Transgender rights have been placed on the chopping block by the second Trump administration. Pushback, however, has been equally fierce across the country as activists combat Donald Trump’s attempt to erase our trans and nonbinary communities from the social fabric of American life.

For this year’s Women’s History Month, I’d like to honor two Black trans women: Rita Hester and Giselle Kristina Byrd. I honor Hester for her life and legacy and Byrd for her historic appointment.

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On November 20, 2024, the 25th Anniversary of the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), The Theater Offensive (TTO) – a queer theater organization – received recognition from Boston City Councilor At-Large Julia Mejia.

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Meijia honored the group for “fostering inclusion through the power of art.”

“This is historic,” I told Byrd, TTO’s new executive director.

“It was overwhelming, to be honest,” Byrd told me. “To receive this recognition from Councilor Mejia is a reminder that queer and trans artists are not only a highly valuable reflection of society, but we can help create the world that we wish to inhabit.” 

The new girl on the block

Under Bryd’s leadership, TTO is entering a new era of LGBTQ+  theater that emphasizes the stories of people of color. Byrd’s lived experiences shape this mission. 

“While traditionally marginalized voices are being silenced, and trans women of color, like myself, suffer an epidemic of violence, TTO centers those creative voices 365 days a year,” Byrd shared at a press conference in 2024. Byrd is the first Black trans woman to head a major regional theater company in the country. 

Byrd recognizes the torch that’s been passed on to her by her Black and brown transcestors, like Marsha P. Johnson,  Sylvia Rivera, and others whose lives have been cut short due to violence, like Rita Hester.

“With my appointment, I was becoming the first Black trans woman to lead a significant American theatre company, something my ancestors and transcestors fought for in their lifetimes, but did not get the chance to see their dream fulfilled,” Byrd wrote in Out Magazine. “I now carry their torch.”

The politics of memory

As a Black Southern trans woman, Bryd brings a unique perspective to her work. She encourages artists to explore outside the box and flip the script on white queer cisgender conventions that both straight and LGBTQ+ theatergoers have become accustomed to. Trans representation at TTO is essential to Byrd. She wants it to be a welcoming space for trans and nonbinary artists to explore their stories and is working to cultivate a diversity of realistic portrayals.  

Hester’s story, for example, is often told as a one-dimensional narrative that fits the dominant trope about Black trans women. Byrd is working to change that.

Hester’s story shows the politics of memory, what gets remembered and canonized for what and whose purpose. The tragedy is cemented in our public understanding of Hester. In telling her story, however,  we cannot skip over her death and its significance.

Cold case

After twenty-five years, Hester’s murder is still an unsolved cold case, like most transgender murders. On November 28, 1998, she was found dead in her first-floor Boston apartment with twenty stab wounds to her chest, just two days before her 35th birthday. Hester’s murder kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project that became the catalyst for the annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20. 

Hester’s murder occurred in an era when the “trans panic defense” — in which a defendant melodramatically pleads temporary insanity after discovering their victim’s gender identity — was a legal strategy. According to Trans Murder Monitoring, a research project by Transgender Europe (TGEU) that tracks the murders of trans and gender-diverse people globally, 320 transgender people were murdered between October 1, 2022, and September 30, 2023. They were predominately Black trans women, an alarming trend the Human Rights Campaign has tracked for decades. 

Violence against Black trans women has been depicted as “a pandemic within a pandemic.” They are killed disproportionately due to the socioeconomic factors that causes  “transmisogynoir’ – which describes the intersections of anti-Black violence, cissexism, and transphobia. Transmisogynoir contributes to Black trans women disproportionately battling/unemployment, poverty, housing insecurity, suicide, HIV/AIDS, health care disparities, sexual assault, police brutality,  and incarceration.

Honoring herstory

Boston is finding many ways to honor Hester’s life. Her life and legacy are memorialized in “Rita’s Spotlight,” a mural in Allston installed in 2022.

In 2024, TTO honored TDOR in community with  Hester’s family sharing reflections on her life and artistry. It also posthumously awarded Hester its Legends Award. Hester’s nephew, Taufiqul Chowdhury, received the award on her behalf. Chowdhury shared he imagined Hester becoming a famous poet or TV star. He told The Advocate in 2023, “I wish that she could have lived long enough for me to see her perform. She was educated, and she loved to write. So who knows, maybe she’d [have written] something and could have gotten published.” 

A week before her death, Hester wrote her last poem. “It’s a little foreboding and not out of pain or sorry. You come to understand there is some sense she needed to get this out and put on paper,” he told me. “And I am super thankful that she did because the words I now have hanging up in my home like a shrine.” The poem “Look to me, my family”  is on Hester’s mural.

Trans rising

Hester’s poem will likely find artistic expression in TTO’s advocacy promoting trans visibility, amplifying their voices -past and present. Bryd understands the importance of TTO  and LGBTQ+ artistic creativity in light of Trump’s executive orders rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating DEI programs. In an open letter to the community on TTO’s website, Bryd clapped back. 

“We will not cower in the face of what’s to come. Instead, we will stand even more boldly on our promise to present liberating art by, for, and about Queer and Trans People of Color.”

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