Born: 30 November 1963, United States
Died: 28 November 1998
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished with permission from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History at Case Western Reserve University.
The origins of Transgender Day of Remembrance can be traced to the killing of Rita Hester. On November 28, 1998, Hester, a Black transgender woman from Boston, Massachusetts, was stabbed and killed in her own apartment. Hester’s killing and other cases like hers drew attention to the frequency of killings of transgender people, particularly transgender women of color, and the speed with which their deaths were forgotten by the community. This motivated Gwendolyn Ann Smith, a transgender woman from San Francisco, to begin the “Remembering Our Dead” website memorial in order to commemorate the lives of transgender people who have been killed. With the help of fellow activist Penni Ashe Matz, Smith organized the first observance of Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 28, 1999, the first anniversary of Rita Hester’s death. The observance consisted of a candlelight vigil and a reading of the names of transgender people who had been killed in recent years, practices that have remained prominent in observations of Transgender Day of Remembrance for 23 years.