As reports of Chyna Gibson’s murder came in, members of Philadelphia’s black transgender community got together Sunday to discuss ways to move forward. Gibson, who was shot outside of a New Orleans shopping center, is the fifth reported trans woman of color to be murdered in the country this year.
The TransHealth Information Project (TIP), a program of GALAEI, and the Trans Masculine Advocacy Network (TMAN) hosted “Philly Black Trans History: A Multigenerational Panel Discussion” at the William Way LGBT Community Center.
TMAN facilitator and TIP co-coordinator Christian A’xavier Lovehall and TIP co-coordinator Aamina Morrison hosted a panel with seven black transgender individuals who contributed to the local trans community: Sheila Colson-Pope, William H. Coghill, Hazel Edwards, Sharron L. Cooks, Alex Covington, Wit Lopez and Tenika Watson.
Colson-Pope, GALAEI’s former TIP coordinator and founder of the Philly Black Trans History event, discussed ways for the community to protect themselves in light of recent incidents. She advised about letting people you meet online into your home, especially if they don’t appear like their online photos. Additionally, she gestured toward Watson, her best friend, and said the two of them have a “code” for when she is inviting someone over.
“With [President Donald] Trump in office, people feel like they have a right to be prejudice,” Colson-Pope said. “They have a right to say what they want to. But that’s not right.”
Edwards, who helped write the transgender policy for the Philadelphia School District, talked about being marginalized for being biracial and transgender. The 20-year-old highlighted ways adults can help trans youth.
“Adults can better support youth by listening to the young people, not just hearing what they’re saying but actually attentively listening to them,” Edwards said. “Adults also assume that since youth are in their developmental stages, they don’t really understand their own selves.”
Designer and artist Lopez gave advice to people in the Afro-Latinx community who experience anti-blackness. Lopez said such behavior not always look like racism when it occurs within the Afro-Latinx community.
“For folks who are Afro-Latinx in the room, what I’d like to say is, ‘You’re not making it up. It’s not in your head,’” Lopez said. “If your mom said some shit, if your cousin said some shit, if the f*cking bus driver said some shit, it probably is racism. You’re probably not imagining it.”
Coghill, a 65-year-old transgender man, talked about how he gave away all of his “female clothes” and got a “male haircut” when he was young. He said he was “thankful” to tell young trans men that “empowerment is important.”
He also noted the important role trans elders can play in the community.
“I believe it takes [events] like this to bring us together, to bring the elders together, so that people can see us and see that ‘if we made it, you can make it,” Coghill said.
Empowering young people is also a goal of Covington, who talked about being a soon-to-be licensed barber.
“My goal is to have a space for people like us so they can feel safe and feel good about themselves,” he said of his future business goal.
Encouraging safe spaces in the political realm has been a goal of Cooks, who was the only black trans woman delegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
“I wanted to bring more trans visibility to black trans issues, bring more visibility to black women, so that’s why I went into it,” Cooks said. “It was an amazing experience. There were so many opportunities that have come from that. I hope that other black trans people decide to get involved in the legislative process. We need everybody’s voice. We need all of your voices.”
Watson, a former sex worker, was a passenger in singer-songwriter Teddy Pendergrass’s car in 1982. A car accident resulted in Pendergrass being paralyzed from the chest down and Watson being outed as a transgender woman.
She noted the evolution that has happened since that time, and commended the trans community for doing a “good job” to affirm their identities.
“I look out at this audience,” Watson said. “People are doing what we used to do behind doors, what we used to wait until dark to do. I see people walking the street doing what they want to do with their lives.”