But a lot of the black professionals, families that were a big part of New Orleans economy and culture, were flooded out as well."

Historically, the private side of Carnival has been a mostly segregated affair with whites and blacks forming their own organizations. In recent years, the race barrier has broken down somewhat, partly due to a 1991 city ordinance to bar street parading by racially discriminating groups.

Rex, an old-line white society krewe, admitted black members, but Comus, founded before the Civil War, dropped its parade rather than admit minorities though it still holds an exclusive ball. Zulu has long admitted white float riders.

"We've talked about admitting white members at length," said Lawrence Robinson, president of the Young Men Illinois, and a member for 31 years. "We don't prevent anyone from joining. We just haven't been approached yet. I think it will happen though. I look at the girls now and they have more white friends. They go to school together, play sports together. It'll happen."

The black Mardi Gras clubs are an important part of New Orleans society, said Errol Laborde, a Mardi Gras historian.

"New Orleans always had a large black middle class," Laborde said. "And the clubs became the way they introduced their daughters into society. And just as the white clubs do, it was always in connection with Carnival."

So despite the daily burden of the recovery from Katrina, the balls are reappearing on the Carnival scene. The Bunch and Plantation Revelers will stage scaled-down dances and balls as did the Young Men Illinois Club, though the latter is still short 10 of its 40 members.

Preyan, a freshman pre-med student at Xavier University, was queen for an evening on Feb. 2, reigning over a court of 15 other debutantes under the auspices of the Young Men Illinois Club. They range from 16 to 18 years old and most are students at the city's old-line Catholic high schools.

Preyan's family was displaced for almost a year after Katrina. Her father, who owns an electric service company, commuted from Baton Rouge. Preyan made the trip with him from January to June 2006 so she could finish her senior year at Dominican High School.

Their home in eastern New Orleans was gutted and rebuilt. But damaged houses, some with Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers in the yards, extend out for miles around it.

For the club's debutantes, events begin in September and include a formal tea and three or more formal parties, plus the debutante ball.

They attend weekly meetings with the club's etiquette officer, Gail Barnes-McConduit. Her instructions cover everything from proper table place settings to how to execute the floor-sweeping curtsey they will use at the ball.

"The Young Men Illinois Club has a great interest in teaching these girls how to make the transition into adulthood," Barnes-McConduit said. "That covers everything from table manners to common courtesy."

At 18, Preyan prefers jeans and tank tops. She and fellow debutantes balked a bit when Barnes-McConduit began introducing then to the finer points of protocol.

"It was all about which glass went where, which fork was used for what," she said. "We even had to learn how to walk a certain way. Grace and dignity, I heard those words over and over."

More than that, she began living them.

At the formal tea in September, Preyan, decked out in am off-white silk suit, matching hat and gloves, was undaunted by the elaborate place settings or the sedate ambiance of the regal tearoom.

In addition to the suit for the tea, the debutantes must have a different gown for each party and the ball.

"It is very expensive," said Dalton Savwoir, spokesman for the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. His daughter, Macy, 17, is making her debut this season.

Besides the wardrobe, which costs thousands of dollars, Savwoir said, there are presents for the queen and the other debutantes, the pages _ young boys that escort the queen onto the stage at the ball _ the club members and their families.

Savwoir threw the required party for Macy at Gallier Hall, the Greek Revival building that served as City Hall for more than a century.

"The party ran about $8,000," Savwoir said. "And that doesn't include the limousine or the hairdresser or any of the incidentals."

The ball was the culmination of the debutante season.

Preyan, in a flowing white gown, a sparkling rhinestone crown on her head, a jeweled scepter in her hand, began the traditional tableau _ the picturesque grouping that highlights the ball.

"I'm supposed to stop when I first step onto the floor and stand there for a minute so the audience can admire me," Preyan said. "My pages will be behind me and we will slowly move around the room while I sweep my scepter back and forth."

Preyan ended up on the stage where each of the other debutantes was escorted and posed.

Although she originally hesitated at the rules that confined gowns to pastel colors with wide straps and billowing skirts, Preyan said she and the other debutantes eventually came around.

"I'm not really a girly-girl, or a tomboy," she said. "But for a little while I get to be an 1890s girl with all the glamour that goes with it. It really is wonderful."

Beaten but Not Broken, Black Krewes Make a Big Return at This Year’s Mardi Gras Fest

photo-the start of the Zulu parade

Tuesday, February 20, 2007
By Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com

When the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Inc., steps off at 8 a.m. Tuesday morning to lead the Mardi Gras Day parade, it will cap a major recovery of the black Carnival season in New Orleans.

Last year, Zulu, the premier black parading organization in the Crescent City, managed to put together a parade, despite the displacement of many of its 600 members in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The city’s smaller black social clubs, which host parties and debutante balls during Carnival, were mostly absent from the scene.

This year, however, the black organizations have made a comeback.

“We came back strong last year, and we’re going to be even stronger this year. The city needed it,” said Alvin Lee, a Zulu member. “It’s time for it.”

Lee said for a true New Orleanean, Carnival festivities leading up to Mardi Gras are just part of the fabric of life.

“Zulu has been in my life since I was a kid,” Lee told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “There’s something about that second line music. It’s in the blood.”

Zulu is the only black organization marching on Tuesday, but the Bunch Club, the Young Men Illinois and the Plantation Revelers were among the traditional black, middle-class organizations hosting soirees.

The groups have had to patch themselves back into the fabric of New Orleans life because so many of their members were displaced by Katrina. Some commuted from Baton Rouge, Houston or places farther afield to participate in Carnival.

According to the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce Web site, there are about 70 carnival groups. “Some are over 100 years old," the site quotes, "but krewes are continually forming and disbanding.”

A check of a Web site that lists contact information for krewes and social organizations revealed that many no longer have active Web sites, have disbanded or have chosen not to participate this year. A number are inactive because it has been too difficult to keep the organizations going with members displaced by Katrina.

“These cultural events are vital to the city,” Keith Weldon Medley, a writer and a member of Bunch, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “When we put on our dance, we’re making a statement that New Orleans’ traditions are alive and will continue into the rest of the century.”

“To a true New Orleanean, it’s a way to relax, get your focus, deal with the devastation,” Lee said. “For one day, there is no race. Everybody gets along on this day.”

Lee added that for Zulu, Mardi Gras is just one part of its mission.

“Mardi Gras is one day a year. Zulu is 12 months a year,” Lee said, pointing out that while most people know about the revelry of Mardi Gras, fewer know about the community service the organization provides throughout the year.

“We give out Thanksgiving baskets, we have a college fund. We help people in need. We’re a social aid and fun organization,” Lee said.

Zulu is involved with the Partners in Education Program in the city’s public schools. In fact, Morris F.X. Jeff Sr. Elementary School was named for the first black man to become a supervisor in the New Orleans Recreation Department, a man who also was King Zulu in 1972. The organization also has a scholarship fund that helps students at Dillard, Southern and Xavier universities.

“I know any way I can contribute and give back to the things that have been around for years, I want to do,” said Kaira Stelly, who will be riding on the Zulu Governor’s float, one of the most prestigious floats because the Zulu King and Queen will be aboard.

Stelly, a native of New Orleans who now lives in Silver Spring, Md., just outside Washington, D.C., told BlackAmericaWeb.com that she tries to get home every year to participate.

She said that it is even more important to help build the economy and black organizations in the wake of Katrina. She said the Zulu’s theme this year, “Keep It Rollin’,” sums up what participating in Mardi Gras means to her and her family.

“I’ve got family riding with me this year, my dad, my aunt,” Stelly said, adding that it is hard work trying to keep up with the planning meetings and other activities that Zulu sponsors because she lives so far away.

It also is a serious investment of money. Whether you are a member of an organization or a civilian who wants to ride on a float, you have to ante up.

“Anybody can ride a float, as long as you pay your reciprocity,” Lee said. “Everything is a budget; everything is about dollars. It averages $1,200-plus to be a member, then you have to buy your throws,” the trinkets thrown from the floats to the crowd in the street.

The more prestigious the float, the more it costs to ride, but the fee to ride runs around $1,500.

“You have no idea. It gets costly. There’s always that one thing more you tell yourself you wish you had. But I’m at the point that whatever I have, I have. There is no turning back. We have to be ready to start assembling at 2 a.m.,” Stelly said the evening before Mardi Gras.

“Zulu is the first parade of Mardi Gras Day. It’s all black. It’s pretty prestigious,” Stelly said.

“You’ve got to see it to believe it,” Lee said. “Until you really feel it and breathe it and smell it and feel it, you’ll never know. It helps you escape. For that one day, you forget about your troubles.”

Don't You Conservatives Have Your Own Heroes?

Conservatism: n, The disposition and tendency to preserve what is established; opposition to change; the habit of mind; or conduct, of a conservative.

I have a conservative that likes to post comments every now and then on this blog. This person seems to think like all conservatives tend to do that they are smarter than everyone else. I've got to call him out on one of his more ludicrous statements.

To borrow an old saying, those of you who THINK you are intelligent really annoy those of us who ARE.

One of the things that I have noted in my decade long battle of wits on and off the Net with conservatives is that they always make this claim that a Democratic or progressive hero if he were alive today would vote GOP.

Excuse me for a moment while I double over in laughter. (cue The Proud Family Papi Boulevardez laugh here)

One of the people whose name they love to try claim as one of theirs, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had this to say about conservatives in an October 26, 1939 radio address:

"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."

Obviously FDR wouldn't be voting GOP right now because the Republicans are the peeps who playa-hated the New Deal for decades and have spent the latter half of the 20th century working tirelessly to dismantle it and its crown jewels of Medicaid and Social Security.

Abraham Lincoln said about them in a February 27, 1860 speech:

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?"

John F. Kennedy? Please. There's as much chance of JFK voting Republican as George W. Bush has of successfully completing a Dale Carnegie speaking course.

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

Does that sound like a man that would vote GOP? Nope.

They sank to new lows last year when the National Black Republican Association ran ads in support of Michael Steele's failed 2006 US Senate campaign in Maryland claiming that Dr. Martin Luther King would have voted Republican.

I have only this to say. Better yet, I think I'll let Dr. King's words speak for themselves.

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Is the conservative movement so bereft of its own heroes that you have to disingenuously try to appropriate mine and attempt to twist their words to support your political agenda when that person's lifetime body of work is geared toward progressive causes and themes?

Yep.

Both parties have been in existence over 100 years. Their constituencies have flipped over time. It is now the GOP that has since 1964 been the home of the Dixiecrats and race-baiting bigots. The once solidly Democratic South has flipped the script in our time period to become Republican. Conversely the Democratic Party since 1964 is the one pushing progressive forward-thinking legislation and the one taking the lead role in civil rights matters.

It must be frustrating to be a conservative. Y'all have a longer losing streak than the Chicago Cubs and you're not as loveable. Ann Coulter and the conservative pundits that spout similar poisonous rhetoric devoid of facts just illuminate the image problem y'all have and the moral bankruptcy of conservatism as a political philosophy.

I gues it's tough being on the WRONG side of every issue in American history.

Y'all were on the losing side (and still are) in terms of American independence, slavery, the 40-hour workweek, women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, interracial marriage, US involvement in World Wars I and II, the environment, meat inspection laws...Shall I continue?

You conservatives will also lose on gay rights, universal health care and campaign finance reform.

But back to the originally scheduled post.

If conservatism is as superior as you peeps claim it is to liberalism, why would you spend so much time hatin' on liberals? Why do you always go negative in your campaigns and use vote suppression tactics if your conservative ideas are supposedly superior election winning ones? Why is it necessary for you to use Orwellian weasel words and deception to articulate and implement your policies? Why do you come up with bogus theories, excuses and spin to hide your policy failures?

With such a losing track record and a political philosophy that has more in common with communism in terms of stifling freedoms and individual rights, I can see why you'd attempt to falsely attempt to claim our progressive icons as your own. If I had folks like Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush as shining examples of conservative leadership I wouldn't claim them either.

Oh well, at least y'all have Ronald Reagan.

Why Y'all Hatin' On Beyonce?

I used to joke back when Destiny's Child was the hottest group going that they were the Supremes 2K version. Not long after that Beyonce released her solo album followed by Kelly Rowland's and Michelle Williams' solo releases.

I've noticed over the last year or so the increasing negativity from the Net and other quarters being directed at my Houston homegirl. I've heard people take perverse glee in the fact that Jennifer Hudson emerged as the breakout star of Dreamgirls and I'm a big Jennifer Hudson fan. I refuse to watch American Idol because she was screwed that year.

I'll be honest. If the technology were available for me to look like ANY woman past, present or future on the planet, she'd be in my top five. (hmm, there's an idea for a post. I'll get back to y'all on that later)

I had the pleasure of meeting Beyonce and her parents on an LAX flight I worked several years ago. I've had other peeps who spend extensive time around her report that she's a sweet kid. (I observed the same thing myself).

Frankly, I think a lot of the industrial sized Hateraid that's directed at Beyonce Giselle Knowles stems from jealousy. She's living what seems like a fairy-tale life. She's breathtakingly beautiful but down to earth. She's won Grammys. She sings the national anthem at the 2004 Super Bowl played in our hometown. She has a wealthy boyfriend in Jay-Z. She just became the first non-athlete, non-model and the second African-American woman to do the coveted Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover solo. If I'd come up with her story as the basis for a fiction novel people would roll their eyes and claim it's unrealistic.

It's real folks. Check out the videos and the Billboard Top 100 lists.

You have to admire someone whose father believed in his daughter's dream so much he quit his job at IBM to manage her career. Her mom Tina's shop is where during the 90's the power sisters in H-town got their hair done. The Knowleses were successful peeps and entrepreneurs before Beyonce blew up in the music biz. They have given money to their home church in Houston. The House of Dereon fashion design house they just started will drive that point home once again.

It's time for some of y'all to stop hatin' on the Knowles family, start appreciating and start taking notes.

Judge Glenda Hatchett

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-trans women who have qualities that I admire.

I first became aware of Judge Hatchett in 2000 thanks to her TV show. After watching the show, reading her bio and discovering articles about some of the groundbreaking work she was doing in the legal profession and beyond I became a fan.

She's an award winning jurist, children's advocate, author and mother of two, She's been recognized as Woman of the Year by 100 Black Men of America and one of the 10 Women of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of America.

She's an Atlanta native who graduated from Mount Holyoke College and Emory University Law School. She spent ten years as Delta Air Lines' highest ranking African-American woman in the company's legal and public relations departments. During her Delta tenure she was recognized by Ebony Magazine as one of the '100 Best and Brightest Women in Corporate America'.

In 1990 she accepted an appointment as chief presiding judge of the Fulton County, GA juvenile court system. During her eight year tenure Judge Hatchett received accolades from her legal colleagues for her innovative approaches to juvenile justice and creative sentencing. It's an approach she continues to implement on her television show. She is a spokesperson for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates).

That concern for our children and the work she's done as an advocate for them is something I hope to be able to incorporate into my own life one day.

I Have To Prove It Every Day

photo-Grace Park as Sharon 'Athena' Agathon

There was a recent Battlestar Galactica episode in which Sharon and her husband Helo were discussing some issues. During the conversation Helo remarked that to him his Cylon wife was always human. She countered that to the rest of the fleet she has to prove that every day.

I feel her on that.

There are times during this gender journey that I feel like Sharon. No matter how fly I look, how smart I am, how many awards I garner, how good a job I do and how many times my genetic girlfriends, supportive family members and classmates that are still in my life tell me that I am what I've known I was supposed to be, I still feel like Sharon in the fact that I have to prove my womanhood every day.

Sometimes that can get to be a pain in the ass.

Yeah, I'll admit that there are some days that I wish that I'd been born female from jump and get to experience everything about it. Usually the transmen I know will tell me otherwise and extol how happy they are to escape cramps, bloating, the cycle, et cetera. Even my girlfriends will tell me they consider me the lucky one. I'll sometimes respond with the comment that no one questions your femininity nor do you have to think about it on a regular basis. However, I do share one aspect of it with my genetic sisters. I now have a heightened risk for breast cancer and have to do mammograms and regular breast exams.

But as philosopher Simone de Beauvoir once stated, 'Great women are made, not born.'

I may have only been female externally for thirteen years, but in a sense I've been prepping for this point in my life for a long time. My goal is to be the best woman I can be despite being born in a male body. To me that means observing the great examples of positive women in my own family, my feminine role models famous and not-so-famous (which I'm profiling in my Women I Admire posts) and incorporating their best qualities into my own life.

One thing I'm acutely aware of growing up in a family of historians is the great contributions that Black women have and continue to make to advance our people. Uplifting the race in terms of community service is a part of Black womanhood that I eagerly embrace. All the sisters that I've read about and witnessed doing positive things inspires me to step it up another level.

I'm cognizant of the fact that Black women are considered trendsetters in terms of fashion and their images. I'm considered a role model in the transgender community and have to pay attention to the image that I project to the outside world. Not a problem since I like fashionable clothes, get a manicure and pedicure every two weeks, hair is on point and I rarely leave the house without my face done. The fact that I have a fashionista diva as a roommate who will not hesitate to call me out along with my best girlfriends doesn't hurt either.

With hormones, electrolysis, laser hair removal and surgery the physical part of transition is easy. The toughest part is the spiritual and emotional end of it. That part of the feminine journey doesn't end until they close the coffin lid on you. Getting in tune with the spiritual and emotional side is a must and too many of my transsistahs ignore or are unaware of that aspect of womanhood.

Black womanhood is a lofty goal to live up to. Sometimes I believe that some of the genetic women in my family dismiss the prayerful seriousness I place on being a compliment and not a detriment to the women (and men) that are related to me. I realized in my youth I don't just represent me, I represent my family and the entire African-American community. My interactions with society must be on point and reflect that at all times.

Nothing in life is easy. Being an African-American transwoman definitely isn't. It's hard work and frustrating as hell sometimes. All these words about my latest take on being transgender get boiled down to one simple fact: I'm happily living life in my own skin.

Even if I have to constantly prove that I'm one of the girls.

For Women of Color, A Fuller Beauty Standard

photo-model Toccara Jones

By Robin Givhan
Friday, February 16, 2007; C02

The voluptuous actress Jennifer Hudson wears a burgundy satin dress on the cover of the March issue of Vogue magazine, where she has been photographed by Annie Leibovitz and lionized by Andre Leon Talley. In the cover image, she leans slightly forward and her mouth is open as if she were captured in the middle of a song. Hudson, one of the stars of "Dreamgirls," is not the usual fragile-framed celebrity or model that one typically finds starring in an issue of Vogue.

March is not Vogue's "shape" issue, its yearly nod to women whose body type does not fit the fashion standard. It would not be particularly surprising to see her there. Instead, Hudson, who went from a reality show castoff to Oscar nominee, is the logical but unexpected star of the fashion bible's enormous "power" issue, which also celebrates women such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the model-turned-philanthropist Natalia Vodianova. Hudson is not photographed wearing her own clothes, the technique often applied to glamour-shy politicians and real people too big to fit the samples. She gets the full fashion treatment, Carolina Herrera dress and all.

The Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition also has a cover model known for her generous curves: singer Beyoncé Knowles. Although one should point out that her figure is generous only by the standards of Hollywood and Seventh Avenue. Most everyone else would simply describe it as "wow." Knowles, who was also in "Dreamgirls" is kneeling in the sand in a yellow and pink bikini.

The magazine also invited talk/reality show host Tyra Banks, who famously posed on the cover of the swimsuit issue 10 years ago in an itsy-bitsy polka-dot bikini, to re-create that image, according to the Associated Press. Banks was the first black model to appear on the cover alone.

Banks is approximately 20 pounds heavier on her 5-foot-10 frame since that time, a fact that caused so much cyber-sniping that she defended herself by posing as a luscious 161-pound pinup on the cover of People. She is a whole lot of woman now, but she did not diet down to fit into the old swimsuit. Sports Illustrated, clearly understanding that a lot of men like "a lot of woman," just added a little extra fabric to ensure tasteful coverage of the parts that had grown bigger.

These disparate magazines are lauding the booty beautiful at a time when the body standard for models -- and actresses -- has come under scrutiny for being unrealistically and unhealthily thin. While designers in New York were unveiling their fall 2007 collections last week, the industry hosted a panel presentation on the subject of ever-shrinking models who have gone from a size 6 a decade ago to size 2/4 and occasionally 0.

The one thing that connects these three curvaceous women, other than their celebrity, is that they are women of color. On them, curves are acceptable. While women such as actress Kate Winslet, who is white, have talked about not giving in to a Hollywood culture that demands they be super slim, it seems that only African-American and Latina actresses really get away with extra pounds, or even just a round
bottom. See: Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah, "Ugly Betty's" America Ferrera and "Grey's Anatomy's" Chandra Wilson and Sara Ramirez.

One could argue that these women, each one quite pretty, are not considered part of the mainstream -- their ethnicity is still a regularly used modifier in their professional lives. They stand just a little apart, so they are exempt from adhering to mainstream definitions of beauty. They set their own standards. But being judged by a different set of rules can be both liberating and vexing.

There may be a greater willingness to accept heft when it is brown or black because it is so much easier to find evidence of black women who are large and proud and take pleasure in their bodies. While so many women -- of all ethnicities -- fret about a modest waistline that protrudes slightly over a pair of low-slung jeans, creating the dreaded "muffin top," there is a group of self-assured women of color who have an entire loaf of bread rising up and over their waistband, and they don't care. Their pudge may not be healthy, but they project confidence and contentment.

There is also the stereotype of the large black woman as the diva-like sexpot: strong, aggressive and entitled. See: the comedian Mo'Nique. There is always the looming danger of taking that caricature into destructive and demoralizing territory -- black women as oversexed, or black women as impenetrable, or obesity as healthy.

But that iconic image has established that big can be beautiful and desirable -- at least when it comes to women of color. Telling a black woman that she has "big legs" -- meaning shapely -- is a compliment, not something meant to send her into training for a marathon.

The larger culture has not bought into that opinion, but it seems to have been swayed. Roundness is more accepted of black women because they are more accepting of their own curves.

Transcending MLK’S Dream

Local activist Tracee McDaniel speaks her truth in an attempt to spark change

By Ryan Lee
Friday, February 09, 2007
From the Southern Voice

MOMENTS BEFORE TRACEE MCDANIEL prepared to approach the podium outside The King Center on what would have been the revered civil rights leader’s 78th birthday, she began to second-guess the speech she was about to give.

She wondered if the hundreds of people who gathered in the Sweet Auburn district to commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. last month were ready to hear a new message about tolerance, about expanding King’s dreams of equality. For a minute, she questioned if she was ready to be the one who delivered it, or if it might be better for her to at least tone down her words.

“I finally just decided, it’s too late to be changing the speech now,” says McDaniel, who is the first transgender individual to speak at the rally that concludes Atlanta’s annual MLK march. “I thought the message needs to be expressed, and I was just so happy and excited that I was the one who was asked to do so.”

McDaniel received a call from organizers of the MLK march about 10 days before the event inviting her to speak, and ironically was in the middle of studying about MLK and Coretta Scott King for a public speaking and communications course at Georgia Perimeter College.

“I had been doing research and I read about their inclusiveness of the TLGBQ community as a whole, to make sure everyone is represented when it comes to equal rights,” McDaniel says, adding that she was somewhat nervous addressing the mostly black crowd.

“I would say it’s more challenging to build bridges with the African-American community basically because of what we’ve been taught and conditioned to believe over the years,” McDaniel says. “I just relied on the fact that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King included openly gay members in the civil rights movement.

“It was one of the most important speeches of my life,” she adds.

That legacy of inclusion is part of what motivates organizers of Atlanta’s MLK march to permit all of its partner organizations — including In The Life Atlanta, a black gay group — to select a speaker to participate in the post-march rally, said Rev. James Orange, who organizes the march on behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“We always have gays and lesbians participating in our rally because it’s their right to be there, too,” Orange says. “We’ve always tried to allow each of [the partner organizations] exposure.”

ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, MCDANIEL would’ve had a difficult time imagining herself talking with anyone about being transgender, let alone giving a speech in the shadow of The King Center. She moved from Los Angeles to Atlanta in 2003, around the time she was considering ending the silence in which she lived for more than 15 years.

“I was in the closet because I was fortunate enough to be one of the ones who could pass,” says McDaniel, who recently turned 40 and has been living as a woman since her late teens. “It was easier that way, just to blend in.”

McDaniel recognizes parallels between her experience and light-skinned blacks who avoided discrimination by passing as white, and says she realized it was time for transgender individuals to begin making more noise in order to be treated fairly by mainstream and gay society.

“I feel like we’ve been placed last on the list of everything,” says McDaniel, who has immersed herself in community activism since arriving in Atlanta. She is the transgender liaison for the Atlanta Human Rights Campaign’s diversity committee, serves on the Atlanta Police Department’s GLBT advisory group and is an associate board member for the Atlanta Pride Committee.

Last year she founded the Juxtaposed Center for Transformation, a transgender non-profit agency.

“I had to be comfortable expressing who I am and not apologize for who I am or being born transgender,” McDaniel says of how her activism sparked changes in her own life.

The nascent Juxtaposed Center for Transformation is creating an infrastructure that McDaniel hopes will make it a safe place for transgender individuals to receive group support, legal advice, counseling and referrals. She also expects the organization to chronicle transgender history, including the key role of transgender people in the Stonewall Riots.

MCDANIEL CONSIDERED HERSELF female for as long as she can remember, and her feelings were well known throughout her family, albeit never discussed. Throughout McDaniel’s childhood her mother made her read Bible verses condemning homosexuality, filling McDaniel with anticipation of leaving Sumter, S.C., when she turned 18.

Upon striking out on her own McDaniel stepped inside a Myrtle Beach mall that forever changed her life.

“I was walking through J.C. Penney and instead of walking to the male’s department I went to the female section where I’ve been shopping ever since,” she says. “I went home for [a grandmother’s] funeral and I did not change my dress or make-up, and my mother and I were having a conversation.

“I remember telling her the family was going to talk about the way I presented myself,” McDaniel remembers. “She told me if anyone had anything to say, they better keep it to themselves.”

Despite their earlier struggles, McDaniel says her mother eventually told her she loves her because she is her child, not because of her gender.

“Now my mother calls me her daughter when she’s introducing me to new people back home,” McDaniel says.

Hardaway Hates Gays-So Do Some Other Black Peeps

Tim Hardaway's anti-gay comments made me recall a conversation I had with my father when I was a teen. He stated that he had more respect for the Klan than he did for some of the Black community's so-called friends.

When I asked him to clarify that, he pointed out that a Klansman's hatred for Black people is well known and out in the open. With the people that profess to be our friends, they can eat dinner with you and still hate you with the intensity of a Klansman. His thought was that he'd rather know who his enemy was upfront so the appropriate response to deal with him could be formulated.

That conversation resurfaced in my mind as I listened to the replay of Tim Hardaway's radio interview. It turned ugly when the interviewer asked questions about retired NBA center John Amaechi's announcement last week that he is gay.

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people," he said while a guest on Sports Talk 790 The Ticket. "I'm homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

When the host asked Hardaway how he would interact with a gay teammate, he said, "First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room."

Incredibly, he went there and indicated that he'd ask for the gay player to be removed from the team.

"Something has to give," Hardaway said. "If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that's upset and can't concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it's going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate."

John Amaechi, who just released his autobiography Man in the Middle, yesterday said that he hoped his coming out would be a catalyst for intelligent discourse.

Unfortunately, it seems that the words 'intelligent discourse' don't enter some peeps minds when it comes to GLBT issues.

When Amaechi was asked by the Miami Herald about Hardaway's comments, "I'm actually tempted to laugh." he said. "Finally, someone who is honest. It is ridiculous, absurd, petty, bigoted and shows a lack of empathy that is gargantuan and unfathomable. But it is honest. And it illustrates the problem better than any of the fuzzy language other people have used so far."

To his credit, Hardaway later apologized for the remarks during a telephone interview with Miami's WSVN-TV. "Yes, I regret it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said I hate gay people or anything like that," he said. "That was my mistake."

Hardaway has reportedly been removed from any further league-related appearances by NBA commissioner David Stern. "It is inappropriate for him to be representing us given the disparity between his views and ours," Stern said in a statement to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

If anyone questions the fact that homophobia in the African-American community needs to be confronted, then this should leave no doubts not only as to the extent of the problem but the work we need to do in our community to eradicate it.

There are other Tim Hardaway's out there in our community. Unfortunately some of them stand in pulpits and utter the same rhetoric as he just unleashed except they try to hide their homophobia behind scriptures.

Thanks Tim for letting us know that you're on the same team as the Eddie Long's and Gregory "I'd ride with the KKK" Daniels' of the world.

Valentine's Day Musings

photo-'In The Garden' by Keith Mallett

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Like most people I'm part of that percentage of the population that is single. It's not that I choose to be, I just am.

I'm a bit of a romantic, and that's the toughest part of being single on Valentine's Day. Enduring the endless commercials that are pushing jewelry, candy, flowers, et cetera. The romantic movies that get dusted off and broadcast. Ironically I was up until 2 AM this morning reading a Kayla Perrin romance novel and spent most of yesterday afternoon writing my own.

One of the things that I factored into my decision to go ahead with transition was the fact that I could possibly be spending a lot of Valentine's days alone. But I love myself far too much to allow myself to wallow in the unhappiness that was part of my life prior to transition.

Maybe there is a special person out there for me, maybe not. I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it. I know what's it's like to be in love, albeit from the other side of the gender fence. It's one of the hard facts of being transgender that love isn't any easier to find or deal with than some of the other life issues we grapple with. We all realize that it is gonna take someone that is secure and confident in their personality and their own lives to love us. That love is tougher to find when the genitalia between your legs doesn't match up with the rest of your gender presentation.

Then there are the misconceptions that potential suitors have about us. News flash to the peeps that want to step to me or any transwoman. I'm not one of the fellas. I look at life, romance and love through a feminine prism. To get with me will not break your bank account, but a prerequisite is treating me like any other sistah you want romantic attention from. (that means flowers, chocolate and my fave perfume)

Another thing that's a must is that some of the things I like to do require you to take me out during daylight hours. If your ego can't handle being talked about by society for having me on your arm, then don't step to me, period. I want the person I love to be just as proud of being seen and being around me as I am of them. If you can't meet that simple requirement, step.

Finally, I am not a booty call or looking to be the other woman. I do believe in karma. I'm not going to deliberately be the cause of any discourse in a stable relationship. I don't want any relationship I eventually get into vulnerable to the reverse spin of the karmic wheel because I disrespected somebody's relationship or their marriage.

So as you can see I haven't and won't give up on love. I have much respect, admiration and a little twinge of jealousy for those people in the community and beyond who are in stable, satisfying relationships or who have experienced the heady rush of having someone worship the ground they walk on. Maybe that will happen for me one day.

In the meantime, what time is the next showing of Daddy's Little Girls and the closest place I can go to get some chocolate to scarf up?

Angelica's Had It Up To Here (And So Have I)

Yesterday Elizabeth (one of my TransGriot guest colmunists) posted a link from You Tube of a video from Chicago transwoman Angelica Love Ross.

Angelica expressed her frustration with the images out there of African-American transwomen. She made it clear that she wasn't criticizing those people who are involved in the pageant, showgirl and adult entertainment worlds, but implored them to think about life after being in those worlds. She drove home the point that we are capable of doing far more than that. Angelica does shows but has a real estate license and a business she's putting together that she's launching later this summee.

She drew from her Native American heritage and personal example to implore African-American transwomen to look past fleeting beauty and stretch themselves spiritually and emotionally to become better human beings that can make positive contributions to society.

I couldn't agree more.

It's a subject that I and other African-American transwomen have discussed for almost a decade now. Many of us are beyond Fannie Lou Hamer status when it comes to 'being sick and tired of being sick and tired' of negative images. Somewhere along the way we veered away from the classy image of Justina Williams to shemalewhatever.com and I have a theory as to when it started.

My suspicions point to the early 80's. That's when AIDS was ravaging the GLBT community and taking out those people who would have been mentors to my generation of transpeeps. Those who were willing to do so, that is.

Factor in what gender clinics told their patients back in the day about gender transition. They advised them to have SRS, blend in with society and cut any ties to the transgender community. Many did. In the case of some African-American transpeeps they went stealth for employment, personal security reasons or both.

The problem with 'stealth' is that we end up not having any knowledge about successful transwomen like the Lynn Conway's of the world unless they come forward or are outed. That becomes more critical when you are part of a minority community and you look for role models for additional inspiration and strength. One of the factors that held up my transition was because I didn't have multiple examples of college-educated transpeeps who looked like me. I didn't meet any until the late 90's.

There's an old saying that 'nature abhors a vacuum'. The lack of visible role models, the death of many in the 80's due to HIV/AIDS, stealth status of others who could have acted as mentors, lack of a community information and support structure similar to our Caucasian sistets and brothers and lack of media coverage created a vacuum that allowed the 'only thing a Black transperson can do is shows or adult entertainment' myth to flower into existence. That's BS, but until you see out and proud African-American transpeeps that are successful in life and the business world, then that negative perception is one we are going to have to expend a lot of energy counteracting.

That image makeover needs to happen right now. We have some churches in our communities preaching hate sermons against us. Because of ignorance and misperceptions about gender identity in our community we comprise a disproportionate share of the people tragically affected by anti-transgender violence. Some 'ejumacation' is sorely needed in the African-American community about who we are and what we have to offer our people.

That information dissemination also needs to happen amongst our fellow transpeeps. There are other ways to 'get paid' and education is the key to a better life. There are African-American transistahs and transbrothas who not only sucessfully work nine to fives but are helping uplift our race as well.

Kim Coco Iwamoto-The Highest Ranking Elected US TG Official

When Kim Coco Iwamoto was growing up in Hawaii her parents stressed that education was the key to achieving her goals. After graduating from high school she subsequently earned her undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University and a law degree from the University of New Mexico.

On November 6, 2006 she was elected to Hawaii's State Board of Education. In the process she became the first transgender person to win a statewide office and has the distinction of being the highest ranking transgender elected official in the U.S.

"I didn't run to get this attention as an individual. I ran to be an advocate for the students," the 38-year-old civil rights lawyer said.

Iwamoto credits the higher values Hawaiian culture places on responsibility to family and community over personal identity for giving her the confidence to seek out success.

Eevn though a number of states, municipalities and major corporations have passed laws and rules banning gender discrimination, it's still a struggle for transgender people just to get a job. While New Zealand (Georgina Beyer) and Italy (Vladimir Luxuria) currently have transgender members of their parliaments, it's a struggle for transgender people in the United States just to get elected into public office.

"For me it's about resilience and having a strong core of self-esteem, which I was very fortunate to have the support and love my parents, my family," she said. "Really, in the face of adversity you have to tap into that place where you feel valued as a member of family and a larger community."

Following her win, Iwamoto's father, Robert Iwamoto, Jr., who heads the well-known Roberts Hawaii tour bus company, issued a statement congratulating his daughter on her successful campaign.

Iwamoto pointed out that Hawaii voters have ushered in a host of electoral firsts in addition to her successful run for statewide office. They include the ratification of the federal Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 and the election of Hiram Fong, the first Asian-American U.S senator shortly after Hawaii gained statehood in 1959.

"This election speaks less of me and much more, I think, of the place and the people of Hawaii — the fact that Hawaii's always been a place of fair-minded, critical thinking voters who vote on the issues and who see people for the substance of their character," Iwamoto said.

She didn't make her gender status a part of her campaign, but she has long been a vocal advocate for the transgender community. She also listed her attendance at an Honolulu all-boy's school, St. Louis High School, and her board membership of Kulia Na Mamo, a local transgender organization, in her campaign materials.

When asked when she knew she was different, Iwamoto replied, "I've only been me."

Iwamoto got involved in local education after becoming a foster parent three years ago. By advocating for her children, two of which are now in college, and other youth, Iwamoto said she found herself testifying before the board on a variety of issues. Board Chairman Randall Yee said he was "very impressed" by Iwamoto's testimony and called her background "excellent."

"She has a legal background. She has a business background — business family. And I just felt that in terms of bringing different individuals with different perspectives on the board, I felt that she would bring a good perspective," he said.

Iwamoto said her personal experience also validates the message for education.

"Whatever the situation, I think if kids grow up with a core sense of self-esteem and feeling like they're a valuable part of their family, of their classroom, of their school, their community and if we teach to their potentials," she said. "I think that's the key to having them be in a position where they can give back to their families and communities."

Congratulations, Kim for making history.

Barack Is In!

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - (AP) Democrat Barack Obama declared himself a candidate Saturday for the White House in 2008, evoking Abraham Lincoln's ability to unite a nation and promising to lead a new generation as the country's first black president.

The first-term senator announced his candidacy from the state capital where he began his elective career just 10 years ago, and in front of the building where in another century, Lincoln served eight years in the Illinois Legislature.

"We can build a more hopeful America," Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery. "And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States."

Obama did not mention his family background, his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia or that he would make history if elected president.

Instead, he focused on his life in Illinois over the past two decades, beginning with a job as a community organizer with a $13,000-a-year salary that strengthened his Christian faith.

He said the struggles he saw people face inspired him to get a law degree and run for the Legislature, where he served eight years before becoming a U.S. senator just two years ago.

"I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness, a certain audacity, to this announcement," Obama said. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.

"Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done," he said. "Today we are called once more - and it is time for our generation to answer that call."

Obama, 45, gained national recognition with the publication of two best-selling books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," and by delivering the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His optimistic message and his compelling biography immediately sparked talk of his White House potential.

Initially he said he would not run for president. But he said last fall that he was considering it after receiving so much encouragement. He formed a presidential exploratory committee last month.

Despite his thin political resume, Obama is considered New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief rival among many vying for the Democratic nomination.

Obama planned to travel throughout Iowa on Saturday and Sunday before a rally Sunday night in Chicago, where his campaign has its headquarters.

He planned to visit New Hampshire on Monday on the heels of front-runner Clinton, whose first visit to the state as a presidential candidate over the weekend provided some early competition for attention from Obama's announcement.

Thousands of people in their warmest winter wear came out for Obama's campaign kickoff despite temperatures in the teens. The crowd huddled in close for warmth and to squeeze into the closed off streets around the Old State Capitol.

"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us," said Bethany Scates of Ridgway, Ill., who drove four hours with her family for the announcement.

Brenda and Michael Calkington of Muncie, Ind., said they have never been involved in a political campaign, but both were laid off from jobs with a lighting company and plan to volunteer for Obama.

"He makes you feel like it is possible to change things," Brenda Calkington said.

She seemed to be reading from Obama's songbook.

He spoke of reshaping the economy for the digital age, investing in education, protecting employee benefits, insuring those who do not have health care, ending poverty, weaning America from foreign oil, fighting terrorism while rebuilding global alliances.

"But all of this cannot come to pass until we bring an end to this war in Iraq," Obama said. "America, it's time to start bringing our troops home. It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war."

Obama was not yet elected to the U.S. Senate when Congress voted to give Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, but Obama gave a speech in 2002 opposing the war. He said Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States and predicted the invasion would lead to an occupation with undetermined costs and consequences.

Obama has introduced a bill to prevent President Bush from increasing troop levels in Iraq and to remove U.S. combat forces from the country by March 31, 2008 - legislation that has virtually no chance of becoming law while Bush is president.

Obama's address was steeped in American history.

He talked how previous generations have brought change - fighting off colonizers, slavery and the Great Depression, welcoming immigrants, building railroads and landing a man on the moon.

He repeatedly referred to Lincoln and his success in moving a nation. He said it is because of Lincoln that Americans of every race face the challenges of the 21st century together.

"The life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible," Obama said. "He tells us that there is power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope."



Associated Press writers Deanna Bellandi and John O'Connor contributed to this report.

It's Black History Month In Canada, Too!

TransGriot Note: photo is of former MP Jean Augustine, who pushed the motion establishing Black History Month in Canada.

Black History Month is not just a uniquely American event anymore, it's an international one. In 1979 the Ontario Black History Society initiated the formal celebration of February as Black History Month within the City of Toronto and the province of Ontario.

The official recognition of Black History Month in Canada is the result of a December 1995 motion introduced by the Honorable Jean Augustine, Member of Parliament for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and the first Black Canadian woman elected to the Canadian Parliament.

That motion carried unanimously by the House of Commons and the Canadian Parliament resulted in the first official recognition of Black History Month in Canada taking place in February 1996.

Despite a presence in Canada that dates back farther than Samuel de Champlain's first voyage down the St. Lawrence River, as one of my Canadian readers commented to me in another post, people of African descent are largely absent from Canadian history books. There is little mention of the fact that slavery once existed in the territory that is now Canada, or that many of the Loyalists who came here after the American Revolution and settled in the Maritimes were Black.

Few Canadians are aware of the many sacrifices made in wartime by Black Canadian soldiers as far back as the War of 1812. African-Americans are unaware that we do have spiritual, cultural and historical connections with our Canadian cousins. African-Canadians were at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement in the 1800s and were equally involved in human rights struggles in the 1960s and 1970s.

African-Canadians took critical looks at their own society as a result of watching the numerous violent incidents, church bombings and overly violent reactions to non-violent protest directed at the African-American community. Canadian segregation was addressed following the 1946 Viola Desmond incident but the work to change legislation, societal behaviors and practices on both sides of our shared border is ongoing.

Dr. Woodson would probably be pleased to know that the event he started as Negro History Week in 1926 is beginning to take on an international dimension. The people of African descent who live in the United States would benefit from not only remembering and learning about our struggles but expanding our minds to learn about the history and culture of our Canadian friends and African communities throughout the Diaspora.

Viola Desmond-Canada's Rosa Parks

Almost ten years before that fateful December 1, 1955 day that Rosa Parks sat down on a Montgomery, AL bus that was headed home and jump started a movement, Viola Desmond did the same for African-Canadians.

Viola Desmond (1914-1965) was a young Halifax businesswoman and beautician who owned and operated a beauty school there. On November 8th, 1946, she was on her way to Sydney, NS for a meeting when she got caught in a blizzard in New Glasgow, NS and her car broke down.

When a mechanic told her he couldn't fix the problem until the next day she found a place to stay for the night. Desmond decided to pass the time with a movie at the local Roseland Theatre. She asked for a ticket for house seats, but the teller sold her a ticket for the balcony, which was where Black people had to sit in that town.

When she sat in the lower "Whites Only" house seats, the manager ordered her to sit in the balcony, which was designated for Black patrons. When she refused, he called the police and she was arrested. Desmond was dragged from the theater and thrown in jail overnight. Bruised and angry, she sat upright all night and for the next 12 hours on the hard jail bench while wearing her white gloves.

In the morning she was charged by the magistrate with "attempting to defraud the Federal Government" based on her refusal to pay the one cent amusement tax difference between the 3 cents charged to those sitting in the balcony and the 2 cents charged to those sitting downstairs. Even though she had offered to pay the difference in ticket price, she was convicted of failing to pay the tax on the downstairs ticket. After a short trial, Viola was sentenced to a fine of $20 plus court costs and 30 days in prison.

Viola Desmond's arrest galvanized the Afro-Canadian community into action. The new Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NSAACP), founded only a year earlier by William and Pearleen Oliver, raised the money to pay her fine and fight her conviction. Carrie Best, the founder of Nova Scotia's first Black owned and operated newspaper publicized her story. Best was familiar with Desmond's situation. She'd been thrown out of the Roseland Theater herself four years earlier for refusing to sit in the balcony and unsuccessfully filed a damage suit against the theater's management.

Desmond's lawyer took the case to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, but her appeal lost on a technicality. She reappealed the case and won on a technicality. The case helped topple segregation laws in Nova Scotia and the provincial government repealed them in 1954.

Tres Chic

The dictionary definition of chic reads: smart elegance and sophistication especially of dress or manner. That's a dead-on target description of one of my favorite bands of the 70's.

Chic's music like most of the stuff I grew up listening to has proven to be timeless and ground breaking as well. I fell in love with their amalgamation of deep bass guitars, the lush strings courtesy of the Chic Strings (Cheryl Hong, Karen Milne and Marianne Carroll) and funky rhythms. Sometimes it was at a disco pace. Other times it was pure 70's funk with some cool soulful ballads and instrumentals thrown in just for good measure.

While Dad introduced me to Parliament-Funkadelic, I discovered Chic on my own. I opened the package of promo albums that got mailed to the house one day back in 1977 from Atlantic Records and noticed Chic's debut album. It was the self titled one that contained what would become their first hits 'Dance Dance Dance' (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah) and 'Everybody Dance'.

Dad sometimes used me to screen albums because I tend to be analytical about the way I listen to music. The lyrics are extremely important for me. I'm into great guitar players, sax players who can blow and great producers. I got spoiled listening to peeps produced by Holland Dozier Holland, Gamble and Huff, Maurice White, Quincy Jones, et cetera. In Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards they already had the quality producers and musicians.

Norma Jean Wright started out as Chic's front singer. They decided after a year of touring to support the first album they needed another female singer to expand what they could do in the live show and musically. Norma Jean suggested her friend Luci Martin. When Norma Jean Wright was forced to leave the band because of her contractual solo career obligations. Alfa Anderson, who sang backup on the second album C'est Chic was moved up to replace her in 1978. Norma Jean did get to sing some vocals on the monster Sister Sledge 1979 We Are Family LP.

C'est Chic got released in late 1978 with 'Le Freak' as the lead single and sold six million copies. Risque was released the next year. It contained a a song that would help propel a new music genre to prominence. That song was 'Good Times' and it became the basis for the Sugarhill Gang's breakthrough hit 'Rapper's Delight' and a host of other rap records that sampled it throughout the 80's. The basslines were sampled by rock, rap and R&B producers as well.

C'est Chic was supposed to contain the song 'He's The Greatest Dancer'. While producing Sister Sledge's album they decided that this song was a better fit for them and swapped it with another song. The song they exchanged it for that ended up on the Risque album was 'I Want Your Love'. They also featured an up and coming commercial jingle and session singer by the name of Luther Vandross on several of their albums. Luther hit it big singing lead vocals on Change's 1979 album featuring the hit singles 'The Glow Of Love' and 'Searching' and set the stage for his debut Never Too Much LP in 1981.

Nile and 'Nard also produced Diana Ross' hit singles 'Upside Down' and 'I'm Coming Out' for her 1980 Diana LP.

They struggled to get airplay in the early 80's and disbanded. They did produce Madonna's 1984 breakthrough album Like A Virgin album and scored some successes producing other artists.

After a 1992 party in which Nile and 'Nard played old Chic tunes along with Paul Shaffer and Anton Fig to thunderous applause they organized a reunion of the band and produced CHIC-ism. It not only charted but received critical acclaim and airplay all over the world.

In 2005 they became three category inductees in the Dance Music Hall of Fame. They have received nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003, 2006 and 2007 but have yet to be elected.

Here's hoping that someday they'll be enshrined there as well.

A Tale of Two Transgender TV Characters

In the last two months we've had transgender characters appear on two ABC network shows. One of them is on ABC's flagship soap All My Children . The other is on Ugly Betty.

Both shows stated they wanted to treat the subject with respect and dignity. The early returns are in from the transgender community. One has gotten rave reviews while the other is getting panned.

I've been a longtime fan of All My Children. I arranged my college schedule around it and the Young and the Restless back during its 1980's heyday. I was excited at first when I heard that AMC was going to tackle a transgender storyline with actor Jeffery Carlson playing Zarf. AMC has had a history of tackling tough and controversial subjects throughout its 36 year run that range from abortion to Bianca being a lesbian.

Then I watched the initial show featuring Zarf. To quote Blaine and Antoine from In Living Color: "Hated It!"

Now fast forward a month later to Ugly Betty and the way it has handled Rebecca Romijn's insertion into the show as Alexis Meade. For several weeks she appeared as a shadowy mystery woman plotting with Wilhelmina Slater. The mystery woman's identity is revealed a week before the Mode fashion show. (See the 'I'm Coming Out') Ugly Betty episode.

In the last two shows I have see Alexis since the reveal describe the alienation from friends, discuss family issues and be slapped with the discrimination and bigotry we face in a sports bar scene.

Ugly Betty gets two snaps up. Somebody was doing their homework on this one. Maybe the Ugly Betty writing team needs to have a chat with the AMC one and give them some tips on how to build a transgender character.

The difference to me and the transpeeps I've talked to online is the realistic way that Alexis has been portrayed versus the disappointingly schlocky way that Zoe has been portrayed so far on AMC. I know that Jeffrey Carlson wanted to do the character in a way respectful to the transgender community.

As with all TV shows it's all about the script writing. Hopefully they will get it together on AMC and get Jeffrey the material that he needs to make this character better.

While having genetic female actresses playing transwomen is a sore point with some peeps in the community, I don't have any complaints about a supermodel playing a transwoman if it's done well.

News flash to some of you: In some cases the surgery results ARE that good. If you have the cash as Alexis did, you could conceivably look convincingly feminine when you're done, especially if you have the right body build to start with. Rebecca's 5'11" height adds an even more realistic touch to it.

Granted, I'd love to see more transwomen actresses get those roles and I'm beyond ready to see another person who looks like me playing a transwoman. (No, Tyler Perry's Madea doesn't count)

Until somebody else gets the cojones (pardon the pun) to create a transgender character that's not killed off in the first five minutes of the show I'll have to enjoy these two.

James 'Sweet Evening Breeze' Herndon

When I first moved to Kentucky I began to hear the stories from Dawn and other Lexingtonians about their legendary transgender resident 'Sweet Evening Breeze'. I stumbled across this article while doing research one night for another column.

"Sweet Evening Breeze"
by Jeff Jones

James Herndon was born in Scott County, KY and was the youngest of John and Kate Herndon's eight children. According to Leigh Angelique,local entertainer, drag queen, and friend of the late Mr. Herndon, James was born in 1889, one year prior to Leigh's grandmother.

In his many decades living in Lexington, KY he was widely regarded as the city's most colorful character, and there are numerous stories (both true and legendary) about Herndon. In fact, few Lexingtonians really know him as James Herndon. He is more widely known by his nickname, "Sweet Evening Breeze," or "Miss Sweets."

He often wore make-up, occassionally performed or appeared on Main St. on Saturdays in drag, and was apparently quite effeminate. Long before there was RuPaul, Lexington's Sweet Evening Breeze was titallating and gaining respect from locals.

For most of his long life, Sweets worked at Good Samaritan Hospital. Taken to the hospital for an eye injury by his uncle as a child, he was left overnight there. Details are obscure, but apparently the boy was basically left at the hospital. He became friends with Miss Lake Johnson, the hospital superintendent, who gave him a room there. He eventually began delivering the hospital mail and playing his ukulele for patients. Through his late childhood and teen years spent living and working in the hospital, he finally learned the profession of orderly, a career that he followed for 40 years at Good Sams. He was widely regarded as the best orderly in the hospital and usually trained new orderlies.

Eventually moving to Prall Street, a part of a hundred year old African-American neighborhood across from UK behind Alfalfa's and Bourbon St. Cafe, he filled his home with antiques and kept it spotlessly clean by all reports. Considering that Herndon lived in the era of segregation, his job as an orderly gave him a relatively high income for African-American Lexingtonians during the early part of this century.

Stories about Herndon are numerous. Some of the authenticated include:

-Herndon was considered in his day to be an excellent cook. During World War II he would meet troops passing through Lexington at the train station and give them his homemade cakes. His fruitcake... the irony not being lost here... was considered his crowning culinary achievement.

-His most notable drag performance apparently was at the Woodland Auditorium where he was lowered from the ceiling in a basket dressed in "feminine frills" and danced the "Passion Dance of the Bongo Bangoes."

-Decades before Ziggy Stardust and David Bowie gave new emphasis to gender-bending, Miss Sweets would spend his Saturdays visiting with friends and acquaintances on Main Street. Upon seeing RuPaul on TV, one elderly woman in Harrodsburg told my friend Marc that Ru was nothing new. She reminensced fondly of trips with her fiance (later husband)long ago into Lexington to shop on Saturdays. The couple always made a point to stop and visit with "Miss Sweets." As Sweet Evening Breeze, Herndon might appear in a range of dress that might include a suit plus lipstick and eye-liner.

-When the doctors and nurses at Good Sams would play each other in basketball, Sweets was the cheerleader.

-Every year during the Bluegrass Fair, Herndon would hold a large banquet for his family coming in from Scott County. He also regularly sent or would take gifts back to his family and old neighborhood there.

-For many years he was a member of historic Pleasant Green Baptist Church. Upon his death, he apparently left a considerable amount of money to the church.

-There are also conflicting tales over a legal episode in Sweets' life: At some point circa 1960, a teenaged Leigh Angelique, another local African-American drag queen, was arrested for violating Lexington's ordinance against cross-dressing except on Halloween. One story holds that Sweets bailed Leigh out of jail and subsequently defended her in court. When the case was brought before the judge, Sweets supposedly pointed to a woman in the courtroom and told that judge that if it was a crime to wear makeup, then the woman should be charged equally to any man. The judge then threw the case out on the grounds that the ordinance unfairly punished one sex for behavior accepted for the other as well as on particular holidays.

Leigh Angelique herself claims, however, that actually both Sweets and herself were jailed. While in jail they even performed a mini-drag show for the curious guards who even went so far as to tip the "girls" for their act. Either a jailor or other prominent friend of Sweets spoke to the judge on their behalf. Sweets spoke up against jailing men for makeup and not women, and the case was dismissed.

With this judgement, Lexington's ordinance against public drag was apparently overturned.

-On the more risque side, older gay men in town remember that Sweets could be seen on occassion frequenting the bathrooms of the Phoenix Hotel and Union Station for "tearoom trade." His home on Prall Street according to these accounts also served as a meeting place for gay people and a sometimes sexual outlet for a number of otherwise closeted UK students.

-Whether Sweets ever settled down and found a partner is difficult to say. Local legends do not mention such a man, but his obituary does hold this tantalizing sentence: "He is survived by... a host of great-nieces and nephews; close friends, INCLUDING HUGH STERLING (emphasis added), and his church family." Perhaps this Hugh Sterling was Herndon's partner?

Through the Depression, World War II, and desegregation, Herndon cut a path as an openly gay man, drag queen, and possibly even a transgendered person. Legend holds that Herndon was accepted in part because he was a hermaphrodite whose will donated his body to UK for scientific study. Nothing I have yet uncovered, however,
substantiates this donation or supposed hermaphroditism. Sweets' many friends described him as sensitive and kind. They relate that he was often deeply hurt and enraged when people would make fun of him.

Herndon died on Friday, Dec. 16, 1983, at the Homestead Nursing Center. He was thought to be in his 90s and was survived by many loving friends and family. For his achievement of being himself against the odds, the Royal Sovereign Imperial Court of All Kentucky named its highest honor the James Herndon Award. Last year the Lexington Men's Chorus also named its small singing ensemble Sweet Evening Breeze in his honor as well.

If one does research on Lexington's gay and/or African-American communities, there is very little information on individual lives before the 1950s. There is, however, an entire slim file in the Kentucky Room on none other than the man that several writers have called Lexington's most memorable and colorful character:

James "Sweet Evening Breeze" Herndon.

Roberta Angela Dee

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-trans women who have qualities that I admire

Roberta Angela Dee was an early voice of the African-American transcommunity for several decades. She challenged the medical community through her intelligent articles on psychology and gender and thoughtful online writings.

Roberta was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1950 and grew up on Long Island. She graduated with a degree in journalism and at age 25 began living as a woman.

Although much of her writing was on medical issues, she was an accomplished fiction writer who wrote several novellas on trans issues. She also wrote columns for Jo Ann Roberts' TG Forum website in addition to founding the Women on the Net (WON) website -- an early transgender resource for women of color. She also ran a Yahoo discussion group called TG Woman until her death in 2003.

I was a member of TG Woman from its inception. Roberta created a place that was different from the average transgender group. There wasn't the whiny, 'woe-is-me' tone that tends to permeate some transgender groups. We talked about issues beyond just transgender ones and it had over 2000 members at one point. When I started Transsistahs-Transbrothas on New Year's Day 2004 I patterned my group on that TS Woman model.

Roberta was a no-nonsense reality based kind of girl that never shied avway from expressing her strong opinions about many subjects. I loved that about her. She's also an inspiration to me as a writer as I endeavor to polish my skills and take them to the next level.

She transistioned but opted not to have SRS. As she once said, "I'm a woman in mind, heart and spirit. That's all that matters. They can cut things off, paste things on, or reconfigure my body parts. If you're a woman, you're a woman. Period"

You're so right about that Big Sis. You are definitely missed.

Black Canadian Snapshot

According to the 2001 Canadian Census, there are 593,335 people who identify as Black and of that number 70,000 also claim European ancestry.

78.4% of Black Canadians are clustered in five cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax and the Canadian capital city of Ottawa. 70% of the Canadian Black population is further concentrated in Montreal and Toronto.

Black Canadians are not recent arrivals. The first African to arrive would be navigator Mathieu da Costa, a free man who was hired as a translator for Samuel de Champlain's 1605 excursion. Unfortunately in 1628 the first enslaved ones would arrive in Canada as well.

While the folks in Halifax and the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia trace their heritage to our escaped ancestors and loyalists who settled there after the Revolutionary War, many of our peeps who arrived in Canada via the Underground Railroad eventually settled in Windsor, Chatham, London, Hamilton, Collingwood, Toronto and other rural areas in southern Ontario. Others trace their heritage to Nigeria or the Caribbean and half of Canada's Black population is of Jamaican origin.

While Black Canadians have had major impacts on Canadian history, politics, the media and the arts in their country, they have also influenced the culture and history of their southern cousins as well.

The NAACP's progenitor, the Niagara Movement was the result of a 1905 meeting held in Niagara Falls, Ont. The first woman publisher in North America, Mary Ann Shadd moved there after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850 and later became the first woman to attend Howard University's law school. Inventor Elijah McCoy was born there.

The influence is even more pronounced in the entertainment world. Singers Tamia Washington-Hill, Deborah Cox and Evangelist Denise Matthews (aka Vanity) are respectively from Windsor, ON, Toronto, and Niagara Falls, ON.

A Motown group called Bobby and the Vancouvers discovered Gladys Knight. Bobby also brought the Jackson 5 to Berry Gordy's attention after the J5 performed as an opening act for them. Another interesting tidbit from Bobby and the Vancouvers is that Tommy Chong was their guitar player (yes, of Cheech and Chong fame and daddy of actress Rae Dawn Chong). Actresses Cree Summer, Tonya Lee Williams and Kandyse McClure of Battlestar Galactica fame were either born there or have a Canadian parent. Melyssa Ford, the current poster model that almost every Black male and rapper drools over is from Toronto along with novelist Kayla Perrin.

Baseball fans of my era remember Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, who was from Chatham, ON. Before Ben Johnson, the most famous Canadian sprinter was world record holder and three-time Olympian Harry Jerome. Donovan Bailey won the 100m gold medal at the Atlanta Games.

The best hockey player on the planet is considered to be Calgary Flames captain and 2002 Olympic gold medalist Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames. Hall of Famer Grant Fuhr tended the nets for the four time Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers. ESPN analyst John Saunders is Canadian as well.

Like their southern cousins African-Canadians have also faced faced discrimination and prejudice. In some cases their experiences eerily mirror ours.

In an incident that galvanized civil rights forces in Canada, on November 6, 1946 Viola Desmond was arrested for sitting in the 'White's Only' section of a theater in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia and charged with tax evasion. The NSAACP supported her as the case rose all the way to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

In 1954 Blacks visiting rural Dresden, ON were denied service in two restaurants there. The Toronto Telegram sent Black testers to those same restaurants that confirmed the discrimination and published the the story. It confirmed what Black Canadians had suspected all along even though the provincial government only ten years earlier had passed the Racial Discrimination Act on March 14, 1944.

Civil rights activists would persuade the Canadian government to dismantle the odious immigration polices designed to keep Blacks out of Canada. Anti-discrimination laws and policies subsequently were enacted that ended Jim Crow-style laws there and put Canada on the road to acquiring its world-renowned reputation as an oasis of diversity and tolerance.

It's a reputation that we in the States would do well to emulate.

That reputation drew Michaelle Jean's family to Canada from Haiti. She was born there in 1957 but her family relocated to Montreal in 1968 to escape the Duvalier regime. She grew up to become a journalist and commentator for the CBC and Radio-Canada and the first Black Governor General of Canada. She was nominated by former prime minister Paul Martin and assumed the office on September 27, 2005.

Black Canadians continue to make their marks on the world stage inside and outside their country. We're proud of our shared history with our Canadian cousins as part of the African diaspora. We Americans need to exert more effort on the southern side of the border to familiarize ourselves with Canadian Black history since it's another chapter of our story as well.


TransGriot note: photos-Her Excellency the Rt. Honorable Michaelle Jean, the Governor General of Canada, Mathieu da Costa artist's rendition, Mary Ann Shadd, Melyssa Ford, Jarome Iginla, Viola Desmond, Michaelle Jean throne speech.

Why Can't We Be 'Just Americans'?

TransGriot Note:
This one started as a response in a Think Progress blog thread discussing Tom Tancredo's (R-CO) disengenuos desire to amend the House rules and abolish the Congressional Black Caucus. Several people agreeing with Tancredo used the conservative buzz words 'why can't we hypenated folks be 'just americans?'

Some of you ask the question why we African-Americans can't be 'just Americans?'

Because for 400 years y'all have refused to let us be 'just Americans'.

You brought us here in chains and refused to compensate us for the 246 years of chattel slavery. Every time we sucessfully built up our own neighborhoods, towns, institutions and economies without your help you started race riots on false pretexts and swooped in to burn those very neighborhoods down.

You organized gangs of white-hooded terrorists to invade our neighborhoods and homes and engage in an orgy of lawlessness, rape and murder designed to intimidate, brutalize and 'keep the Blacks down'.

You lynched us by the thousands and called it 'entertainment'. You discriminated against us, jacked with our voting rights and refused to let us participate in making the laws that affect us even though it stated in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments of the Constitution that you couldn't do that to fellow American citizens.

You have called us 'stupid and ignorant' when it is my people who have created many of the inventions, medical procedures, scientific advances and processes that have enriched this country and improved life for all of us.

You have called us 'lazy' when it is our labor that built Washington D.C., the railroads and much of this country's infrastracture.

You have mocked our beauty and called us 'ugly' even as your women rush to spend thousands of dollars to bake their skin under ultraviolet light and surgically acquire the features that African-American women possess from birth.

You have called us 'Unamerican' even though we have fought and shed our blood in EVERY war this country has been involved in and come home from battle to have the rights and freedoms we fought to extend overseas to others denied to us on American shores.

You have repeatedly denigrated and disrespected my people and my culture even as you secretly admire our creativity and seek to emulate it.

You have never apologized for the centuries of pain and suffering that you have inflicted upon my people, but have the nerve to tell me to 'get over it'. Why can't you humble yourself to say to my people "I'm sorry?'

Why can't we be 'just Americans'? I don't know. Why don't you answer your own question for me?

The Man and the Story of The Black National Anthem

On February 12, 1900, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” also known as the Negro National Anthem and the Negro National Hymn was sung publicly for the first time at the Stanton School, a Jacksonville, FL school for African-Americans.

It was written by James Weldon Johnson with music composed by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson. The song was written for a celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birthday at the school.

He and his brother had forgotten it, but the students who heard it that day didn't. They taught it to their children and other children throughout the South. The song became so popular that the NAACP offically adopted it as the Negro National Anthem in 1920.


Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears have been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee;
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land


The man who wrote it, James Weldon Johnson led quite an interesting life. Attorney, teacher, poet, diplomat, novelist, Broadway lyricist and civil-rights leader.

He was born in Jacksonville, FL in 1871 during the heady optimism of the Reconstruction period. His mother was a schoolteacher at the Stanton School, his father a head waiter at one of Jacksonville's numerous resort hotels and young James and his brother grew up with middle class backgrounds. After completing the eighth grade he was sent to Atlanta, GA to attend the college prep school and university divisions for Atlanta University since there were no high school at the time in Fhis hometown for African-Americans. After graduating from Atlanta University in 1894 he returned home and became the first African-American attorney in Florida since Reconstruction.

He soon tired of practicing law and became principal of his alma mater the Stanton School. Thanks to the influence of Booker T. Washington in 1906 he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909 he moved to a more significant consular posting in Corinto, Nicaragua but left the consular service in 1913 after the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency.

He joined the NAACP in 1917 and as a field secretary established local chapters througout the South and increased overall membership from 10,000 to 44,000 by the end of 1918. In 1920 he became the first African-Ameerican secretary (CEO) of the multi-racial NAACP and held that post until 1931.

He was also continuing his literary efforts and was more renowned as an writer than a civil-rights warrior. During this time period he'd moved to New York, gotten married and played an active role in the Harlem Renaissance. He served as a mentor to writers Langston Hughes and Claude McKay and urged others to draw upon everyday African-American life as inspiration for their creative works.

He was deeply commmited to exposing the brutality and injustice heaped upon African-Americans and eliminating it. He pushed hard to get the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill passed that would have made lynching a federal crime. He not only worked successfully to get the NAACP on a firm financial footing but was responsible for the NAACP becoming a clearinghouse for civil-rights court cases. He worked with noted attorneys of that time in litigating a series of cases that attacked the legal pillars propping up segregation and worked closely with W.E.B. DuBois and Walter White (the man who succeeded him) to coordinate strategy.

He became a professor at Fisk University in 1931 and spent the remainder of his life teaching creative writing, American and African-American literature and writing. He was killed in an automobile accident near Wiscasset, Maine in 1938.

Johnson acknowledged in 1926 that he didn't originally set out to write a unifying national anthem when he penned the words to 'Lift Ev'ry Voice' and admitted that he'd let the song pass from his mind. But as songs sometimes do they take on a life and meaning of their own.

Thank you James Weldon Johnson, for all that you've done to uplift our people.

2003 Louisville Transgendered Day of Remembrance Speech

photo-the late Amanda Milan, died in June 2000 after having her throat slashed at the NY Port Authority terminal.

In 2002 and 2003 I was asked to be the keynote speaker for the local TDOR event in Louisville. This is the text of the speech I gave that night.

Giving honor to God,
I am pleased to have the privilege of speaking to you on the occasion of the 5th Annual Transgendered Day of Remembrance. This is the second annual observance
that has been held here in Louisville on the LPTS campus. I'd like to thank Mary Sue Barnett, More Light, and The Women's Center here at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary for their hard work in putting this event together and honoring me with another invitation to speak so that I can make more people mad on the Internet after this speech gets posted.

I'd like to give you a brief history on how this event began. It honors Rita Hester, an African-American transgendered woman who was found brutally stabbed twenty times in her Boston apartment on November 28, 1998. When Rita's death was announced in the gay and straight newspapers she was disrespected to the point where transactivists in Boston picketed the news outlets. It led to the Associated Press revamping their guidelines in terms of how they refer to transpeople in news stories. It was also the impetus for Gwen Smith to start the Remembering our Dead Project.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance works on several levels. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgendered people. It allows us to publicly mourn and honor the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. We express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. It's a reminder to non-transgendered people that we are your sons, your daughters, your relatives, your parents, your lovers, and your friends. It allows you an opportunity to stand in solidarity with us and gives the transgendered community a chance to thank our allies and friends.

Last year I spoke to you on the steps of this chapel as a dark night gave way to a beautiful late November fall morning. When you think about it, there was some interesting symbolism to last year's observance. The early morning chill gave way to the warmth of the sun rising to start a new day. Well, this year's speech has its own symbolic touch. The ceremony for this year's vigil has moved from outside Caldwell Chapel to indoors. To me, it's a powerful statement of the commitment of the progressive elements of the Presbyterian Church, More Light, LPTS, and elements of other faiths to include its transgendered children in its mission. They are oases of inclusiveness in a sweltering desert of intolerance and it couldn't have come at a better time.

President John F. Kennedy stated during a televised June 11, 1963 speech on civil rights that ‘Every American ought to have the right to be treated as they would wish to be treated, and as one would wish his children to be treated. Sadly, that is not the case.'

Forty years later, it's not the case with transgendered Americans and our brothers and sisters around the world. We are being demonized by fundamentalists so that they can pursue political power. The Roman Catholic Church recently banned transgendered people from serving as lay ministers, priests or nuns. There are some African-American and other Baptist churches that have cast out their transgendered members at a time when we as Christians need to be INCLUDING transpeople into the fold and not EXCLUDING them.

We are here tonight because of hate violence directed toward my people that has snuffed out thirty-nine more lives. Once again we are adding people to a somber list that is approaching 300 names. That's a little over one killing a month since this project started tracking those stats in 1999. The thirty-nine individuals that we are remembering tonight represents the highest number of people that we have ever honored at a Day of Remembrance vigil. Once again we are gathered to hear about the causes of deaths of people who are simply struggling with trying to live their lives and being killed because of it. The sad part about it is that in many cases people either don't care or are unwilling to see the perpetrators brought to justice.

I mentioned earlier that I received some e-mailed criticism from some transpeople after my 2002 speech was posted on several transgendered Internet lists. Most of the e-mails I received agreed with what I said in last year's speech, but objected to me calling out conservatives and fundamentalists as the root cause of some of the violence being expressed toward transpeople. They cited the October 9, 1999 televised 700 Club comments of Pat Robertson stating that ‘transsexuality is not a sin’ as evidence that conservatives weren't the bad guys in terms of what's happening to our people. I pointed out to those folks that some of the people involved in the transgender bashing proudly call themselves conservative.

I reminded them of Pat's silence as Jerry Falwell sat by his side and blamed GLBT people for the 9-11 terrorist attacks on his TV show. I also reminded them of Pat Robertson's sorry history of opposing civil rights, so if the white sheet fits, too bad.

I've noticed over my lifetime that when conservatives get elected to office, society seems to descend to a mean spirited Darwinian tone and attacks on people that they don't like start happening with increasing frequency. It's as though the bigots feel that it's safe to slither out from under their rocks and openly act on their prejudices, since they see their politicians and ministers openly attacking GLBT people. They feel it's okay to do whatever they want to ‘those' people and get away with it.

It happened in my birth state of Texas once the conservatives got control of the governor's mansion and state government in 1994. The intolerant attitude cultivated over the last ten years has contributed to a rise in hate violence that led to the James Byrd dragging death in 1999. Two of tonight's people that we memorialized here come from my hometown, and although Kentucky as of yet has not lost a transperson to hate violence, I fear that it will happen soon. The bigots have already started to verbalize their feelings since the recent November 4 election.

The recent incident I was told about upset me. A married non transgendered woman with a short haircut was confronted downtown near Kinko's by several young males cruising Market Street. They hurled anti-gay slurs at her, and when the woman showed her tormentors her wedding ring, one of them responded, "Aww, you're probably married to one of them blankety-blank F to M transsexuals."

The interesting thing about this incident is that the woman in question is a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They have been taught down the street and at their churches over the last twenty years that GLBT people are the enemy. Now that one of their own has been confronted with the hatred that we face, some of the students on that campus are starting to see the light.

Society needs to see the light, too. All that I and any other transgendered person wants is to be able to use our God-given talents to make a decent living for ourselves and uplift our society. I was not put on this Earth to become a target for people who are upset at their how their own lives have turned out, are insecure about their own gender identity or sexual orientation, or want to use transpeople as bogeymen to scare people into donating to their pet political causes. Treat me and other transpeople as you would wish to be treated.

What needs to happen is that society needs to send a message that it will no longer tolerate its transgendered citizens being brutally killed. We need to be included in hate crimes legislation at the state and federal level, and prosecutors need to start giving murderers of transpeople the maximum penalties under the law, and not plea bargaining them down to minimal probation terms.

I'm going to close this speech by quoting the Rev. Pat Robertson from that October 9, 1999 700 Club show:

‘God does not care what your external organs are. The question is whether you are living for God or not. Yes, He loves you. Yes, He forgives you and He understands what is going on in your body.’

Enough said.


TransGriot note;
On May 22, 2005 the fear that I expressed at the TDOR came true when Timothy Blair, a 19 year old transgender youth who was in drag at the time, was shot to death at 28th and Magazine Streets as he walked home from a bus stop.

Phyllis R. Frye

photo-IFGE's Denise LeClair, me and Phyllis Frye at the 2006 IFGE Convention in Philadelphia.



Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-trans women who have qualities that I admire.

What can I say about the Phyllabuster?

She's a dear friend, a fellow Texan, my activist mentor and one of the first people along with Sarah DePalma that welcomed me into the Houston transgender community with open arms. Phyllis is a major reason why Houston not only has a large transgender community, but why so many of us from there have leadership roles at the local, state and national levels in it.

She was born the second of three children in San Antonio and was an Eagle Boy Scout, her high school’s ROTC Commander, a multi-scholarship university student at Texas A&M, a member of the Aggie Corps of Cadets, a career military officer, a licensed civil engineer, a husband and a father.

She began to address the transgender issues that she'd tried to bury since age six in the early 1970's. She was not only bounced from the military but ended up getting divorced from her first wife. She remarried, but had a tough time finding a job in the macho world of Houston's engineering firms and decided to go to law school.

Phyllis Frye spearheaded the successful effort to overturn the Houston anti-cross-dressing law in 1980. (the story of the events that led up to it is on the blog). In 1979, 1981, 1983 and 1985 Phyllis was elected as an out transgender delegate to the Texas Democratic Party Convention. She was instrumental in persuading the Party to adopt a gay rights plank in 1983.

She also served, as an out transgender woman, as an elected director and later a vice president of the Houston League of Women Voters. In 1998 she was also appointed by the State Bar President to the Committee for Legal Matters Concerning the Indigent in Criminal Matters. In 1993 she was honored with the highest award giving by the transgender community to one of its own -- the Virginia Prince Lifetime Contribution Award from the International Foundation for Gender Education.

She's a founding partner in the Houston law firm Nechman, Simoneaux and Frye. She has been not only at the forefront of fighting for GLBT civil rights but has been a supportive and outspoken ally about pushing the GLBT community to include people of color in leadership roles. She's still married to her second wife Trish and was recently honored in 2006 by being voted as grand marshal for the Houston Pride parade.

She also plays a mean guitar ;)

I firsr heard about her when I was a freshman at UH and she was a law school student at the time. Ironically our paths didn't cross until 1997. My old gender clinic in Galveston has a twice yearly meet-and-greet event in June and December in which past and present (and sometimes future) clients get together to talk about issues and how our lives are going. That's where I met her, Sarah DePalma (Mommy Sarah I call her) and the late Dee McKellar. At the December 1998 one she and Sarah were there.
Right after she overheard me agreeing to do an interview on 'After Hours', a Houston GLBT themed radio show on KPFT-FM that I later co-hosted with Sarah and Jimmy Carper for two years, Phyllis challenged me to show up in Austin for the TGAIN lobby day that was in the final planning stages at that time.

I did and had the honor of walking into several legislative offices with her at my side. She's one of the people I call or e-mail when I need a historical perspective on things or I get homesick. I've even clashed with her strong-willed behind on occasion (hey, we're Texas women and we ain't wimps. She's an Aggie, I'm a Cougar. What can I say?)

I admire her creative legal mind and have much love and respect for her. She's taught consumer law at TSU's Thurgood Marshall Law School, written numerous law review articles and been a featured speaker at a wide array of events from gender, civil rights and legal conferences to the 1993 March on Washington.

She's gone through some drama like we all have on one level or another. But one of the lessons that she taught me and everyone one else is when you get punched by life, get off the canvas and don't let anyone jack with your civil rights without a fight.

Other lessons I learned from her is that transition shouldn't stop us from full participation in society. We transpeople need to get out there and get involved with mainstream organizations. We also need to have fun doing the things that you like to do. She was a shining example to me when I needed one about being out and proud of being transgender.

She's still got it going on.


TransGriot Notes:
For more info on Phyllis, click on her name to see her website http://www.transgenderlegal.com/

Lorrainne Sade Baskerville

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-trans women who have qualities that I admire.


As Lorrainne puts it, she said, "I did not come out to this community. I stepped on the scene as Lorrainne Sade. No way I ever considered myself a man!"

She grew up in the Cabrini-Green housing projects of Chicago as the eldest of seven children. She said that since early childhood, she "self-identified as a girl. But I had to search [for information]. I thought I had a mental illness. I was always very feminine acting. I grew up with a father missing from the family. My mother was a very strong person. I learned from her."

She left home at 17 and started working every kind of job to make ends meet. Lorrainne began her transition by doing research at the library and connecting with other people like herself.

She has also noted like myself and Dawn the cultural differences betwen white and black transpersons and how it affects transition.

"White transgender people have a risk involved," she said, while African-American people like herself, often battling poverty and discrimination, have less at stake. "That's why we start out early dealing with gender at 13 or 14.

"Look what happens [to white transgenders]: They suppress everything, go in the Army, do all the stuff society says. At a certain age, they're married, kids, picket fence and the volcano erupts."

Baskerville eventually decided to resume her education and in 1994 earned a bachelor's degree in social work from Northeastern Illinois University.

In the 1970s, she became familiar with sex workers' conditions and sometimes was forced to confront a city ordinance of the times that prohibited her appearing in public while wearing female clothing. When AIDS struck a member of her family in the mid-1980s, Baskerville took its health threat seriously. She began to work as a volunteer as a volunteer at organizations such as the Howard Brown Health Center
and Horizons Community Services.

In the 1980's Baskerville became a social worker and founded TransGenesis in 1995, a social service agency for transgenders in Uptown. One of her major goals was to reach out to transgender youths, who often drop out of school because of verbal and emotional abuse and end up on the streets.

She also had a goal of starting a health clinic for transgenders and a fund to award grant money for surgery. She also shares my concerns about young transwomen who undergo dangerous silicone injections from "unqualified, incompetent providers underground," at 'pumping parties' in an attempt to feminize their bodies. She's seen the consequences that r4esult from the multiple use of unsterilized syringes that include everything from gangrene to HIV infections.

In her community activism since 1986, Baskerville has served on the board of Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN), in the Chicago HIV Prevention Planning Group (HPPG), and in the Chicago Police Department's 23rd District Gay and Lesbian Advisory Group.

In 1997, Baskerville received the Greater Chicago Committee's first Georgia Black Award for service to the transgender community. She chaired the Youth Events Committee for the Chicago Black Pride 2000 conference. She was selected by the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and the 13th International AIDS Conference to lead a panel on transgender issues at the conference that was held in Durban, South Africa in July 2004. She is also an advocate for transgendered victims of hate crimes and
violence and was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2000.


TransGriot Notes:
Lorrainne is married and living in Thailand now, but I do have hopes of finally meeting her in person one day. We trade e-mails from time to time.

Cathy Hughes

Another installment in my ongoing series of articles on transgender and non-trans women who have qualities that I admire.

As a child who grew up around radio stations, Cathy Hughes is someone I have much love and respect for. If it weren't for her your local Black radio stations probably wouldn't exist or much less have the intense community oriented focus that the 71 Radio One stations in 22 markets nationwide pride themselves on.

Born in Omaha, NE in 1947, the founder and chairperson of Radio One, Inc is considered one of the most powerful women in Black America. Essence Magazine named her one of '100 Persons Who Changed the World'. Radio Ink lists Hughes as one of the “20 Most Influential Women in Radio”. She and her son Alfred C. Liggins III, Radio One's President & CEO run the largest African-American owned and operated broadcast company in the nation. She's also made a lot of history in the process.

Radio One is the first African-American company in radio history to dominate several major markets simultaneously. Hughes also has the distinction of being the first woman in radio history to own a number one ranked major market station. In 1995, Radio One made broadcasting history again when the largest transaction between two Black owned companies occured when it it purchased Washington, D.C. WKYS-FM for $40 million.

In May 1999 another milestone historical moment occurred. When Cathy Hughes and her son took their company public, it made her the first African-American woman with a company on the stock exchange. In 2000, Black Enterprise named Radio One, “Company of the Year”, Fortune rated it one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” and Radio One was inducted into the Maryland Business Hall of Fame.

Her goal of building a broadcast empire with a solid foundation in the African-American community has come to fruition. Radio One’s value is currently in excess of $2 billion, and with that increace in revenue opportunities for minorities and women in the white-male dominated radio buisness have increased as well.

Hughes currently has more than 1,500 Black broadcasters on staff at Radio One, Inc. the seventh largest radio corporation in the United States. Radio One stations reach over 18 million Black listeners daily in 15 states and just celebrated its 25th anniversary last August.

Her dedication to minority communities, entrepreneurial spirit, pride in our heritage and mentoring of women are proudly manifested in her work and life. It has earned her many awards, including an honorary doctorate from Howard University.

She's been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Area Broadcasters Association, The Seventh Congressional District Humanitarian Award. In 2001, she received the National Association of Broadcasters’ Distinguished Service Award and the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington’s Silver Medal Award. Hughes was presented with the coveted Golden Mike Award from the Broadcasters’ Foundation; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters; and a 2002 Essence Magazine Award.

She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1971 and became a lecturer in the newly-established School of Communications at Howard University. She entered radio in 1973 as general sales manager at Howard University’s WHUR-Radio, increasing station revenue from $250,000 to $3 million in her first year.

In 1975, Hughes became the first female vice president and general manager of a station in the nation’s capital and created the "Quiet Storm" format. It is the most listened to nighttime radio format and is currently heard in over 50 markets nationally. Purchasing her first station in 1980, Washington D.C.'s WOL-AM she pioneered yet another innovative format -- “24 hour Talk from a Black Perspective.” With the theme, "Information is Power," WOL became the most listened to talk radio station in the nation’s capital.

Radio One’s newest venture is TV One, Inc., launched in partnership with Comcast on January 19, 2004. TV One caters to the adult lifestyles of African Americans offering quality programming such as “B. Smith with Style,” and an array of original programming. Hughes is on the board of TV One, is the Executive Producer of “The Gospel of Music with Jeff Majors,” and also hosts TV One’s interview show, “TV One on One.”

Radio One also owns REACH Media, Black America web.com, and The Power, a 24/7 satellite radio channel on XM radio 169 devoted to talk about social, political and economic issues from an African American perspective.

She went though some trials to get to that point. She was all set to go to college in 1965 until the discovery that she was pregnant put an end to those plans. She was a divorced single mother when she made 32 presentations to banks trying to get the loan she needed to purchase WOL-AM. The 33rd presentation to a new Latina loan officer at Chemical Bank garnered her $600,000 of the $1 million she needed with the remainder coming from venture capitalists.

That was only the beginning. When Hughes took possession of the station she discovered that the previous owner fired the entire staff and they responded by trashing the station. She had to bring LP's from her personal collection to play on the air. In addition during those lean years she had to sell a family heirloom white gold watch made by slaves that belonged to her great-grandmother for $50,000. When her house and car were repossessed she slept in a sleeping bag in the station for 18 months. She and her son persevered and six years later WOL turned its first profit.

So the next time you're listening to the Quiet Storm on your local radio station or are checking out TV One on cable, say a word of thanks to Cathy Hughes and her son for not only making history, but keeping Black radio alive in the 21st century.

The Washington Post had it right. In D.C. Hughes was called 'The Voice of the Black Community' from her days as an outspoken talk show host at WOL-AM with deep roots in it. She's now expanded that reach to cover the entire nation.

Tavis' State of the Black Union 2007'' This Weekend

By Denise Watson Batts, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 6, 2007

WHEW, A WHOLE 10 minutes on the phone with Tavis Smiley. That's a coup considering how swamped he is, he says, serving his people.

Time magazine has called Smiley, now 42, one of America's top young leaders. There's his foundation for young people, books, including his work with "The Covenant With Black America," a New York Times best-seller last year, not to mention his down-home hell-raising.

He's known for his shows on Black Entertainment Television, National Public Radio and PBS, and the popular (national)radio program "Tom Joyner Morning Show"

Smiley and Joyner's on-air crusades to mobilize listeners are the stuff of legend, including a successful campaign to get major retailers, such as CompUSA, to advertise more in black-owned media outlets.

Smiley visits the area this weekend for discussions at The College of William and Mary on Friday and for his annual "State of the Black Union 2007" symposium at Hampton University on Saturday. The theme of the latter ties in with the Jamestown 400th anniversary; more than 11,000 people from across the country have registered for the free event, according to organizers.

From California, Smiley recently answered questions from The Virginian-Pilot and readers about the prospect of a black president, Jamestown and his own agenda. His answers have been edited for length.

Q. What can people expect at the Saturday event?

A. A conversation about the significance of the African American imprint on America. In addition to that conversation, we'll be talking about the new book, "The Covenant in Action," which is the follow-up to "The Covenant With Black America." The first book essentially addressed the "what" question of our agenda. This is the "how to," how you take the Covenant and put it into action. It's really a conversation looking back over the last 400 years, vis-a-vis the Jamestown settlement, and then also looking forward. So it's going to be a wonderful and comprehensive conversation, ultimately about one thing: How to make black America better. If you make black America better, you make all of America better.

Q. I listened to you earlier on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show," and you mentioned not forgetting the funk. Can you explain that?

A. Jamestown reminds us that we are approaching 400 years since our ancestors first arrived - of course, the first arrived in 1619 - so when you look at the timeline in the book, you see all of the funk, all of the hell, that we have had to endure. From the Dred Scott decision to the Newark riots... there's just so much we've had to endure to arrive at this place where we can be celebrating two brothers in the Super Bowl.

We can never, ever forget from whence we have come.... When we talk about the American experience, people typically want to talk about Ellis Island. Nobody talks about Jamestown; everybody didn't come through Ellis Island, certainly not our ancestors. Ellis Island is a much more sexy story - give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses. We didn't come here as immigrants.

Q. I asked some people in the community for questions. This is from Lindsay Powell, an 18-year-old in Virginia Beach: "There is a possibility that a black man might be elected in the 2008 election. Do you think that America is ready for a black president?"

A. I think America might be ready. The question is, is Barack Obama the right person?

For example, when you look at the polls now, he is trailing Hillary Clinton two-to-one inside of black America. Here's a guy who black America is, at the moment, skeptical about. Could that change? It could.

The other thing is that Barack Obama has not had the quintessential black experience in America - raised in Hawaii, spent time in Indonesia, biracial family. He didn't grow up in Mississippi or the South Side of Chicago. Most black folk got to know Barack the same way white folk got to know him - two years ago when he gave that speech at the Democratic Convention. Barack Obama is no Jesse Jackson. For that matter, Barack Obama is no Shirley Chisholm. When Shirley Chisholm ran in '72, when Jesse ran in '84 and '88, they had long-standing relationships with the black community.

So there's some courting here that Barack is going to have to do. I don't know whether or not, after the courtship, if black America is going to decide that we're going to date, much less be wed to him.

I personally don't like the idea that the majority community is basically telling us who our candidate ought to be.... The point here is that there is not a black groundswell, at the moment, saying, "Run, Obama, Run." You follow me?

And I know Barack well - he's a friend, a personal friend. I'm just answering your question honestly, that there is a courtship that needs to happen.

Q. Here's a question from Delceno Miles, Virginia Beach businesswoman: "Many people of color continue to come to this country with very little in terms of possessions or wealth yet seem to find a way to succeed in business and education by sheer determination. What lessons can be learned from them that can be applied to the black community?"

A. I'd flip the question and say that those are the lessons they have learned from us.

I understand the point, but at the end of the day, again, that's what this Jamestown conversation is all about. We have taught this country more lessons than anyone about hard work, about discipline, about self-reliance, about self-respect.

And so I think it's not about us learning from them as much as it is one recognizing that we taught them; we wrote the book on overcoming. The second part of that would be, if anything, we need to go back to our own playbook. It's not about reading somebody else's playbook. Nobody in this country has had to endure what we've had to endure, and we're still standing 400 years later.

Q. This one is from local minister Carlton McLeod of Calvary Revival Church Chesapeake:"How should we address consumerism and materialism in our community?"

A. That's a good question. Every year, the focus of these conversations change. Last year, the focus was on economics, and you can go to the Web site (www.covenantwithblackamerica.com) for more information.

The short answer is that we blame other folk, talking about economics, for coming into our communities, taking our money, yadda, yadda, yadda. You can't blame other folk for 98 percent of your problems and give them 100 percent of your money. We have to recycle dollars in our own community.

Number two, we have to focus on not just spending but on saving. We have to stop living above our means. I say all the time the problem with us is too many of us spend money we don't have, to buy stuff we don't need, to impress folk we don't even like.

Q. O.K., I'm going to try to get this question in. Much has been said about the shortage of eligible black men in America. You're still single?

A. I am.

Q. When are you going to do your part in addressing this problem?

A. (He chuckles.) The minute I find some time. I'm one of 10 kids, so I love family and look forward to the day when I can perhaps have my own. The short answer and the truthful answer is that I have been so wed to the cause of our people that it makes it challenging.

I think people sometimes don't truly grasp how much energy and effort goes into trying to make all this happen. Even for people who were married and had families, you read their books, listen to them and they will tell you - Jesse Jackson, never home. Dick Gregory, never home. Dr. King, never home.

Somewhere in there, they found a way to get married and make some babies, but the struggle of our people, when you love our people and when you are in service to our people, it takes a lot of energy. And, then again, that's not to say that for me it won't happen at the right time....

But it is on my agenda, if I can put it that way.

Q. O.K., so there's an agenda for America, and there's an agenda for Tavis?

A. (Laughing more.) Yes.

Reach Denise Watson Batts at (757) 446-2504 or denise.batts@pilotonline.com.

NBJC Black Church Summit in Philly

Saturday, March 10 promises to be a hot time at the historic Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, PA when the National Black Justice Coalition sponsors their second annual Black Church Summit. They will pick up where they left off last year in terms of their discussion on homophobia in the Black Church.

Over three hundred people from across the nation will gather to debate the issue of homosexuality and its role within the Black Church as well as provide solutions on how to create a welcoming and gay-affirming church.

Unlike last year's inaugural event in Atlanta, this year there will be GLBT and anti-GLBT ministers in the same room. Anti-gay ministers such as Bishop Eddie Long and others were invited last year but declined to participate.

Somne of the confirmed attendees are Rev. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Bishop Harry Jackson (Maryland), Bishop Yvette Flunder (San Francisco), Rev. Eugene Rivers (Boston), Dr. Kenneth Samuel (Atlanta), Rev. Deborah L. Johnson (Santa Cruz, CA), and Rev. Irene Monroe (Boston).

One of the reasons this event was created is because of concerns about HIV, anti-gay violence and emotional depression within the Black gay community. The Black Church is either ill equipped or refuses to adequately address these issues. Too many times their response to these problems is to ignore it or hurl vitriolic rhetoric from the pulpit that is not only divisive but exacerbates the problem.

This year’s event will once again attract nationally prominent clergy, civil rights leaders, and many opposed to and also affirming of homosexuality. Our goal is to assist the Black Church on how to embrace their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender friends, neighbors, family, and members of their congregations.

The continued silence of the Black gay community on issues dealing with homophobia has left the entire African-American community vulnerable to the divisive tactics of those who do not have the community’s best interests at heart.

The stated goal of the summit is to assist the Black Church in formulating strategies on how to embrace their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender friends, neighbors, family, and members of their congregations.

Another goal that the NBJC hopes to accomplish at this event is to expand the ranks of the Black Church Social Justice Community Action Network. It is a national coalition of gay-affirming Black churches and clergy who are actively working to end homophobia and discrimination in the Black church.

They will also address concerns that the continued silence of the Black gay community on issues dealing with homophobia has left the entire community vulnerable to the divisive tactics of those who do not have our community’s best interests at heart.

The sponsor of this event, the National Black Justice Coalition is a nationwide Black gay civil rights organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to end racism and homophobia within the Black communities across America.

For those of you who wish to attend, registration is $75 and can be processed online at www.nbjc.org. The address for Mother Bethel AME Church is 419 S. 6th Street in Philadelphia and the summit is scheduled to take place from 9am - 5pm.

Hope this one gets C-SPAN coverage like Tavis' State of the Black Union.

Tony! Tony! Tony!

Nice guys do finish first.

Congratulations to Tony Dungy for officially becoming the first African-American head coach to win the Super Bowl as the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17 in Miami.

He's been saddled with the label of the coach who couldn't win the big one. He took Tampa Bay to the playoffs numerous times, made it to the NFC championship game in 1999 but fell short 11-6 to the St. Louis Rams thanks to a questionable call. After becoming head coach of the Colts in 2002 they had to deal with the agony of having their seasons end at the hands of the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship in 2003, losing to them the next year and the Steelers in the 2005 divisional round of the NFL playoffs. Today's Super Bowl XLI win ended that frustration for him.

"I'm proud to be representing African-American coaches, to be the first African-American coach to win this," Dungy said as he accepted the Vince Lombardi Trophy in the postgame ceremony. "That means an awful lot to our country."

Dungy also became the third coach to win a Super Bowl as a player and a coach following Oakland's Tom Flores and Mike Ditka in accomplishing that feat. He was a safety on the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1978 that won Super Bowl XIII, ironically which was played in Miami.

The 'Soul Bowl' was an entertaining game from start to finish, if you're a Colts fan. My roomie Dawn was born in Chicago and is a rabid Bears fan. She was very happy after Devin Hester's 92 yard kickoff return to open the game. I said to her, "Ohio State started the BCS Championship game with an opening kickoff return, too. That championship trophy is sitting in Gainesville, FL right now."

The Vince Lombardi Trophy is headed to Circle City and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Congrats to the Chicago Bears and another class act from the Lone Star State, coach Lovie Smith for a wonderful season.

Justina Williams-The 1979 JET Magazine Article

photo-Justina Williams

From the November 1, 1979 Jet Magazine article written by D. Michael Cheers. Deep thanks to Roberta Black for scanning it. Note how OUR media used the correct pronouns several decades before the 2001 AP Style Book mandated it, and treated Justina with respect.


Justina Williams always knew that she was different.

Ms. Williams, 30, was born Johnny Williams, a man with a gender disorder. She said that although she had a man's genitalia, psychologically she was a woman. Further, she had glandular bust tissue, and chromosomally and hormonally she was female.

"From my early childhood years I was more feminine than masculine. I just naturally assumd that I was a girl," she told JET. "I used to fight with my sister to see who would comb the doll's hair. I never played with games or toys associated with boys."

While on sick leave two years ago from her job as an assembly line worker for General Motors' Cadillac Motor Car Division in Detroit, she went to New York and was admitted to Boulevard Hospital for a sex reassignment operation.

"The doctors made an incision down my penis, removed my testicles and formed a vaginal cavity. Part of the penis was kept to form a clitoris," she said.

Two months later she legally changed her name to Justina. Fifteen months later, after 10 years of seniority at General Motors she was terminated.

Ms. Williams filed a lawsuit last month in Wayne County Circuit Court where she claimed her termination was illegal, and that she suffered from unlawful employment practices and other forms of discrimination because of her sex. GM says they plan to answer the suit within a month.

Among the charges listed in the complaint, Ms. Williams alleges that she was "repeatedly harrassed, tormented and humiliated with verbal abuse with the intention of making her workplace conditions so unbearable that she would be forced to terminate her employment for her physical and mental well-being."

"I tried to be a man." said Ms. Williams, who now supports herself on general assistance and food stamps. "From 1970 to 1974 I even grew a mustache, tried to generate an interest in girls, but I could not become interested in them. We could only be friends. I never dated a girl in my life. I never had sex with a woman, nor have I ever engaged in any homosexual activity.

"When I was 13 I read a magazine article about an entertainer who had a sex reassignment operation. I knew then that there was hope for me. My prayers were answered." she continued. "In 1969 I started taking hormone shots to soften my skin and develop bust tissue. I even dressed like a woman, but only when I wasn't at work.
"Now I am totally a woman and content with my body. I have sex, have orgasms and really enjoy macho men," she added. Ms. Williams said that she cannot have children because she does not have any ovaries or a uterus.

As for her future, "What I really want to do is study cosmetology and move to another location so that I can get on with my life. I want to form an organization to help other women who have gender dysphoria and have suffered like I have. But for right now I want to concentrate on being female. I haven't had time to do that yet," she said.


TransGriot Notes:
Ms. Williams lawsuit against GM was never settled, but she did fufill her dreams of becoming a cosmetologist. She also went to school and became a legal assistant. The organization she formed, the National Gender Dysphoria Association helped many people in the Detroit area transition and lead happier, healthier lives. NGDS provides gender counseling, electrolysis, legal advice and SRS guidance.
They can be reached at:

National Gender Dysphoria Organization
PO Box 02732
Detroit, MI 48202
(313)842-5258

How Young Is Too Young To Transition?

photo-slain Washington DC transgender teens Ukea Davis (left) and Stephanie Thomas

Kim, 12, has always fought a male identity; she began hormones before puberty and will soon have surgery in a controversial step her doctors think more humane.

Kim is believed to be the youngest person to begin gender reassignment.

Biologically male and originally named Tim by her parents, Kim was diagnosed officially as a transsexual two years ago and has been undergoing hormone treatments. However, following an extensive mental and physical examinations, German doctors have been given the go-ahead. The child's parents have also expressed enthusiasm to begin immediately.

When the news broke about Kim's case in Germany it reawakened an old debate in the transgender community. How young is too young to transition?

We had a TSTB discussion thread on the topic and we couldn't come to a consensus on the right age to do so. We did agree that American attitudes on the subject of early transition lag far behind the rest of the world. In Thailand and Mexico for example, female hormones can be bought over the counter and the trend in other nations is increasingly leaning toward teenage transition.

My thoughts on it have evolved as the evidence continues to mount that the earlier a male to female transitions, the better. I used to believe that 18 was the right age to transition. I currently think that it needs to happen around 15, the start of the high school years. Many children develop a clear sense of whether they are boys or girls between the ages of 18 and 30 months. After that point gender stabilizes and the child adopts gender specific behavior in terms of mode of clothing, the toys they play with, et cetera.

Children with GID issues react in a different way. They will persistently insist that they belong to the opposite gender and show signs of discomfort with their body. Boys may exhibit a preference for cross-dressing, playing the female role and be disgusted with their penis. Girls may adopt masculine clothing, be drawn towards rough-and-tumble games and hide their breasts and vagina. GID kids want their unwanted body parts to disappear as they grow older and have strong preferences for friends of the opposite sex.

Shoot, sounds like my replay of my childhood.

In Great Britain and the United States, doctors follow the The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (formerly the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association) Standards of Care. They generally avoid gender reassignment surgery until the patients are 18.

WPATH guidelines state that "surgical intervention should not be carried out prior to adulthood" and that hormones should not be given to those under 16.

It is well known that early transition for male-to-female transpeople has more benefits than downsides. Testosterone is a powerful hormone and the earlier you can stave off its post-puberty effects the better for the transwoman to be. Teen transitioning allows your body to develop with feminine gender characteristics. More importantly there's not as much testosterone buildup to overcome and you avoid the testo-induced vocal cord thickening that produces a masculine timbered voice.

The major benefits are social. Families have a way of projecting their expectations for your life based on gender. A young transitioner would have the benefit of not only healthy self-esteem from having their body develop in the gender matching their brain's hardwired and self-perception, but the family would also see that. They would then develop a parental life expectation projection based on the female role, not the gender role you're leaving.

For example, if you're male, you're expected to 'carry on the family name' by marrying and having kids and doing better career wise than your father.
The later you transition in life, the harder it is for the family to let go of the 'old person' and those dreams. It lends itself to a situation in which the family can come to resent the 'new one' that took over the 'old person's' body.

That's why we often stress that a transgendered coming out is different from one of a gay or lesbian person. A gay or lesbian person inhabits the same body and gender that the family grew up with. Once a transperson comes out that old person is gone forever.

If the option had been available to me would I have taken it? You damned skippy I would have. I believe that had I done so at 15 my quality of life and familial relationships would be much better than the decade long isolation that I'm painfully trying to overcome right now in my nuclear and extended families.

As far as my body was concerned I have no problems passing. I was fortunate to be blessed with a wiry body build, smooth skin, limited body hair growth, feminine features and a rather androgynous voice. HRT basically enhanced and improved what I was given. My only regrets about transition is that I didn't do it sooner. The feelings I've had have been present in my life since I was 5.

If a young person has been insistent for years that they are in the wrong body, have gone through counseling and there is no change in their perception they are a member of the opposite gender, then why shouldn't society allow them to make the transition moves that will ensure a happier, healthier and more productive life for them?

Even if they came to that conclusion at age 12 or sooner.

Ugly Betty

photo-America Ferrera as Betty Suarez

I started watching Ugly Betty when I was channel surfing one Thursday night and happene to see Vanessa Williams on the tube. When it was over I went to ABC's website to get more information about the show and get caught up on all the episodes I'd missed.

It was adapted from a popular Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea and is executive produced by Salma Hayek. They've had some big name stars doing guest spots on the show like Lucy Liu, Judith Light and others.

I have fallen in love with this show. It's well written, well acted and you enjoy rooting for Betty and her family. Even the antagonistic characters like Vanessa's delightfully backstabbing Wilhemina Slater shows a vunerable human side that makes you not hate her as much.

The show is already garnering awards. It recently won a Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy Series and America Ferrera won a Gloden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. I have a feeling these won't be the last awards this show gets before it's done.

The basic plot of Ugly Betty is that a ordinary girl from Queens gets hired at a high fashion magazine by Bradford Meade as an executive assistant to his son, playa-playa Daniel Meade. Daniel has become chief editor in the wake of his brother Alex's mysterious death as the result of a skiing accident.

Bradford's thoughts are that she's the only woman in New York that he won't sleep with and he'll focus on the job at hand. Daniel initially resists, but is won over by Betty's bright ideas, sweet personality and intelligence. They discover that together they are an unbeatable team.

They need that togetherness. They are opposed by Wilhemina, who is still upset that she got passed over for the editor-in-chief position by Bradford after the mysterious death of their editor Fey Sommers, her toadying assistant Marc and the scheming receptionist Amanda. The Terrible Trio are always plotting and looking for opportunities to set them up for failure. Betty does have a friend at Mode in terms of the inhouse seamstress Christina, who knows everybody's dirty little secrets. She has also garnered the romantic attention of Henry the accountant.

Betty's home life isn't glamorous either. Her dad Ignacio and older sister Hilda constantly worry that she's setting herself up for a fall. Her show tune loving nephew Justin enthusiasically pushes his aunt to go for her dreams even as he criticizes her sense of fashion. She's still getting visits from her nerdy ex-boyfriend Walter despite her lukewarm attempts to convince him to stay away.

The plot just got thicker with the arrest of Bradford Meade, the appearance of his mother Claire who started drinking heavily after Alex's death and return of his brother with a twist. Alex is now his sister Alexis, played by supermodel Rebecca Romijn and has launched a hostile takeover bid backed by Wilhemina to gain control of Mode Magazine. It has been blunted for now by an injunction filed by Daniel.

Judging by the way that they've been handling the show so far, Ugly Betty will continue to surprise and delight me as the season unfolds.

February 2007 TransGriot Column

Honoring Black History Month
Copyright 2007, THE LETTER


“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.”

Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), Father of Black History Month

February is the month when the nation takes 28 days (29 during a leap year) to focus on the contributions of African-Americans thanks to the Herculean efforts of Dr. Carter G. Woodson. (who spent several semesters at Berea College working on his bachelor’s in Literature). On February 7, 1926 he founded Negro History Week, the precursor of what would later become Black History Month.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, I have a deep love of history and agree with Dr. Woodson about the importance of knowing what your predecessors have accomplished in order to chart a better future. One of the reasons that Black History Month exists is because despite the fact that we’ve been on American shores since 1619, for too long the contributions of African-Americans in the building of our nation were either overlooked or deliberately covered up.

It’s to your benefit to know, for example that Garrett Morgan invented the gas mask. There’s the unmatched combat record of the Tuskegee Airmen or the exploits of the Buffalo Soldiers to peruse. Get to know Benjamin Banneker, the mathematician who was part of the survey team that helped lay out Washington D.C. and put together a best selling almanac that was widely read in the 13 colonies.

Those accomplishments even apply in our current time. Philip Emeagwali not only built the world’s fastest computer in the early 90s but came up with a process that allows for more crude oil to be recovered from drilled wells. He is the gentleman responsible for the increasing accuracy of weather forecasts you see on the local news. Those are just tantalizing examples of the historical buffet awaiting you.

“Our song, our toil, our cheer and warning have been given to this nation in blood brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving? Would America have been America without her Negro people?”

W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

The same could be said about GLBT African-Americans as well. Our contributions to the American family quilt are numerous. Gay writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Countee Cullen were major forces in the Harlem Renaissance. Many of the major civil rights events, including the 1963 March on Washington were organized by Bayard Rustin, a gay man who helped Dr. King co-found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Speaking of the Harlem Renaissance, that planted cultural seeds that decades later allowed Alvin Ailey to found his world famous dance troupe. The Harlem Renaissance also gave birth to the Harlem drag balls that morphed into the ballroom culture depicted in the movie ‘Paris Is Burning.’ Chicago had their own version on the South Side called the Finnie’s Ball, named after its founder Alfred Finnie.

We were there at Stonewall. One of the plaintiffs in the Lawrence v. Texas case that overturned sodomy laws was an African-American by the name of Tyron Garner. One of the seven couples in the Goodridge v. Massachusetts Dept. of Public Health case that made marriage equality a possibility has an African-American lesbian in it. We GLBT African-Americans are still making contributions today fighting for GLBT civil rights and building the GLBT community

Black History Month is not just a FUBU (For Us By Us) production. Yes, it helps my people better understand where they’ve been, where they are going and build pride and self-esteem in our kids. It’s vitally important for other cultures to know what we have contributed not only to American society, but the world as well. Black history does not start and stop with slavery, Martin Luther King, the creation of jazz, achievements in sports or the Civil Rights Movement.

It is much more than that. It is American history.

Happy Black History Month!

Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History Month


Happy Black History Month!

February is when we take the time to shine the spotlight on our past, present and future history makers. Judging by recent events on several college campuses, Black History Month couldn't have come at a better time.

But no discussion of Black History Month can take place without taking a bow to the man who almost singlehandedly willed it to happen, Carter G. Woodson.

The son of former slaves whose vision of celebrating our history through annual events and a prestigious journal became a reality, was born on December 19, 1875 ten years after the Civil War ended. He taught himself the fundamentals of math and English and at 19 entered high school in Huntington, West Virginia. He mastered the four year curriculum in less than two years and at age 22 spent time at Kentucky's Berea College before returning to the coal mines.

In between trips to the mine shafts he studied Latin and Greek, then moved on to receive his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Chicago. He matriculated at Harvard University and became the second African-American to earn a doctorate in history.

Then the man who earned a doctorate in history proceeded to make it. On September 9, 1915 he and four other men founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now called the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History). On January 1, 1916 he used his own money to print the first edition of the prestigious Journal of Negro History. After serving as a dean at Howard University and West Virginia State he left teaching and published one of Black history's major books, The Negro In Our History. He also started on February 7, 1926 the annual Negro History Week celebrations that evolved in the 1960's into what we call Black History Month. Dr. Woodson considered it his proudest achievement.

Dr. Woodson believed that you look back in order to look forward and like many pioneers ignored the naysayers to make his dream a reality. He had an unshakeable faith in the power of Black history and believed that "the achievements of the Negro properly set forth will crown him as a factor in early human progress and a maker of modern civilization."

It was also what we'd call in our generation a FUBU (For Us By Us) production. While Dr. Woodson's foundation did receive some contributions from three white foundations in the 1920s, those funds dried up when the white culture structure, led by power broker Thomas Jesse Jones, objected to Woodson's policy of "telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth regardless of whom it affected."

According to Dr. Woodson, a clandestine effort was launched to erode support for the Association. He describes what happened by stating in a 25 year report, "One interracial agency," he wrote, "assuming the authority to dictate the leadership of the Negro race in all matters in America and in Africa, became most vicious in its attacks. This agency prepared a memorandum setting forth the reasons why the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History should not be further supported and clandestinely circulated it to lop off the supporters of the Association. Finally, it had the effect of depriving the Association of the assistance of all foundations and the rich people who had formerly assisted the undertaking."

Undaunted, the foundation survived on Dr. Woodson's teaching income, book royalties, and soliciting support directly from the Black community. That this occurred during the Great Depression is an even more remarkable testament to the iron-willed determination and effort that Dr. Woodson undertook to keep his dream alive.

The legendary Dr. Woodson died on April 3, 1950 at the age of 74. His outstanding historical research influenced other persons to carry on his work such as historians John Hope Franklin, Charles Wesley, and Benjamin Quarles. My late godmother Pearl C. Suel was president of the Houston chapter of Dr. Woodson's organization and wrote the African-American history curriculum for the Housron Independent School District. She passed on her passion for history not only to my mother but myself as well.

Dr. Woodson often said that he hoped the time would come when Negro History Week would be unnecessary and all Americans would willingly recognize the contributions of Black Americans as a legitimate and integral part of the history of this country. Sadly, American society has not yet fully evolved to that point and the teaching of Black History is needed now more than ever.


Whether it's called Black history, Negro history, Afro-American history, or African American history, his philosophy made the study of Black history a legitimate and acceptable area of intellectual inquiry. Dr. Woodson's vision has given all African-Americans a profound sense of dignity and pride in our heritage.