Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1943, Sir Lady Java is a Black trans entertainer and activist who moved in the same circles as James Brown, Richard Pryor, Don Rickles, Lena Horne, Rudy Ray Moore (better known as Dolemite), Sammy Davis Jr., and more.

For Black History Month and every month, we at TransLash honor trans icons like Sir Lady Java, who continue to inspire us today.

By Zarina Crockett and Daniela “Dani” Capistrano for TransLash Media, video editing by Brennen Beckwith

Sir Lady Java Explainer Transcript

Zarina: Hey TransLash fam!

Step into the spotlight of Sir Lady Java: a pioneer and trailblazer for transgender rights and the entertainment industry.

Born in the vibrant heart of New Orleans in 1943, Lady Java was someone who knew from a young age that she was destined to shine and she did just that in a world that was not ready for her light.

Java’s charisma uniqueness and talent made her an iconic pillar of Los Angeles nightlife.

She was adored by many for her performances and her amazing look.

Lady Java challenged rule Number 9, which was a law that targeted trans reformers. It basically said that you can’t perform or crossdress without a specialized permit.

Lady Java was important to pioneering the fight for transgender rights. Her legacy of activism glamour and the full perspective of a life of a Black transgender woman still endures today.

Sir Lady Java’s story inspires us all to live authentically and fight for every voice to be heard.

Learn more about Sir Lady Java or other icons in Black trans history in the Black Trans History Month Guide at translash.org.

Did you find this resource helpful? Consider supporting TransLash today with a tax-deductible donation.

The post Sir Lady Java: Black Trans Woman and Icon appeared first on TransLash Media.

By Zarina Crockett and Daniela “Dani’ Capistrano

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is an opportunity to both honor MLK’s legacy and the extraordinary woman who helped make that legacy possible: Coretta Scott King.

Like many Black women and femmes throughout history, Coretta’s role in the civil rights movement has at times been diminished and outright ignored. Today and every day, join us in honoring Coretta’s enduring influence that reverberates beyond her time and beckons us to carry on the march toward justice.

Read TransLash Media founder & CEO Imara Jones’ statement about Coretta Scott King and access more resources below.

About Coretta Scott King

Team TransLash celebrates Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006)’s role in the civil rights movement and her continued fight for equality.

Historians and journalists often focus on the luminaries standing in the spotlight, inadvertently casting shadows over those who are equally deserving of acclaim. One such remarkable figure is Coretta Scott King, whose life was more than just a reflection of her husband Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. For decades after MLK’s assassination in 1968, Coretta continued to serve as a light of hope, resilience, and unwavering commitment to justice and equality.

“It’s #MLKDay and I hope you’ll join me today in taking some time to honor the person whose unfinished legacy we continue to grapple with so vividly this year,’ reflects Imara Jones, highlighting the depth of Coretta’s influence and the breadth of her own contributions to the movement. Jones reminds us that ‘we often forget about the women, many unknown and unnamed, that worked alongside Dr. King amidst the civil rights movement.”

Coretta, a woman whose grace and strength redefined the civil rights movement and the role of Black femmes within it, reminds Imara of “those like Dora Edith McDonald, another unsung hero in Dr. King’s legacy.”

Upholding a Dream, Paving New Paths

From her early days in Marion, Alabama, Coretta Scott King was a symphony of strength and intellect. A talented singer and a scholar, Coretta’s life took a pivotal turn when she met MLK in Boston in the early 1950s. Coretta was more than moral support; she was a campaign manager, strategist, and integral to fundraising and addressing the public—often with her children in tow.

Coretta’s journey did not end with MLK’s death; it simply took on a new dimension. She was instrumental in the establishment of The King Center and played a critical role in making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a reality.

Honoring the Invisible Labor of Black Femmes

The narrative of Coretta’s life is one of invisible labor, a theme that resonates deeply with the experiences of Black femmes in the civil rights movement.

Invisible work—a term coined by sociologist Arlene Kaplan Daniels to describe work that goes unpaid, unacknowledged, and thus, unregulated—is compounded by anti-Blackness and misogynoir.

Additionally, Coretta was a visionary who saw life at the intersections, therefore supporting LGBTQ+ rights, because she recognized the value of Black queer and trans people and allies. Among many acts of solidarity, in 1998 Mrs. King gave the keynote at an event marking Lambda Legal’s 25th anniversary. 

As Imara Jones powerfully states, “Coretta Scott King reminds us that this day is for everyone who has been left out & left behind… She & Dr. Martin Luther King believed in the equality of us all.”

Coretta herself fought to address the erasure of Black femmes’ roles, ensuring their contributions would be recognized.

Not Just Dr. King’s Wife

In celebration of Coretta Scott King, we honor her grace and activism that continues to inspire generations of people worldwide in the fight for justice and equality.

As Imara Jones reminds us, “the Dr. King we know so much about would not have been possible without [Coretta] and others like her.”

Most importantly, Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr., wants the world to know her mother was not a prop. The couple’s youngest daughter recently shared a photo of her mother on X after Jonathan Majors compared his girlfriend, actress Meagan Good, to the civil rights leader in his first interview since being found guilty of assault and harassment.

“My mother wasn’t a prop,” King, who leads The King Center in Atlanta, wrote in the social media post. “She was a peace advocate before she met my father and was instrumental in him speaking out against the Vietnam War. Please understand…my mama was a force.” 

Coretta’s legacy is the enduring power of her voice and influence, along with the importance of recognizing the unseen efforts of those who stand, not behind, but alongside the greats in our collective history.

Black Trans Resources for MLK Day

Black Trans Femmes in the Arts: ‘Artistic Legacies’ Screening Q&A – REPLAY

‘Tone It Down’: Poetry By A Black Trans Femme

TRANSCRIPT: Translash Podcast Ep 73 ‘Black Trans Femme Artistic Legacies’

TRANSCRIPT: TransLash Podcast Episode 65, ‘Black Trans Podcasts’

Black Trans Women Tell Their Stories in Sundance Breakout ‘Kokomo City’

Q&A with B. Pagels-Minor, founder of DVRGNT Ventures, the first Black trans-led VC Fund

Black Trans And Cis Women Deserve Equal Pay.

Women’s History Month: Black Trans Women To Follow And Support

Confronting Black men’s roles in the murders of Black transgender women may be the only way to save our lives

TRANSCRIPT: TransLash Podcast Episode 64, ‘Black, Incarcerated, and Trans’

TRANSCRIPT: TransLash Podcast Episode 36, ‘A New Black Trans Civil Rights Agenda’

How Salvador da Bahia liberated this Black trans woman

TRANSCRIPT: TransLash Podcast, Episode 14 ‘Black Trans History and Futures’

#LivesAtStake: A Conversation Between Black Straight Men & Black Trans Women

Searching for Black, Queer, and Trans Community

TransLash Guide to Black History Month

Did you find this resource helpful? Consider supporting TransLash today with a tax-deductible donation. Did we miss anything? Let us know and we’ll update the guide with your suggestion, crediting you as the contributor.

The post Coretta Scott King and Black Femme Invisible Labor appeared first on TransLash Media.

I am only in my mid-20s and have lived at over ten different addresses. I’ve moved for many reasons: schooling, jobs, and love, but underlying each of those moves was actually a desperate search for community.

“Home” for me is a blip on the map just south of Houston, Texas. Growing up, sometimes I felt more at home in the city with the rest of my family and where I could blend into a crowd of people who looked like me, but my mother insisted on the “safety” of small-town life. So, instead, I was big, Black, queer, and poor in a space that revered everything but. Eventually, I left and looked for people who lived out loud.

For college, I ended up in Western Massachusetts. It was only different from my hometown when it came to the foliage and political representatives. There, I ran into primarily white people who didn’t hide their gender expressions or sexualities. I spent my time trying to fit into their friend groups. I was convinced their queerness was the most legitimate because it was the most prominent. The queer and trans people of color I knew were still mostly closeted, often hanging out with me in secret, and it scared me to go back to such a life.

After undergrad, I became engaged to an abuser, a white trans man, in my first openly-queer relationship. We had been together throughout college and were drawn together by our rejecting families. I was convinced that time equaled value, so I clung to the strongest connection I had despite toxicity outweighing the joy. We moved again and again to follow jobs and the promise of opportunity. I noted increasingly frequent displays of white fragility, controlling behavior, and threats to my safety. The facade could no longer be maintained and I finally broke off the engagement. Then, in the middle of a global pandemic, I was alone again.

For the last few years, I’ve taken advantage of worldwide social upheaval (including working remotely and vacated cities) and moved around even more. All the while, I’ve been searching for a place that feels more like home than the last. I’ve been telling myself that somewhere else will be better (and safer) than where I’ve already been, or that I’ll stumble into a niche community that accepts me with little effort. It seems to come easy to other people, so why not me?

Along the way, I began building my world the best way I knew how: through the art of writing. I joined writing courses, weekly groups, and even attempted an MFA in Creative Writing. There, I founded a literary magazine that platformed marginalized writers and received note after note telling me how important it was for it to exist. It got me thinking: my story is not uncommon.

How have other Black queer and trans people found each other? 

*

Simone Person (they/them) is a Black queer femme born and raised in the Midwest. Their queer community has been primarily shaped by the internet.

“At my core, I’m an introvert. Living with PTSD has made in-person activities harder, so I really appreciate the resurgence of digital communication,” Person said.

It took Simone years to acknowledge their queerness and transness. Also inundated with white queerness at the onset of self-discovery, they’ve come to believe that community sets Black queerness apart.

“Black queerness has always felt like it’s built on a belief in the future, particularly a future where Black people exist,” Person said. “In contrast, white queerness traditionally has such a deeply embedded sense of hyper-individuality—real ‘I got mine, you should figure out how to get yours’—a complete lack of structural analysis, and is often extremely reactionary (as seen with the rise of trans-exclusionary and sex work-exclusionary politics in so-called radical queer spaces, because whiteness is the same way). Few white people are willing to give up the social power of whiteness, so they continue to repeat the larger structures of oppression.”

*

Adrienne Doyle (she/they) grew up in close proximity to queerness with a bisexual grandmother. This allowed them the freedom to explore their sexuality in more depth, having had a role model throughout their youth. However, their process of finding queer community didn’t take place until around a decade ago.

After developing a crush on a Black queer roommate, the two became great friends. They introduced Doyle to dance parties, cafes, and other queer institutions run by people of color. Soon, jobs and career goals led Doyle into creating their own queer art-centered space.

“It was a response to the white supremacy that exists within Minneapolis’ cultural institutions—the lack of control Black, Indigenous, and POC folks have over their work, the shuck and jive we are asked to do, and the willingness of white folks to fund and consume depictions of our suffering.”

In 2014, Doyle started a two-year project called Burn Something Zine, featuring written and visual work from femme, nonbinary, and trans folks of color in the Twin Cities. The relationships crafted through this zine project informed the co-founding of Burn Something Collective, a group of seven artists working to create opportunities through exhibition and publication projects.

  “Social media has felt like the clearest way to stay in contact with people or to just see what folks are sharing about their lives, but the tech bros have designed these platforms to be such energy drains,” Doyle said. “I have been leaning on the people in Burn Something Collective as my tethers to some kind of social life. We were all dissatisfied with what the predominantly white Twin Cities art scene has had to offer our communities.”

Even as they’ve all navigated “disorienting” life changes and loss, some strong bonds have been able to form and even “otherworldly shit that feels like spirit working deep.”

“I envision growing deeper into ourselves as people through these relationships, and growing weirder or more comfortable with making fulfilling choices for ourselves that don’t need to make sense to other people,” Doyle said.

*

Kenia Hale (she/her), a recent Yale graduate, has also lived in multiple cities and crafted new worlds in each. She has organized in Ohio, finished up her senior year in Connecticut, and now, since being in New Jersey, has created an arts collective and started an all-BIPOC rock band. The pandemic, as well as the natural shifts that come with life’s cycles, separated those she knew and severed some ties entirely, making the need for community critical.

“During the summer of 2020, I was wondering ‘how can I find people that understand this deep pain that I’m feeling right now?’”

So, though her recent connections have been more in-person, she knew to turn to the internet when the question reared its head. Before her college and organizing years, Hale had found queer community online. Tumblr and its fandom culture helped put a name to her sexuality.

Perhaps inspired by the stress of rapid change, like her recent loss of a Black queer mentor, Hale believes it’s worth making an attempt to rebuild those online communities.

“When we travel from one place to another and hold tight to those connections, we create a mosaic. It’s a cultural exchange and it allows us to honor the paths laid out by those who came before.”

*

For better or for worse, the internet is the crux of the Black queer and trans community. This proves to be worrisome in a time where net neutrality is frequently at risk and broadband access is limited for those of us in rural and poorer communities. I’ve spent much of my life traveling from place to place, seeking the space with the “most welcoming” QTPOC for making deeper connections, when it seems like saving numbers and socials to a device in my pocket can be equally as effective.

For now, we seem to do this until we can achieve the dream of gathering our branching communities into one place to be near each other more often than not.

“Although we were only able to break bread once before the pandemic began in the U.S., we’ve built tender connections with each other throughout the pandemic and the Minneapolis Uprising,” Doyle said. “This summer, we are finishing up our fourth project together, and then I hope to organize a beach house retreat so we can hang in person for a few days, rest, and vision for the future of our collective.”

Person feels similarly about the relationships they’ve crafted but has been unable to nurture in a face-to-face context. They’re also ready to shift with the tide, since our friendships seem so malleable, especially during a time when the community is not and may never be entirely local.

 “My dream is to move to the Colorado mountains and have a Black feminist commune with my homies, but if I have to be more realistic, I just want to continue growing individually and together, even if it means growing apart,” Person said. “I’m trying to accept that change happens, and it’s not always the worst thing.”

 For Hale, this perpetual song-and-dance is simply a part of our culture.“You’re not born necessarily into a queer family, you have to find it,” Hale said. “In that same way, you have to find your own heritage and your own place in that legacy.”

Danielle Monique (she/they) is a Black queer nonbinary woman who writes short stories, screenplays, and essays primarily about the effects of marginalization and finding community. Originally from South Texas, their “cities I’ve called home” count is now at ten, including Baltimore, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. When not writing, she can be found communing with the ancestors, playing video games that go easy on the heart, or taking sass from her dog.

The post Searching for Black, Queer, and Trans Community appeared first on TransLash Media.

As an Afro-Latinx musician, I spend a lot of my time jamming out to an array of sounds that cross generations, cultures, and genres. My headphones are always on, and the music is always up. It’s been one of the biggest ways I’ve been able to come closer to my identity when the world makes it seem out of reach or like a bad idea to do so. Building this relationship with artists, especially Black artists, has given me so much life, and now I get to help keep their legacies alive by passing on the music to you. In honor of Black History Month, here are five musicians that remind me of my power, and some of the songs that propel me forward. 

All The Time Always 

Made up of Makel Clemons and Alex Restivo, All The Time Always captivates your attention with sung and spoken performance over ever-evolving production soundscapes. I was briefly roommates with Makel while at Berklee College of Music, and in that time, was able to see and hear the music before it came to life. I’d often come home to fully finished, recorded, and produced songs after just having been gone for a work shift – it was incredible. As someone who’s seen a life before All The Time Always and a life present with them, I say with full confidence that it’s better to know them. You also never have to worry about carving an hour out of your day to listen to a whole project because their four song EP Feel is only four minutes long! For a taste of what you’re getting into, watch the music video for REPETITION above. It speaks for itself. 

Duke Ellington 

Duke Ellington may very well be the reason I didn’t realize synesthesia, specifically chromesthesia – the ability to see colors for sound – wasn’t something everyone experienced. I remember reading about him as a child and he’d talk about how notes sounded like different colors when played by different people and thinking to myself “He gets it, no wonder the music is incredible, he’s painting jazz symphonies!” I’m never going to hear it in the same colors he wrote it in, but I like imagining what the palettes he heard were. As a recommendation, here’s a deep-cut from the 1963 album Afro-Bossa, a favorite of mine, called Pyramid. Close your eyes when you listen, imagine what it must’ve been like to write it, the colors you hear…it’s a very eye-opening experience. 

Eryn Allen Kane

When releasing her debut two-part EP series Aviary in 2015, against all suggestions from industry representatives, Eryn decided on Have Mercy, an a Capella song, as the single. Defying the odds, that move was what propelled her forward, becoming a collaborator of Chance The Rapper, Thirdstory, Noname and more. It’s never just about the music for her, she has to shake the room and make you feel something. Her voice got her into the room and her spirit is what keeps her in it. It’s no wonder to me that Prince happily mentored this legend in the making. Her more recently released album a tree planted by water, is dedicated to and made for Black women, saying to Teen Vogue, “I wanted [this project] for the world, but I always gotta talk to my sisters.”

Florence Price

As a religiously raised Arkansan, Florence had an admiration for the music she heard in church. She also was heavily interested in European Romantic composers. The combination of gospel and Tchaikovsky became known as her compositional repertoire, and led her to being the first African-American woman to be recognised as a symphonic composer and the first African-American woman to have her works performed by a renowned, major symphony orchestra in 1933. To put it simply, Florence changed the rules within and built a bigger picture. And succeeded. By herself. What more could you need out of a favorite musician? For a taste of the magic take a listen to Dances in the Canebrakes: I. Nimble Feet, one of the last compositions Florence wrote before passing, meant to be a reflection of past tradition, played by the legendary African-American Pianist Althea Waites.

Jimmy Cliff

And to close us off, The incredible Jimmy Cliff. There was no doubt in my mind that good ol’ Jimmy was showing up on this list. A multi-instrumentalist master of reggae, soul, ska, and rocksteady – a genre invented in Jamaica around 1966. Jimmy does it all and brings every ounce of energy to each performance – not just live, but also in the booth. Listening to the ‘Music Magician’ (a name I made for him years ago) taught me how to leave it all out there when I sing and play. He holds the Order of Merit, the highest honor granted by the Jamaican government for achievements in the arts and sciences, rightfully so. He also holds the key to my heart, but the order is more impressive. The 1970 album Wonderful World, Beautiful People is the record most scratched of his in my collection, the second song, Many Rivers To Cross being the most tattered up. If you need to be uplifted during a good cry, this might be a good song for you.

I hope that somewhere in here you find sounds worth listening to, stories worth learning, and ambition worth chasing. Happy Black History Month from my favorites, and from me.

Yannick Eike Mirko (he/they) is an actor, musician, editor, and writer. Yannick supports production of TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones.

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The post 5 Black Musicians That Remind Me Of My Power appeared first on TransLash Media.