This Day in History

Nov. 20, 1999: Transgender Day of Remembrance

Time Periods: 1975

Themes: LGBTQ

Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice. — Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith

Remember Trans Power — Fight For Trans Freedom by Micah Bazant. Source: Justseeds

On November 20, 1999, transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith held a vigil in San Francisco to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman murdered the year before. This was the first Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), a commemoration that has been honored each year since to raise awareness of continued violence to the transgender community and the many lives cut short.

An excerpt from the book Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Radical Queer History, edited by Zane McNeill, Riley Clare Valentine, and Blu Buchanan (forthcoming from PM Press and Working Class History) reads,

The first Transgender Day of Remembrance was organized by transgender activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith after Rita Hester, a transgender woman, was murdered on November 28, 1998, in Boston, Massachusetts. Hester’s murder, like many crimes against transgender individuals, was marked by a lack of media sensitivity, including misgendering and deadnaming in reports.

Smith, who wanted to honor Rita Hester and draw attention to the broader issue of violence against the transgender community, organized a vigil in San Francisco on November 20, 1999. This date was chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the murder of Chanelle Pickett, another Black transgender woman whose death had deeply affected Hester.