Number 14- Rest In Power Pebbles LaDime Doe

Another day, another Black trans woman murdered

We go to Allendale County, South Carolina to discuss the latest trans person who has joined the ancestors way too soon.,

24 year old Pebbles LaDime Doe was found dead on August 4 inside a car parked in a driveway off Concord Church Rd.   

Allendale County is situated along the South Carolina-Georgia border 90 miles from Charleston and 73 miles northwest of Savannah. 

Neither the Allendale County sheriffs or the South Carolina state police  have any suspects in this case.  And as you probably guessed, media misgendering played a role in why it has take us

If you have any information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of Dime's killer, you are urged to call local law enforcement.

Now for the stats.  Doe is the 14th trans person we have lost to anti-trans violence in 2019 and the second in South Carolina this year.   Most infuriating to me as a trans elder is that Doe is the tenth we have lost under age 30.   

As for funeral arrangements, the visitation will take place on August 10 at the BF Cave Funeral Home in Allendale, SC from 6-& PM EDT.   The funeral will take place on August 11 starting at 12 noon EDT in Allendale, SC at the Magdalene Christian Church .

The family is accepting donations to defray funeral costs, and you can call Dime's mother Debra Sabb at 803-395-2834 for more details as to how you can help.

Rest in power and peace Dime.   You trans family will not rest until the perpetrators of the crime against you have been captured and justice is served.
. 

Number 12- Rest In Power And Peace Denali Berries Stuckey

Was distressed to hear while attending a BTAC leadership training in Dallas about the way too soon loss of another young Black trans woman.  We head to North Charleston, SC for the latest news.

Thanks to Marcus Yasir Ross and Taliyah Cassadine Smith for alerting me to this latest death.

North Charleston PD officers responded to a 4:05 AM EDT call of a body lying on the side of the road at 2721 Carner Avenue.  They arrived at the scene to find 29 year old Denali Berries Stuckey dead from a gunshot wound

And as you probably guessed. local media misgendered her in their reporting.

North Charleston PD is still investigating the crime.   As of this writing NCPD has no suspects or persons of interest in the case.   If you have any information that will lead to an arrest and conviction, please call NCPD Crime Stoppers at 843-554-1111 or the NCPD Tip line at 843-607-2076.

Stuckey is the 12th trans woman to die this year in the US, with all of the known victims so far being African American.  She is also the 8th one under age 30 to be killed in 2019.

As of yet no word about whether there will be a vigil or memorial service for our trans sibling.  If one is organized, I will pass that info along as soon as I receive it. 

Rest in power and peace, Denali.   Hoping that the person who killed you  is swiftly caught and punished to the full extent of the law. 

Number 25- Rest In Power and Peace Regina D. Brown

Thanks to Elizabeth Rivera, it was brought to my attention that we lost another trans sibling.

We go to Orangeburg, SC to discuss our latest trans person who was taken from us far too soon in the person of 53 year old Regina Denise Brown.

The crime originally happened back on October 10 when Brown's home on 361 Sellers Avenue was reported by a woman as being on fire at 4 AM EDT that morning and called authorities.  . 

Because Brown's 2000 Lincoln Navigator was missing, arriving fire fighters assumed that no one was home.   The presence of a vehicle in the driveway is an indication to firefighters arriving to battle a house fire that someone might be home.   

As the firefighters worked to put out hot spots, one of them discovered her body and asked firefighters to cease with the hot spot dousing operation   Orangeburg Department of Public Safety and  SC law Enforcement Division was then called in to begin the investigation into her death.

37 year old Kenneth Lamont Jenkins of Columbia, SC was charged with second degree arson and grand larceny a few days after the fire.  He 'willfully and maliciously' according to the arrest warrant set fire to her home, and watched it burn from across the street as he sat in her SUV before driving off.

That point alone made me go hmm after reading the initial report, and had me recalling the eerie similarity with the Viccky Gutierrez case in LA earlier this year.   Her body was found after her apartment was set on fire by accused killer Kevyn Ramirez. 

Jenkins was subsequently charged with murder after admitting he killed Brown after a physical altercation, and had injuries on his body consistent with being in a physical altercation.

Now for the grim duty of dropping knowledge on the trans murder stats. 

Brown is not only the second trans woman murdered in South Carolina this year, she is also the second oldest one in the US at age 53 to die.    She is also the 19th African American trans and GNC person out of the 25 we have lost to anti-trans violence in 2018.

The 53 year old Brown was a beloved beautician an hairstylist in her community and is missed by all who loved her.

And may Kenneth Jenkins be tried, convicted and thrown under the jail for his crime. 

Dayna Smith Running For South Carolina Senate Seat

There's a special election happening in South Carolina today that will also get my undivided attention when the polls close this evening.

Dayna Smith is running for the SC State Senate District 20 seat that covers Lexington and Richland counties and the cities of Columbia, Irmo, Lake Murray, Seven Oaks and St. Andrews.

She's also the first out trans person to run for office in South Carolina

The special election is happening because longtime state Senator John Courson (R) resigned and vacated the seat after pleading guilty to official misconduct in June.    The seat has been held by the GOP since 1984, and South Carolina has a 28-18 GOP state Senate majority that the SC Democrats would love to begin the process of flipping by flipping this senate seat..

Smith is one of three Democrats competing for the seat, and faces off against Dick Harpootlian, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party and Kyle Lacio for the Democratic nomination. 
Four Republicans are running in their primary. 

If no one gets over 50% in their primary, there will be a runoff election scheduled for August 28.    The primary winners will face off in the November 6 general election for the District 20 seat .

Good luck to Dayna and hope she makes some South Carolina political history later tonight.

Number 8- Rest In Power and Peace Sasha Wall

Thanks to TransGriot reader Greg Green, he has made me aware of another trans sister we've lost to anti trans violence and it's  my sad duty to report that to you. 

The latest murder of a trans person happened in Chesterfield County, SC, just across the state line from Charlotte, NC.

Her name is 29 year old Sasha Wall.  She was originally from Charlotte, NC  but was living in Pageland, SC, 40 miles SE of Charlotte. 

Wall was found at 8 AM EDT Sunday in her running car slumped over the steering wheel.  She had been shot several times, with one gunshot wound in her neck.. 

And as you probably guessed, Sasha was misgendered in the article and in the on air broadcast by the police.

A passing motorist discovered what happened at the intersections of Sandy Plains Road and Highway 145 north of Chesterfield and near the North-Carolina-South Carolina state line and called 911

According to Chesterfield County Sheriff Jay Brooks, Sasha's black Toyota Corolla was parked on the side of the road with the engine running for nearly two hours.



A small caliber bullet was recovered from the driver's side door, and Brooks told WSOC-TV that whoever shot Sasha was either sitting in the passenger seat or was standing outside the car with the door opened.

The Chesterfield County Sheriff's Department at this time doesn't have a person of interest or a suspect in this case

Sasha is now the eighth trans person killed in 2018, and the fifth Black trans person murdered this year.   And once again, the pattern continues of an under 30 trans woman being murdered.

Rest in power and peace sis.   We will say your name and won't rest until justice is served in this case,

Happy 10th Blogiversary Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters!

Eight months after I founded TransGriot on January 1, on September 6, 2006 South Carolina based blogger Alvin McEwen was founding his now decade old award winning blog entitled Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters.

The blog was initially started by McEwen as an effort to support a book of the same name that Alvin was trying to get published that discussed the anti-gay industry, but turned out to be far more successful than the book was according to Alvin.

I finally got to meet him and Pam Spaulding at Netroots Nation 2012 in Providence, and had a blast getting to know him and discussing with him and Pam some of the issues impacting our community at the time.   I also have the pleasure from time to time of chatting with my fellow Southern blogging colleague on a somewhat regular basis.

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters has done such a great job of calling out the tactics of the anti-gay right, he has become after Joe Jervis of Joe My God, the other LGBTQ blogger they love to hate  

McEwen's blog has also been nominated twice (2014-2015) for GLAAD Media  Awards, and there are times I link to him for his take on the issues of the faux Christians and their ongoing facts free attacks on our LGBTQ community and other subjects.

Happy blogiversary Alvin and congrats on 10 years of publishing success for your blog. It is needed and even more necessary now than it was when it started.

May you have continued success in exposing the facts free hypocrisy and outright blasphemous lies of the anti-LGBTQ industry.

Is Open Trans Hate Becoming A Political Liability?

Another piece of political news I was gleefully doing the happy dance about was hearing about two trans hating Republican politicians in Colorado and South Carolina losing their reelection bids.

Colorado state Rep. and faux faith based transphobe Gordon Klingenschmitt lost his reelection bid for a third term last night in the GOP primary.   He was blown out by his primary challenger Bob Gardner, a former state representative who won with 62% of vote to represent Colorado Springs in the state Senate.

Gardner is considered more moderate than 'Dr. Chaps', who will not be missed in the state senate, especially by the Colorado TBLG community.

He wasn't alone in tasting electoral defeat last night. South Carolina state senator Lee Bright, who sponsored the failed anti-trans legislation in the Palmetto State, lost his bid for a third term as a South Carolina senator.

He lost his runoff race to former state Rep. Scott Talley, a candidate backed by SC Gov. Nikki Haley (R) who once again, was considered more moderate than Bright..

With Sen. Ted Cruz attempting to deploy transphobia in his last ditch effort to keep Donald Trump from becoming the GOP nominee, spectacularly failing in the Indiana primary and dropping out of the presidential race the next day, are the losses of anti-trans politicians a coincidence or a sign that open hatred of transgender people is a political liability?

Both Klingenschmitt and Bright were unpopular and had committed other unforgivable sins in their party besides being unrepentant transphobes that led to their political demise, but I sure hope so.

As I have pointed out, trans people are at least 1% to 3% of our population, and we are just as diverse as the US population.

Some of those adult trans folks are not only Republican, but some of our trans kids have parents who are members of that party like Debi Jackson, Kimberly Shappley and Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) .

Those parents and their allies are increasingly becoming fed up with the demonization of their children and trans family members and seeing member of the party they support propose legislation and dehumanizing policies to make their kids third class citizens and are retaliating at the polls..

We'll find out if the nascent political hypothesis I'm pondering about transphobia for fun and GOP political gain becoming a liability is valid if North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) falls on November 8 to his Democratic gubernatorial challenger Roy Cooper  

Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Gov. Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton, assuming he isn't convicted or in jail by then we won't find out about until they face the voters in 2018.

Hopefully by that time the Texas voter suppression law will be dead.

But I'm hopeful that the pattern of politicians gleefully and openly hating trans people for political gain goes the way of hanging chads on punchcard ballots.

Clinton Massively Blows Out Sanders In South Carolina

After Sec. Hillary Clinton's six point win in Nevada, the next election contest in the 2016 Democratic party primary schedule is the South Carolina primary.   In this one, African-American voters would get a major say in who would become the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee and divvy up the state's 53 delegates.  

Tonight Black voters in South Carolina served notice that the road to the Democratic nomination comes through Black Democratic voters.  In 2008, 55% of the voters in South Carolina's Democratic primary were African-American, and they made up an astounding 61% of the electorate today

Told y'all Bernie fans that your candidate's failure to build a convincing case for Black voters to vote for him was going to cost him, and tonight Clinton has won South Carolina in a massive blowout fueled by Black voter turning out for her.

The rout was so complete networks were calling the election within minutes after the polls closed there. Sanders according to exit polling lost the African-American vote 86-14%, and it played out in the election results.   With 99% of the votes counted, Clinton leads Sanders 73.5% to 26.0%, and has swept every county in the Palmetto State.



This butt kicking has been brewing for several weeks, and anyone who was paying attention to the primary election so far could have seen this coming.  Clinton's dominance of the Black vote in South Carolina carried her to a blowout win and getting 39 of the state's 53 delegates.

And what's more ominous as we come to Super Tuesday on March 1 is that six of the Super Tuesday states, Alabama, Arkansas. Georgia,, Tennessee, Virginia and (ahem) Texas have sizable African-American populations, and I don't think that Sanders will fix his problems with African-American voters between now and Tuesday.

2016 South Carolina Democratic Primary Today

In a few hours the Democratic voters of South Carolina will start heading to the polls to determine who will win their state's presidential primary and how they will apportion the states 59 available delegates to this summer's convention in Philadelphia.

It's looking good for Hillary Clinton right now as she seeks to build on the momentum of her win a few days ago in Nevada and keep it going into the critical March 1 Super Tuesday contests.

Sec. Clinton is maintaining her huge double digit polling lead overall and her big lead with African-American voters in this state despite attempts by Sen. Bernie Sanders to reach out to this critical Democratic voting bloc.  African-American voters will comprise up to 50% of the people casting ballots in this primary contest.

But as any political observer will tell you, the only poll that matters is the one being conducted at the ballot box, and we'll see who wins when the polls close later tonight at 7 PM EST.  

Will Chase Culpepper Make History Again?

South Carolina trans teen Chase Culpepper was recently in the news when she finally got the opportunity to take her feminine driver's license photo that was denied her in March 2014 by a transphobic SCDMV employee.

Now comes word that the 17 year old is one of the five finalists for homecoming queen at T L Hanna High School in Anderson S.C.   She was selected as one of the five finalists in a school wide vote of the student body, and at this Friday's 2:30 PM EDT pep rally will be introduced along with the rest of the homecoming court.

The winner will be revealed during halftime of TL Hanna's game with Easley HS on Friday.

Congratulations on being voted onto your school's homecoming court, and hope you are named the queen.

Chase Gets Her Drivers License

Due to my housing drama that blew up in mid to late June and July, I missed some of these trans themed stories that occurred during that time period.

One of the stories that had a happy ending was of South Carolina trans teen Chase Culpepper.  You'll recall that Culpepper ran into a transphobic DMV employee in the Anderson. SC office that forced her to take off the makeup she was wearing for her license photo back in March 2014.  

She won a federal lawsuit that not only allowed her to take that license photo that more accurately reflects who she is, but changed DMV policy.

Culpepper also received an apology from the South Carolina DMV for the unnecessary transphobic drama they took her through.

She finally got the opportunity to take that correct license photo, and WYFF-TV news cameras were there to watch what transpired.



Happy for Chase.  It's also an example of our trans younglings showing us trans elders by example that they are not only won't back down in the face of transphobic discrimination, but will fight it tooth and nail.

Gotta love her for that.

South Carolina Transteen Dissed By DMV Reaches Settlement

TransGriot Note:  At the time Chase was discriminated against and I wrote about it last September, Chase identified as gender nonconforming.  Now she identifies as trans.

South Carolina trans teen Chase Culpepper took and passed her driving test at a DMV location in Anderson, SC in March 2014.

Instead of allowing the now 17 year old trans feminine teen to take her picture in the makeup she wore on a regular basis, she was told by the DMV employee to 'look male' and remove her makeup because of an alleged policy that bans license photos when someone is purposefully altering his or her appearance and refused to take her photo and provide her the license she'd earned until she did so.

After several attempts, Culpepper's makeup was removed to the DMV employees satisfaction in a process that was called degrading and humiliating.

In September 2014 Culpepper filed a federal lawsuit with the help of the New York based Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF).   The suit asked the court to rule that denying Chase the freedom to wear her everyday makeup in her license photo constituted sex discrimination and violated her right to free speech and expression under the United States Constitution. It also sought a ruling under the U.S. and South Carolina Constitutions that the DMV’s former photo policy was unconstitutionally vague, too broad, and allowed DMV employees to arbitrarily decide how a driver's license applicant should look, including based on unconstitutional gender stereotypes. 


Under the terms of the settlement announced today, the South Carolina DMV will (1) change its photo policy to allow license applicants to be photographed the way they appear regularly, even when their hair, makeup or clothing doesn’t match the DMV’s expectations of how a man or a woman should look; (2) implement training for DMV employees that addresses the new policy and the professional treatment of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals; (3) allow Chase to return to the DMV to get her license photograph taken wearing makeup; and (4) apologize to Chase for how she was treated at the DMV.

“I am thrilled with the outcome of my lawsuit,” said Culpepper. “My clothing and makeup reflect who I am. From day one, all I wanted was to get a driver’s license that looks like me. Now I will be able to do that. It was hurtful to be singled out for being transgender and made to feel that somehow I wasn’t good enough. With this settlement, the DMV can no longer force transgender people to look like someone they’re not. I’m so glad that I stood up for what’s right and helped make positive change for transgender and gender nonconforming people.”

“This settlement agreement sends a strong message about equal rights,” said TLDEF Staff Attorney Ethan Rice. “Transgender and gender nonconforming people are entitled to be themselves without interference from the DMV. It is not the role of the DMV or its employees to decide how men and women should look. People should be able to get a driver’s license without being subjected to sex discrimination. The policy changes and training that the DMV will implement in response to Chase’s lawsuit will help all transgender and gender nonconforming South Carolina residents in the future.”

Gender Nonconforming Teen Sues SC DMV

You may have heard about the incident back in March in which Chase Culpepper was forced to take off the makeup he was wearing and 'look more like a boy' before officials at a South Carolina DMV office would take a driver's license photo.

16 year old Chase identifies as male and answers to male pronouns, but wears feminine or androgynous attire and makeup in his everyday life.

Chase was informed by DMV officials at the Anderson, SC office near where he lives that wearing the makeup constituted a 'prohibited disguise' and refused to take his picture for his drivers license despite his mother pointing out this is how Chase appears in his everyday life.

The Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday that alleges the DMV violated Chase's free speech rights in violation of state and federal constitutions.

“My clothing and makeup reflect who I am,” Chase said.  “The Department of Motor Vehicles should not have forced me to remove my makeup simply because my appearance does not match what they think a boy should look like. I just want the freedom to be who I am without the DMV telling me that I’m somehow not good enough.”

The suit was brought by Chase’s mother Teresa Culpepper on his behalf as a minor.  It asks the court to rule that denying Chase the freedom to wear his everyday makeup in his license photo constitutes sex discrimination and violates his right to free speech and expression under the United States Constitution. It also seeks a ruling under the U.S. and South Carolina Constitutions that the DMV’s photo policy is unconstitutionally vague, too broad, and lets DMV employees arbitrarily decide how a driver's license applicant should look, without regard for the rights of the people they are supposed to serve.

For you legal junkies, the suit is Teresa Culpepper v. Kevin A. Shwedo, et al, and is pending in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, Columbia Division

Let's hope that the TLDEF lawsuit is successful

Using Our Pain To Make You Money

Back in 1925, Maxon Lester Graham and Adelaide Burt started with a $50 investment a restaurant in Salt Lake City called The Coon Chicken Inn.

It had an entrance designed to look like a smiling blackface picture of an African American porter.   As you approached The Coon Chicken Inn, you would see a large head with huge lips and a porter’s hat over the exaggerated features that portrayed African Americans as a denigrated cartoon character. Customers would enter the restaurant through the sculpture’s mouth, and the trademarks and advertising for the restaurant featured the same reprehensibly racist caricature.

Items on The Coon Chicken Inn's menu were southern fried Coon Chicken sandwiches and the Baby Coon Chicken special.  African Americans were hired as waiters, waitresses, and cooks but were discouraged from frequenting the venue as customers or enjoying its dance floor.  

The karmic wheel caught up with it in early July 1927 as the restaurant caught fire sometime around 6 PM.  But a group of 50 people rebuilt the Coon Chicken Inn and had it back in operation within days.  The Coon Chicken Inn later expanded to Portland and Seattle and the chain's three locations were in operation until the late 1950's

I tell that piece of Black history to point out this isn't the first time a white restaurant owner has used racism for fun and profit.   In January last year the news went viral about a Mexican restaurant owner in South Carolina there using racism and xenophobia to boost her business.

Leanne Snelgrove owns the Taco Cid restaurant in Columbia, SC and her vanillacentric privileged behind thought it would be a hilarious and wonderful idea to promote her restaurant with an offensive T-shirt that states 'How To Catch An Illegal Immigrant'.

It has a graphic of a box trap propped up by a stick with two tacos underneath it that employees of the eatery also wear.

It went viral after Corey Hutchins took a picture of this full of fail shirt and posted it to his Twitter account.   Predictably, Snelgrove doesn't think the shirt is racist and proceeded to whitesplain it in media interviews and on the restaurant's website.

So for you peeps still trying to defend Ani DiFranco for her fauxgressive frack up last week, just stop.  The visceral reactions of Black women and the African-American community to the now cancelled plantation retreat and the initial fauxpology come from this long four century history of whites choosing profits over the humanity of non-white people, be it cluelessly or deliberately.      

It’s so cute when white-owned businesses, restaurants, etc., in an effort to prove how bold, hip and modern they are, hide behind marketing campaigns in demonstrating their resentment of people of color and other marginalized bodies all in the name of sticking it to political correctness. I can’t imagine just how awesome these folks must feel to know their creativity is so dismal that they have to step on the backs of oppressed groups just to get ahead. - See more at: http://newblackwoman.com/2013/01/11/today-in-post-racial-america-restaurant-uses-xenophobia-to-promote-business/#sthash.ZT3Pxpk3.aFldB9ik.dpuf

We're tired of you using our pain to make you money, and hope that message came through loud and clear during that dustup. 

Sadly I have the feeling it didn't

Break Out The Oreos, We Have A Cookie-Chomping US Senator

To no ones surprise, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) chose Rep Tim Scott (R-SC) yesterday to fill resigning Senator Jim DeMint's remaining term in the US Senate.  

The 47 year old Scott is a Tea Klux Klan favorite who was elected to the House in 2010 from a district that includes north Charleston and Myrtle Beach, SC.  He beat the son of notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond in the GOP primary that year on his way to election..

Scott will be the first Black* senator from South Carolina, the seventh in US history and the first from the  South since Hiram Revels (1870) and Blanche K Bruce (1875-1881) represented Mississippi during Reconstruction. 

In addition to Revels and Bruce, the other Republican senator was Edward Brooke from Massachusetts.

He was the first African-American elected to the US senate by popular vote and represented the state from (1967-1979)  Brooke was a moderate Republican who championed mass transit, low-income housing and a higher minimum wage.  

The Democratic African-American senators all come from Illinois and includes the only Black female US senator in Carol Moseley Braun. She served from 1993-1999, was a prosecutor before winning political office and called for more restrictive gun laws during her tenure. Unfortunately she was defeated in her first re-election bid and was later appointed as the US ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.

We know about the second US senator from Illinois because he now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  But before he became the 44th president of the United States in 2008,  in November 2004 Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in a landslide over his GOP opponent Alan Keyes.

When President Obama left the Senate, Roland W. Burris was appointed to Obama's seat on December. 31, 2008.  He served two years and was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for being misleading about his controversial appointment to the seat by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Now that I've discussed the history of African-Americans in the US Senate,  back to the conservanegro about to replace Jim DeMint.   Scott achieved a 92 percent score on the Club for Growth’s legislative scorecard, which meant that he was more conservative than all but 30 members of the House.  

He will have to run for the seat in 2014, so South Carolina Democrats, you have time to get a candidate to take him on.

So yeah, the Republicans can point to Scott's nomination to the US Senate and claim until they're red in the face it's an example of how diverse their party is. 

Knee-grow sycophants mouthing the same failed conservative policies as their white brethern not only will not get our votes, but it's an insult to our intelligence if you think the only reason we vote for candidates is based on the color of their skin. 

But then again, that's a play you vanillacentric privileged conservafools have perfected. 

It's even more of an insult when you nominate a guy who earned an F on the NAACP Congressional Report card and supports policies hostile to African-Americans.

Let me count the ways. Scott called for the impeachment of President Obama if he raised the debt ceiling, is virulently anti-gay, opposes a woman's right to choose, the labor movement, opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." 

And oh yeah, he's the first one along with Angela McGlowan and CL Bryant the Tea Klux Klan trot out when they need a knee-grow human shield to deflect attention from their racism. 

The conservafools are hailing Scott's Senate appointment, but many African-Americans aren't.   He's just another cookie-chomping knee-grow sellout to us. 

Break out the Oreos.