Frances Thompson( 1840 – 1876)

Frances Thompson was a formerly enslaved Black trans woman and anti-rape activist who was one of the five Black women to testify before Congress about the 1866 Memphis Massacre. Thompson and the other five women’s testimonies contributed to the 1871 Enforcement Act by proving how the racist and sexual violence afflicted on them violated the 14th and 15th Amendments which “guaranteed the rights of African Americans and highlighted the widespread violence and intimidation that sought to prevent African Americans from exercising their rights.”

Frances lived in Memphis while enslaved to a man named Robert Walker. Walker’s family recognized her gender identity, allowing Thompson to be clean shaven and wear feminine attire such as “ bright colored dresses.” She also used crutches for mobility due to cancer in her foot.

After most of the Walker family was killed in the Confederate Army, Thompson became a free woman at 26 and “rented an apartment on Gayoso Street, in a majority Black neighborhood known as "Hell’s Half Acre.” With help from her 16-year-old housemate, Lucy Smith, Thompson washed, sewed, and ironed clothes for wages.

Thompson was one of 5 Black women to testify about the 1866 Memphis Massacre and the first trans women to testify before Congress. Her testimony and advocacy for bodily autonomy led to civil rights legislation for newly emancipated Black Americans during Reconstruction, in addition to positive impacts for feminism and disability rights.

Clarence Henry Cobbs (February 29, 1908 – June 28, 1979

Clarence Henry Cobbs was a Black American clergyman and broadcaster considered to be one of the first (known) Black gay church leaders in U.S history. Influenced by hymnwriter Lucie Campbell and spiritual medium “Mother” Della Hedgepath, Cobbs founded the First Church of Deliverance in 1929, which openly welcomed Black gay churchgoers.

Nicknamed “Preacher”, Charles was known for his fashion, informal manners, and stirring performances with the church’s 200-member choir. In 1953, the church became the first Black church in the U.S to broadcast its services through WLS-TV for 12 weeks.

While Cobbs never publicly disclosed his sexuality and didn’t hide his relationship with his secretary, R. Edward Bolden, he filed a defamation suit against the Chicago Defender when it claimed Cobbs could be questioned by the “state's attorney's police concerning widespread rumors of a scandalous nature.”

Cobbs passed away in his home in Chicago on June 28th, 1979. Cobbs' hour-long radio broadcasts pioneered a format which was followed by many subsequent religious programs.

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992)

Born on August 24th, 1945 in New Jersey to Malcolm Michaels Sr. and Alberta Claiborne, Marsha moved to New York City in a time of LGBTQ+ persecuation and violence. She described herself as a gay person, a transvestite, and a drag queen. Marsha went by “BLACK Marsha” before settling on Marsha P. Johnson. The “P” stood for “Pay It No Mind,” which is what Marsha would say in response to questions about her gender.

Johnson did waitressing, drag shows, and sex work to survive and later joined the frontlines of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising after it had started. She and Sylvia Rivera founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), “an organization dedicated to sheltering young transgender individuals who were shunned by their families.”

Her body was found in the Hudson River on July 6th, 1992, the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ violence according to the New York Anti-Violence Project. Police reclassified her death from suicide to drowning, enraging the LGBTQ+ community for the lack of further investigation. Hundreds attended her funeral. Marsha P. Johnson is a pioneer of not just Black queer activism and movements but for queer activism in general, particularly for Black trans women and sex workers.

Combahee River Collective (1974-1980)

Xica Manicongo (1592-?)

Manicongo is a distorted way of saying Mwene Kongo, lord of the Congo; Xica was a way that gender dissidents, especially Black women, used to rescue her from a violent naming that the world of slavery had addressed to her: Francisco.

In 1592, an enlsaved African woman was trafficked from the Congo to Salvador and worked as a shoemaker. Following the Kimbanda practitioners of her home, Xica wore a fabric tied with a front knot and proudly described and carried herself as a woman around the city. She was known to have many lovers. Offended by identity, a Portuguese Christian accused her of sodomy and the Holy Inquisition of Court sentenced her to burn at the stake in public and to have her descendants dishonored for three generations.

Xica was rediscovered by trans activists in Brazil and acknowleged as the first “travesti” targeted by the Brazilian state. Her preferred name—Xica Manicongo—was posthumously given by Majorie Marchi (1974-2016), a Black travesti activist who chaired the Rio de Janeiro Travestis and Trans People’s Association [Associação de Travestis e Transexuais do Rio de Janeiro—ASTRA-Rio]. Coletivo Xica Manicongo is a militant collective of trans artists in Brazil named in Xica’s honor.

Named after a 1853 raid led by Harriet Tubman at the Combahee River in South Carolina where she freed some 750 enslaved people, the Combahee River Collective was a Black socialist feminist lesbian organization in Boston. In 1977, the CRC published the Combahee River Collective Statement in: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties. The Statement is comprised of four sections:

1. Genesis: CRC’s origins in the material history of Black American women’s life-and-death struggles for survival and liberation, working class and Third World women’s roles in advancing feminist movements, disillusionment of and resistance against reactionary forces of patriarchy and racism in Black liberation movements and mainstream feminist movements respectively, and recognition of capitalism built on and succeeded by the economic exploitation of Black people.

2. What We Believe: CRC emphasized equality, the inherent value of Black girls & women, sisterhood (which included trans women) while rejecting capitalism and imperialism. They recognized the multiple forms of racial, gender, and class domination that Black women experience through coining the term “identity politics.” The CRC, (while not specifically naming her) drew from Black communist activist Claudia Jones’ “triple oppression” analysis, which argued that Black women couldn’t explain their experiences through just one of these systems, but rather that they all intersected with each other.

3. Problems in Organizing Black Feminists: The CRC clarified the contradictions of the social justice movements of the time, seeing how misogyny went unaddressed in Black organizations but actively practiced, while racism and class privilege ran rampant in white middle-class led feminist movements. They found that both fronts also held their share of homophobic and transphobic issues that often went unquestioned and unchallenged.

4. Black Feminist Projects and Issues: The CRC listed the various struggles and projects they practiced such as discussion, reading and writing retreats, fighting for reproductive justice, resisting forced sterilization, domestic & sexual violence, and medical racism, hosting workshops on Black feminism on college campuses, at women’s conferences, and most frequently for high school women’ [girls]. "The inclusions of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, third world, and working people. With the acknowledgement that race, sex, and class are all factors in oppression, Black feminists can further continue understanding the verbal or nonverbal divide and try to bridge these divides to equalize the systems. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. "