That kind of routine is a mundane, slow burn fuse, which in a way is the opposite of an explosion. No one notices. You don’t notice. By all accounts, I don’t even seem like a huge partier, or even the biggest drinker I know, but I do know that something’s always felt a little different. It’s like I’ve got an internal switch that flips and not everyone has it, and if you don’t it’s almost impossible to explain. Sometimes it flips between my first and second drink. Sometimes it flips first thing in the morning. The easiest way to explain it is that I’ve always felt like a drinker, a word that resonates with the same truth as the word ‘queer’ or my first name.
Hate violence disproportionately target BLACK transgender women
- Deoni Jones was simply waiting at a bus stop at the intersection of East Capitol Street and Sycamore Road NE, in Washington DC’s Benning Heights neighborhood when she was stabbed in the face. She was rushed to a hospital in Cheverly, MD where she died.
- “Amanda [Milan] was a transsexual. She was killed because she was a transsexual. Her neck was slashed and her story went unreported because she was Black and a transsexual…The Black community is the worst. They who have suffered from prejudice in this country have treated us worse than any other people.” - Octavia St. Laurent preached at Amanda Milan’s funeral.
- 23 year old Paige Clay was found shot to death in the West Garfield Park neighborhood in an alley in the 4500 block of W. Jackson Blvd.
- Lorena Escalera, a 25 year old black trans woman, garnered attention after her brutal death was sensationalized in media by Time. The article sexually exploited her, sexualized her “curvy” body and basically shamed her legacy instead of even addressing the violence she endured.
- Rita Hester was an out African-American transwoman who lived in the Allston/Brighton community west of Boston. A neighbor reported to police a disturbance at Rita’s apartment. Upon arrival, they found her in cardiac arrest, having been stabbed multiple times. She was rushed to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital but was unfortunately declared dead after her arrival.
- On the morning of August 7, 1995 the popular 24 year old hairdresser named Tyra Hunter was on her way to work as a passenger in a car. That vehicle ended up being involved in an accident at the corner of 50th and C streets in Southeast DC.
Tyra and the driver had been pulled from the smoking ruins of the vehicle by onlookers and were lying on the ground when fire department personnel arrived at the scene. The neighborhood began gathering to watch as a male firefighter began treating Tyra for her injuries. That is, until he cut open her pants leg and noted she had male genitalia.
At that point, according to eyewitnesses, the firefighter, later identified as Adrian Williams stood up and backed away from Tyra. She was semi-conscious, complaining about pain and gasping for breath as he was quoted as saying by one witness, "This bitch ain’t no girl…It’s a nigger, it got a dick." Williams began joking with the other fire department personnel at the scene as the bystanders pleaded with them to resume working to save Tyra’s life. Tyra’s treatment was discontinued for 5 to 7 critical minutes while bystanders pleaded for them to resume treatment. Finally an EMS supervisor arrived and resumed treating Tyra. She was rushed to DC General Hospital where she arrived at 4:10 PM.
But the nightmare was just beginning for Tyra. The DC General Hospital ER staff compounded the insulting neglect of the fire fighters. A doctor refused to treat her and she died of blunt force trauma at 5:20 PM in the now closed hospital’s emergency room.
- 26-year-old Erycka Morgan, a black transgender woman, was stabbed to death in her home, proving that even in death our identities remain unsettled, Susan Epstein of the New Jersey Star-Ledger opted to ignore industry guidelines and instead report Ms. Morgan’s death with only masculine pronouns and her given name.
- A post operative black transgender lingerie model named Victoria Carmen White was brutally shot to death. Victoria Carmen White was pursued by the Newark man who she began talking to earlier that day. She invited him over to talk. Once she told him she was transgender, he was heard yelling “You a dude?” by Victoria’s female friend and female cousin, and a string of gun shots followed.
- Police have discovered the body of a transgender woman named Coko Williams in a particularly crime-, drug-, and prostitution-ridden section of East Detroit. Her throat was slashed and there were apparent gunshot wounds as well.
- 32 year old aspiring actress Domonique Newburn, who was found dead in her Fontana, CA apartment. She robbed of clothes and her computer. Her car was also stolen.
- 37 Year old Brandy Martell, an outreach worker, was sitting behind the wheel of her car when one or two men walked up and began a conversation that appeared cordial on the surface, Brandy revealing immediately she was a trans woman, a few moments later one of the men became angry and fired into the car at Martell.
- Chanel Larkin, 26, was shot three times in the head by a man who allegedly picked her up for sex, and offered her $20 to turn a trick. Authorities contend that Andrew Olacirequi, who was cruising the vicinity for a prostitute, shot Larkin three times in the head when Larkin revealed to him that she was biologically male.
- Artegus Madden, 34 year old black trans woman, was found dead in the living room of her Denton County home. She had been hit in the face and shot in the neck.
- 20 year old Cemia Dove Acoff from Cleveland was found in a retention pond on MacKenzie Road, north of Cook Road, in Olmsted Township, OH, nude from the waist down. She was stabbed multiple times tied with a rope to a block of concrete. She was slandered through out media and misgendered by news.
- 30 year old Ashley Sinclair was found shot to death in a wooded area on Rio Grande Drive just off S. Orange Blossom Trail in Orange County.
- Kelly Young, a 29-year-old black transgender woman, was found shot to death inside a home in Baltimore, Maryland.
- 20 Year old Ebony Whitaker was found murdered in grass, shot, nude from the waist down.
- Just like most black trans women, Duanna Johnson made national news when video footage leaked of her being viciously beat by white officers of Memphis who called her transphobic and racist slurs. It resulted in the officers being fired. Ten months later, Duanna Johnson was found murdered.
- Lateisha “Teish” Green, the sweet 22-year old African-American transgender woman who was shot and killed at close range by Dwight DeLee after DeLee uttered anti-gay slurs.
- Nakhia “Nikki” Williams was a proud transgender woman, a writer and painter, who was deeply involved in her community. She was brutally murdered in Louisville on August 20, 2008, a few days shy of her 30th birthday.
- A 21-year-old out transgender woman who went by the name of Tyli’a Mack was stabbed to death in DC on August 26th, 2009.
- Chanelle Pickett, an African-American transsexual woman, was strangled to death at age 23. Chanelle’s murder graphically illustrates the connections between violence and pervasive employment discrimination. After being bashed by co-workers and experiencing discrimination from her job - along with her twin trans sister (after both being outted as trans) and falling on hard times, Chanelle begin dating a man named William Palmer. While William Palmer tried to deny that he knew Chanelle was transsexual, or that he enjoys the company of transsexuals, he’s as familiar to the Boston transgender community that frequented the bar as Norm from Cheers was. He not only knew what and who a transsexual was, he frequently dated them.
Chanelle and Palmer had been seeing each other for some time and they had met at Playland on a number of occasions. Friends say that she really liked Palmer and wanted to have a more serious relationship with him. Palmer had written a letter to Chanelle not only expressing his affection for her, but had promised to help her get back on her feet and to take care of her. With this overwhelming evidence, the letters to Chanelle and being seen in the company of her and other transwomen prior to the murder, Palmer’s defense attorney came up with a then new variation of the ‘homosexual panic’ defense. - Stacey Lee's lifeless body was found by her boyfriend in the South Philadelphia home she shared with her boyfriend.
- 21 Year Old Islan Nettles was walking down the street with her friends (all trans women of color), while she begin to get cat-called by her murderer who thought she was beautiful. Islan and her friends were trying to walk away to avoid drama. One of his male friends voiced that the group of women were transgender and Islan Nettles was beat to a coma right across the street from the police station. She died.
- 22 year old Brittany-Nicole Kidd-Stergis was found murdered in a car. The early media reports of course (as usual) misgendered Brittany-Nicole.
These were only some black trans women who have been murdered. So many are unidentified, not reported in news and ignored in general. They are denied employment not only for being black but for being transgender. They are profiled by police not only for being black but for being transgender. They are murdered not only for being black but for being transgender.
