Miss Major Interview

I have much love for one of our iconic transwomen in  Miss Major, who is one of the few African descended Stonewall Rebellion veterans.    She talks to Ashley Love about Stonewall and a few other issues.   


.

Jim Fouratt's May 27, 2000 Transphobic NY Times Letter

TransGriot Note:   Longtime transphobe Jim Fouratt has been trying to spin his divisive image in New York City and gay history recently by appearing on a 2009 episode of the Colbert Report.   But Colbert or the writers trying to sanitize this image didn't ask him about this. 

We folks with long memories in the trans community won't forget this transphobic email.    It was his response to the NY Times magazine article entitled 'An Inconvenient Woman'.    

It's as Dr Lynn Conway wrote about later, a classic example of the transphobia that runs rampant in the gay  men from that time period.    

 <<Forwarded Message:
Subj: ALERT: New York Times promotes sexual reasigment (sic) as a solution to gender varinace (sic)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000528mag-calpernia.html

Date: Saturday, May 27, 2000 2:58:21 PM
From: JimFour@aol.com
I am shocked to hear a member of the Imperial Court endorsing this blatantly homophobic article written by a gayman. Yes, this is a tragic story. Murdered because he was perceived to be gay, Barry Winchell deserves all our grief and anger. As do his loved ones including a gender variant gayman self named Calpernia Sarah Addams, a professional gender illusionist.

All around us we see these attacks on gaymen who do not conform to some kind of Tom of Finland or Andrew Sullivan image, What is new is we now see gay academics and pop journalists embracing this new push to make gaymen and lesbians straight by leading them to endure painful physical body manipulation and dangerous hormonal injects to take on the topography of the conventional definition of what is male and what is female. Modern medicine is once again trying to cure us of our desire for same sex love.

Our gender variant gay and lesbian population is under intense pressure to deny their homosexuality and to take all physical, hormonal and emotional steps in order to be accepted into heterosexual society.
First we had Boys Don't Cry which told the horrific story of a 19 year old baby butch lesbian who was first raped and than murdered because she had the audacity to role play and act on her desire to love and have sex with women. In death Brandon Teen became the poster girl of the reparative therapy movement (aka transgendered) for adult gender variant gaymen and women and in this guise was deemed acceptable frirst to Hollywood and than to a larger straight audience. 

We are familuar with the smarmy tabloid journalism of gaywriter David France. Who could forget his bizarre book on Andrew Crispo? But does the New York Times need to sink to the level of the National Inquirer doing a Talk-ish sex/celebrity/death feature? I would hope not.

The Barry Winchell story needs to be told. How homophobia both external and more importantly internally puts at risk most homosexuals and lesbains and all gender variant individuals, How the rush to gender reassign through the wonders of modern medicine has ultimately failed ... where in the sensational picture of a professional skin strutter was there any reference to the 30 year John Hopkins study of sexual reassignment and how ultimately it did not improve the self image or well being of the subjects in their program. The results of this study caused John Hopkins to cease sexual reassignment as a solution to gender dysfunction. Or where is the information on how most transsexuals who are not closeted have very few job options other than in the adult entertainment and/or sex industry...Wendy Carlos and Dr. Renee Richard's are the exceptions.

The Imperial Court can be a powerful voice in confronting the solutions that are now being promoted by mainstream publications like the New Times and by the toxic, anti-gay/lesbian "queer" academics. Neither group is a friend of the Cherry Grove and/or Court community, Why can't Calpernia Sarah Addams dress, act and be himself as a gaymen, The Court sets a powerful role model of how to be who ever you want to be and to be true to your gay male identity. After all, this construction of 'women" is totally informed by gaymale sensibility and has little in reality to do with the essence of being female.

Speak up. Help those gender variant gaymen and women who are under siege to save their pennies to mutilate their bodies to gain acceptance into the heterosexual society.

Would be most interesting in hearing each of your response to this increasingly serious attack on who we are and how we live.
Jim Fouratt >>

Houston Crossdressing Ordinance Repeal 30th Anniversary Celebration Oral History Video

Had a wonderful time last weekend interacting with various members of the community.

Got to finally meet and chat with HPD Sgt Julia Oliver, talking with some of the wonderful people at Frye and Associates, Cristan, Phyllis, Ray Hill, and other members of the community.

At the end of it is some trans blogger y'all may have heard of.

30th Anniversary of Houston Crossdressing Ordinance Repeal

Today is the day 30 years ago that an ordinance was passed by Houston City Council that repealed Section 28-42.4 of the city’s Code of Ordinances, more popularly known back in the day as the anti-crossdressing ordinance.

It had been on the city's legal books since 1904 and was used by HPD during the oppressive leadership reign of hated police chief Herman Short to harass the Houston GLBT community.

Thanks to a 1972 lawsuit by transwoman Anne Mayes that got an injunction against the Houston Police to back up off her and quit using it to harass her and the 3.5 years of hard work of my activist mentor Phyllis Frye, the transpeople of my generation and beyond could walk the streets of Houston without being arrested or harassed by the Houston po-po's for wearing the apparel of the opposite gender.

And now, a link to a 2006 OutSmart magazine story by Ann Walton Sieber about the repeal

Happy Birthday Sylvia!

Today is the birthday of the mother of the trans rights movement as we call her, Sylvia Rae Rivera.

She was born in New York City on this date in 1951 to parents of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan extraction, and was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance.

She also founded with her friend Marsha P. Johnson STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group focused on helping homeless young street transwomen.

She was a Stonewall Veteran in addition to being a loud and persistent voice railing against the attempts by the gay community to erase and exclude transpeople, people of color and low income people from the nascent TBLG movement and civil rights legislation.

I had the pleasure of meeting her in May 2000 and having a long conversation with her about some of those events.

We also agreed to disagree about Lyndon B. Johnson.

Sylvia lost her battle with cancer in February 2002, but her memory will live on through the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the MCC's Sylvia Rivera Food Pantry named in her honor.

In 2005, the corner of Christopher and Hudson streets in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood where she organized much of her activism was renamed "Rivera Way" in her honor.

MAGNET also had some commentary about the Mother of the Trans Rights Movement as well.

Mayor Parker's Inaugural Speech

The public swearing in ceremony for new Houston Mayor Annise Parker took place today at the Wortham Theater Center with five of our previous mayors, Fred Hofheinz, Kathy Whitmire, Lee Brown, Bob Lanier and Bill White (the one she's succeeding) on the stage with her.

Due to regulations in the city charter, she was sworn in Saturday in a private ceremony to become our 61st mayor and only the second woman to hold the office.

Here's the link to Mayor Parker's inaugural speech

It figures that Phred Phelps and 4 members of his Westboro Baptist Hate Church KKKlan would show up to picket today. They were countered by an even larger group picketing them. I hope the city disinfected and scrubbed down the sidewalk where the Phelps family was standing.

Congrats Madame Mayor. May you have much success and two more terms in the mayor's chair.

It's Officially Mayor Annise Parker!

The arrival of the New Year meant that the day Houston's new mayor would take office was fast approaching.

In a Saturday private ceremony witnessed by her partner Kathy and a small group of her family and friends, Annise D. Parker was officially sworn in as my hometown's 61st mayor.

Longtime friend and former campaign manager State District Judge Steven Kirkland had the honor of administering the oath of office.

Mayor Parker used her grandparents’ Bible for that ceremony, and plans to do so again when she takes part in the public ceremony on Monday at the Wortham Theater Center.

According to a statement issued by the city, Parker kept Saturday’s swearing-in private to avoid overtime costs that would have incurred if police and other city employees were needed for a weekend inauguration.

“At a time when the city is facing budget shortfalls, we will be continually looking for ways to cut expenses,” Parker said in a statement.

During the Monday inaugural festivities, she will take the oath again at 9:30 AM CST along with City Controller-elect Ronald Green and members of the Houston City Council.

As the Houston Chronicle noted and many of us who have watched her rise to the mayor's chair already know, the incoming mayor knows her way around City Hall.

She spent six years as an at-large council member and six more as city controller, years in which she was immersed in city finances and department audits,

“We have someone with institutional knowledge in charge, someone who can recite 12 years of city policy-making off the top of her head,” said local political observer Nancy Sims. “This is truly unique since we adopted term limits.”

And it's that unique aspect which will serve her and the citizens of Houston well.

She also is a straight shooter, and plans to remind Houstonians during her inaugural speech that our city faces difficult choices.

“I'm not going to paint a rosy picture when that's not the truth,” she said. “I am by nature an optimist, but I believe that optimism has to go with hard work and commitment — you have to do the preparation — but Houstonians know how to do that. We'll get by, and things will be fine, but it's not going to be easy.”

But judging by your past work, Houston will be in good hands as you make the tough decisions that will help us get by.

Amanda Simpson Makes History

Amanda Simpson is no stranger to making transgender history. In 2004 she won the Democratic nomination for an Arizona House of Representatives seat but narrowly lost that bid to become the first transperson elected to a state legislative body since 1992.

She made history in another way by becoming the first transgender presidential appointee.

Simpson has been appointed by the Obama Administration as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce. She'll be working in the Bureau of Industry and Security.

Simpson brings considerable professional credentials to her new job. For 30 years, she has worked in the aerospace and defense industry, most recently serving as Deputy Director in Advanced Technology Development at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Ariz. She holds degrees in physics, engineering and business administration, along with an extensive flight background. She is a certified flight instructor and test pilot with 20 years of experience.

In other words, Amanda's all that and three bags of chips!

“I'm truly honored to have received this appointment and am eager and excited about this opportunity that is before me,” said Simpson. “And at the same time, as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others.”

I was hoping that the 2010's would be a decade that results in an avalanche of groundbreaking 'firsts' and universal recognition of our human rights for the transgender community in the States and around the world.

Well, on the first day of it, we get this wonderful news.

Congratulations Amanda. You deserve it and what a great way to start off the new year and the new decade on a positive note.

A Trans Houstonian Reflects On Annise's Win

TransGriot Note: My latest post for the Bilerico Project;

As many of you Projectors already know, Annise Parker handily won her runoff election race against city attorney Gene Locke Saturday night to become only the second woman elected as mayor of my hometown.

It was a watershed moment in GLBT history and GLBT politics as well as Houston became the largest city in the United States and the first in the Lone Star State to elect an openly gay mayor.

And best of all for me as a proud Houstonian and Texan, we beat Dallas to that distinction.

Hey, the rivalry between Houston and Dallas never dies.

Even though I was a thousand miles away at the time and bummed about it, I was still proud to see someone from our GLBT community rise to the highest office in our city.

In addition to her impressive political resume and compelling story, Annise has been a friend to the Houston trans community and had our back on our issues. She's a straight shooter who talks the talk and walks the walk. The Houston trans community enthusiastically supported her and volunteered in her successful city council runs in 1997 and 1999. Many of those vets were back for this nearly year long campaign.

Annise's election emphatically makes the case for something that I continually point out to people who live in blue states and have the misguided impression that relocation to GLBT meccas is the way to advance our cause.

We shouldn't be abandoning 'red states' to right wingers and never should have in the first place simply because they aren't San Francisco, Los Angeles or New York.. In some cases the advances in TBLG rights, LGBT history, BTLG culture, and GLBT politics have come out of red states.

GLBT people live all over this country, including 'red states'. Many of us grew up in locales like Houston and Texas and have mad love for them. It gives us the impetus and the incentive to want to stay, fight and do the work to make them better, more progressive places to live.

And in many cases, because we 'red staters' have organized Christohaters in our midst that hate all of us GLBT peeps equally, we're better organized politically and as a community than you 'blue staters' to work in an intersectional manner.

We red staters have to have all hands on deck efforts in many cases just to keep our passed civil rights from being rolled back in referenda or restricted in the first place.

We don't have time to engage in the internecine warfare that roils some GLBT communities in blue states, and as we painfully found out in Houston in the early 80's, the only people we hurt when we do engage in it is ourselves.

Annise's election also sends the message that just because you are a GLBT red state resident, it doesn't disqualify you from serving in your city council, your county commission, your city's mayor's chair, your school board or your state house as long as you are open and honest about your life.

It's time for qualified GLBT peeps in red and blue states to dream big and aim higher politically.

Ray Hill, the dean of the Houston GLBT activist community, said this in the Houston Chronicle about Annise's win. “For me, it means 43 years of hard work has finally paid off. “For Houston, it means we have finally reached the point where being gay cannot be used as a wedge issue to divide the community and prevent us from reaching our aspirations. Annise Parker is not our mayor — she is the city's mayor.”

Damned right she is. She represents 2.2 million people, not just Montrose.

But I can't help still seeing at times the person I met at the Houston trans community's Unity Dinner and smiling about it.

It is going to be so cool to see Annise on January 1 standing in the Wortham Center once again standing next to Kathy, holding up her right hand, but this time taking the oath as the 61st mayor of Houston.

Simone Bell Becomes First African-American Open Lesbian State Legislator Elected In US

History was made last night in Georgia as Simone Bell won a runoff election in Atlanta area State House District 58 to become the first openly lesbian African-American state legislator in the United States.

Bell becomes the second openly LGBT member of the Georgia State House, joining another Atlanta area member in Rep. Karla Drenner.

Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund said in GayPolitics.com,“This is a tremendous victory for LGBT Georgians. Simone is a longtime leader in her community, and she will be a huge asset in the Georgia State House,”

Simone has worked as an activist and advocate in Atlanta and across the south for more than 20 years. She’s tackled a broad range of issues including workplace equality, access to affordable health care, fighting HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, safe schools for all children, youth empowerment and women’s issues.

Congrats Representative-Elect Bell on your historic victory and may you have a long and distinguished tenure in the Georgia State House.

Georgina Beyer Election To NZ Parliament Tenth Anniversary

Today is the tenth anniversary of Georgina Beyer's grundbreaking achievement.

On this date in 1999 she became the first open transperson in the world to be elected to a national legislative body when she defeated Paul Henry to win the Wairarapa seat for the NZ Labour party and become the world's first transsexual MP.

Traditionally, a new legislator is given 10 minute to make a Maiden Speech as a way to introduce themselves to their new colleagues.

On this 10th anniversary of Georgina's historic achievement, I leave you with an excerpt from tht speech.

Mr. Speaker, I can't help but mention the number of firsts that are in this Parliament. Our first Rastafarian… our first Polynesia n woman… and yes, I have to say it, I guess, I am the first transsexual in New Zealand to be standing in this House of Parliament. This is a first not only in New Zealand, ladies and gentlemen, but also in the world. This is an historic moment. We need to acknowledge that this country of ours leads the way in so many aspects. We have led the way for women getting the vote. We have led the way in the past, and I hope we will do so again in the future in social policy and certainly in human rights.

And hopefully there will be many others following in your footsteps over time.

Annise Parker In Houston Mayoral Runoff

Was keeping a close eye on the mayoral election back in Houston last night. I was happy to see that city controller Annise Parker is headed to a December 12 runoff against City Attorney Gene Locke.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting in Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, Parker led the field with 31 percent of the vote, followed by Locke at 26 percent. Brown came in third at 22 percent, trailed by Morales at 20 percent. Three other minor candidates on the mayoral ballot totaled 1 percent.

Even though Parker led most of the night, she wanted to make sure her supporters knew that they had unfinished business.

“This race is not over,” she said. “Join me at headquarters tomorrow. We'll get back to work, and in five weeks, we'll claim victory.”

The runoff will have the element of history coursing through it. At the end of the night on December 12 Houston will either have its second woman mayor and first openly gay woman mayor of any large city or our second African-American mayor.

Fairness 10th Anniversary

This weekend those of us in the Louisville GLBT community will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the passage of our inclusive GLBT protective rights ordinance we call the Fairness Ordinance.

The Fairness Ordinance was passed by the Louisville Board of Aldermen.on October 12, 1999. It was groundbreaking at the time because it not only was the first time a GLBT rights laws passed in a Southern city, it was also inclusive as well. The sad trend at the time was to cut transpeople out of them and pass them for gay and lesbian people only.

Ten years later the sky hasn't fallen in 'Sodom on the Ohio' as our Reicher opponents call the city. Two other Kentucky cities, Lexington and Covington have their own GLBT rights laws on the books as well, and Lexington's passed on a 12-3 vote.

But not everyone in Kentucky has these protections. The task is to pass a statewide law so that all GLBT people within the state can enjoy the same rights as the people residing in Louisville, Lexington and Covington do.

What About Our Legacy?

TransGriot Note: I was shocked and pleased to discover that in Dr. Susan Stryker's latest book Transgender History, I'm not only listed on Page 150 of it, this humble blog is listed as a resource for further transgender info.

It's an honor to be considered by Dr. Stryker, a person that I admire as a resource.

It also means I have to step up my blogging game another level and be a BETTER historical resource and repository of information.

Since the community seems hellbent on erasing the voices of our Black transleaders, and some of y'all don't know (or in come cases don't care) who they are, I'm going to take it upon myself and start an ongoing TransGriot project to invite those history making leaders to talk about whatever's on their minds on a regular basis.

First up is A. Dionne Stallworth. She's one of the original founders of GenderPac, and a longtime advocate and activist concerning issues of mental health, homelessness, people of color, and equality for all LGBTIQ people.

****

Among her many accomplishments, Dionne was one of the original founding
members of GenderPAC, a former officer and board member of the Pennsylvania
Mental Health Consumers’ Association, founded and ran the first organization in Philadelphia dealing with the issues of transgender youth of color, and one of the founding members and original co-chair of the Philadelphia–based Transgender Health Action Coalition.


Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my own mortality. I guess that could be that Michael Jackson and I shared the same age when he died. It could be that in the past five years, I have lost 6 others who I loved – an ex, two brothers, and my father among them. With that being said, I have sat by and watched the same-sex marriage take over the equality discussion for all queer or LGBTIQ2S rights. I have watched Lt. Dan Choi, in a real “David and Goliath” moment, fighting for gays to serve openly in the military. I have watched in recent days as ENDA includes gender-variant people and is being seriously discussed on the Hill.

With all of these occurrences, I wonder what kind of legacy will we as queer people actually intend to leave behind for our families, the kids who seem to be coming out even earlier to a world that hasn’t figured out how to deal with them fairly, justly and with dignity. I begin to actually wonder what has happened to queer history and our leadership.

I had the pleasure of meeting Barbra Gittings before she left us, admittedly too soon. A very wise woman. At the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference, I met a woman who I had only heard whispers about. When I first saw her, I thought: “Naw, it couldn’t be her. Just couldn’t be.” But as sure as I breathe, it was her. It was Miss Major, one of the two transgender pioneers I knew who were at Stonewall in 1969. She was dressed comfortably, and was poised and elegant. I wonder how many people besides me even knew she was there.

This brings me to my point of the day, folks – if we were there at Stonewall and before, and even at the subsequent events, why does there seem to be no trace of us in populist queer history? I mean, some of us may have been Black, but I don’t think it was that dark all the time to miss all of us. What about the Asian leaders like Pauline Park or Sabina Neem? What about the Latino/a leaders like Gloria Casarez or David Acosta? What is with history or herstory when all the pages and accomplishments are all white? What does this say to the next generation of queer people of color? What does this say about the fight for inclusion and equality? Does it mean that people of color are expendable? Does it mean that transgenders and gender-variant people are less queer than their White counterparts? From what I see and hear, with very little exception, some people are more deserving of equality than others. I see and hear that my human rights, my very right to exist, are less deserving than the right of gay people to be married. I ask the people reading my words now – is that the legacy, the true legacy, you wish to pass on?

In my lifetime, I have witnessed the election of the first African-American President of the United States. To be perfectly honest, I had my doubts that he was gonna make it, but he did. However, I remember another candidacy that virtually was done before it started – the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm. Look that one up in your history books.

I have watched the constant refrain from the leadership to the mainstream media: “We don’t want special rights. We want equal rights.” They say the more things change, the more they stay the same. It would appear to our leadership in organizations like HRC and GLAAD, and to representatives like Barney Frank, some people are more equal than others. Are they right? Is this the legacy we want to send to queer families and the next generation of our leadership?

We are at a most crucial point in our history. We can begin to truly call into question the “isms” that in the past have separated and divided us and made us easy prey for the purveyors of hate and division. We can begin to really what is necessary to take care of our next generation of leaders by investing in adoption not only for gay and lesbian children, but for transkids as well.

We can say no more to the hundreds of thousands of kids and adults who die from suicide each year. We can learn and teach each other our true history, which includes everybody and I mean EVERYBODY! With all the pain, hate, injustice and intolerance, we’ve all seen and experienced, do we really have time for the whitewashing of our history? Do we really have time to be so myopic that our own legacy slips right through our fingers?

What’s it going to be? It’s your move and ours.

Stonewall 40th Anniversary

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that jumped off the modern GLBT rights movement.

It is a day we celebrate and take stock in where the movement is now, visualize the type of America we would wish to live in, then do whatever is necessary to make it happen.

It's also the day to remember the people who got tired of being jacked with by the po-po's enough to where they did get pissed off enough to do something, like Sylvia Rivera.

Yes, we transpeeps are the heirs of Sylvia's legacy. It has been a rocky road for us filled with challenges and opportunities. We've had spectacular successes over the last 40 years and some spirit crushing defeats, but to paraphrase Maya Angelou, 'and still we rise'.

As a transperson of color I have mixed emotions about this day. Yes, I'm proud of the major role transpeople of color like Sylvia and Miss Major played played in helping jump start the Stonewall Riots.

But at the same time I'm concerned about the fact we have been shut out of the GLBT movement leadership ranks and systematically erased from its history.

As Stonewall veteran Raymond Castro reminds us, "It wasn't just gays. It wasn't just white gays. You had straight people sympathetic to gays. People of the arts. You had people who had had enough (of the police). You had Latinos, you had blacks, you had whites, Chinese, you had everything. It was a melting pot. Young, old. Fems, butches."

While its been amazing to see the progress that the GLBT community not only nationally but here in Kentucky and other locales has made over the last 40 years, we still have a long road yet to travel.

But I'm cautiously optimistic about where we'll be when we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall in 2019.

Who Was The First African-American Transwoman?

In 1906 Kelly Miller stated, "All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritual vision."

Because the half century of transgender history so far has been predominately written by people who don't share my ethnic heritage, it has only covered one facet of the story.

We know for example that Lili Elbe was the first person to undergo gender transition in the 1930's, that Christine Jorgensen in 1953 was the first post-war one that garnered huge media attention, and about the exploits of other transwomen from Coccinelle to Renee Richards to Dana International.

But it's only in the last few years that the stories of pioneering non-white transpeople have been coming to the forefront. Fortunately, some of those stories were recorded in the pages of our iconic magazines JET, EBONY and Sepia. Thanks to the Johnson Publishing Company agreement with Google that resulted in JET and EBONY being digitized and placed online in their book search feature to peruse, some of those stories are now coming to light.

As a transperson of African descent who comes from a family of historians, I want to know and revel in my history. Just as I'm keenly aware of the varied historical accomplishments of my people, I want to know the same things about Black transpeople as well.

I am one of three African-Americans who has won the IFGE Trinity Award. Dr. Marisa Richmond is the first African-American transperson to be elected as a major party convention delegate for her state. I know that Avon Wilson was the first African-American and first person to go through Johns Hopkins gender program in 1966

But what irritates me at times is that I don't definitively know (yet) who was the first African-American person to transition.

I've been encouraged lately to see some tantalizing clues surface pointing to an answer to that question.

About the same time that the media was fixated on Christine Jorgensen, an article appeared in the June 18, 1953 issue of JET magazine.

It began following the story across several JET issues of Pittsburgh's Carlett Brown. Because Denmark's laws restricted the surgery to Danish nationals, Carlett took the drastic step of renouncing her US citizenship in order to be able to have SRS done in Denmark and have her HRT supervised by Dr. Christian Hamburger, Christine Jorgensen's endocrinologist.

I'll have to write up her fascinating story in another post since I'm still reading through more than a few issues of JET to find out how the story ended.

A Sepia magazine article and two 1965 National Insider tabloid articles claim New Orleans born Delisa Newton, who was 31 when she transitioned is that person.

Sepia magazine was a Fort Worth, TX based competitor of EBONY/JET similar in style to Look magazine that published from 1948-1983. The African-American Museum in Dallas, TX has the picture files of Sepia Magazine in its archives.

It seems appropriate that one of the contenders was born in New Orleans. Delisa was billed as ‘The First Negro Sex Change’ in that 1966 article, but they probably weren't aware of Avon Wilson yet. I'd also have to check with what's left of the New Orleans transgender community to see if Delisa is still alive.

These are the articles in question pointing to Delisa Newton. I have yet to find those Sepia magazine articles online or see them.

* Delisa Newton. “My lover beat me”. National Insider, June 20, 1965: 4-5.
* Delisa Newton. “Why I could never marry a white man!”. National Insider July 18, 1965: 17.
* Delisa Newton. “From Man to Woman”. Sepia. 1966.

JET also had a small blurb in its March 16, 1967 issue about 28 year old Philadelphian Carole Small. She was working as a female illusionist-singer in Germany and was reported to be in Denmark getting SRS. Assuming she's still alive, she'd be approaching her 70th birthday.

Carole was quoted as saying in that article, "Black women in America are among the luckiest on the face of the earth and it will be marvelous to be one."

Your late 20th century-early 21st century sisters echo those sentiments as well. It would be nice for us to know exactly who was our first and hear about how their lives progressed post surgery.

In order to continue progressing toward our glorious future, we must know about our past in order to get a better understanding of our present.

As I keep perusing these older issues of EBONY/JET, I'm discovering they did a much better job of covering gender issues back in the day than I'd been aware of.