Transgender Day of Remembrance at VT
Transgender Day of Remembrance: Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson Screening
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 6pm in the Graduate Life Center Auditorium
Join us after the screening for a conversation with producer, Mark Blane, as we remember Marsha, Sylvia Rivera, and the many lives we have lost this year to anti-transgender violence.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson chronicles Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, prominent figures in gay liberation and transgender rights movement in New York City from the 1960s to the 1990s and co-founders of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The film centers on activist Victoria Cruz's investigation into Johnson's death in 1992, which was initially ruled a suicide by police despite suspicious circumstances.
As Gwendolyn Ann Smith, the founder of Transgender Day of Remembrance once said: “Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. . . .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."
If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, welcome! Please contact Dr. Bing at anbingham@vt.edu at least five business days prior to the event.
Sponsored by: HokiePRIDE & the LGBTQ+ Resource Center
A brief history of Transgender Day of Remembrance
Wednesday, November 20th, 2019 marked the first ever Transgender Day of Remembrance event coordinated by the Virginia Tech LGBTQ+ Resource Center. Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester's death, and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.