UPDATE: This story has been updated to include information about a GoFundMe in honor of Cei Bell and an upcoming memorial service on May 19.
Cei Bell, a prolific trans writer and artist of color, recently died. She was 68 and lived in West Oak Lane. The time and cause of her death was not immediately known.
A longtime community advocate, Bell helped organize the city’s first Gay Pride Parade in June 1972 and co-founded Radical Queens the following year.
“My early LGBT activism probably saved my life,” Bell wrote in 2022 for Billy Penn. “It also helped me develop organizational skills. I co-founded with Tommi [Avicolli Mecca] a new group called the Radical Queens, and we published a magazine. That helped me develop a writing career while I was still a high school dropout.”
Mecca, a longtime advocate and former editor of PGN, mourned the loss of his close friend.
“Cei was my friend for 52 years,” Mecca said in an email. “We both grew up in South Philly, came out around the same time, and felt left out by the gay rights movement of the ’70s because of our gender identities. That’s why we formed Radical Queens [in 1973]. Cei was someone I could trust, someone who always had my back. She was a fighter. She never compromised on her principles. I will miss our long conversations on the phone on Sunday nights. And the cat videos I found in my email in the mornings when I woke up. She was family.”
As an artist, Bell received a Merit Scholarship to attend the Art Institute of Chicago, attending classes online during COVID. She was working on a series of portraits of family members, a memoir in pictures, beginning almost a century ago with her paternal great grandmother who lived through the antebellum South, reconstruction, Jim Crow and World War I, Mecca said.
Mecca recalled Bell’s activism. “She was active in the first Gay Community Center, volunteering at its very popular weekly coffeehouse, both at its original location on Kater Street and its later site on Camac Street,” Mecca said. “She was also active in Gay Activists Alliance, at the time the city’s largest gay organization. She worked on many political campaigns throughout the years.”
Additionally, Bell was a member of the Pen and Pencil Club — one of the oldest press clubs in the country — and the Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club.
Bell grew up in Southwest Center City until she was 11 and spent her adolescence living in West Oak Lane. Harassed and bullied during childhood and forced to visit a psychiatrist, Cei joined Gay Activists Alliance in Philadelphia when she was 16.
“It was mostly male,” Bell recalled in an interview with KYW. “There were some lesbians, but they were not encouraged to be there. And they definitely did not want transgender people, drag queens or transsexuals.”
A tall, willowy figure, Bell stood out in a crowd. Over the years, she became a familiar face at LGBTQ+ parades and protests, never at a loss to express her concern with injustices affecting the community. She spotlighted the need for thorough investigations regarding the homicides of trans women, particularly trans women of color.
Bell often said writing was a creative outlet that nourished her spirit. In 2015, she received the Leeway Foundation 2015 Transformation Award for Literature.
“Writing has given me joy,” Bell wrote for WHYY in 2017. “It gave me an outlet for my emotions. It organized my thoughts and helped me find my way out of a very dark place. Getting published made me feel equal.”
Two subjects close to Bell’s heart were art and gender nonconformity.
“I wanted to study and write about art,” Bell wrote. “I also wanted to write about transgender issues, particularly minority transgender issues. And I needed to get these articles into mainstream newspapers where people who wouldn’t normally be exposed to these issues could think about them.”
Bell was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Tribune, WHYY Newsworks and numerous other publications.
A survivor of rape and sexual assault, Bell was an emphatic advocate for services for sexual-assault victims and children abused in the foster-care system.
Moreover, Bell ran a volunteer group, “Chris and Friends,” that cooked for the Ronald McDonald House — which serves meals to families who travel to Philadelphia for pediatric care for their ill children, Mecca noted.
Bell was steadfast in raising awareness about racism within the Gayborhood, eventually leading to a major investigation by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations in 2016.
Longtime advocate David R. Fair recalled Bell fondly.
“It took a great deal of courage to be Cei Bell,” Fair told PGN. “She was not afraid to be herself. Certainly, she was a major force in our generation. The impact she had regarding trans rights was enormous. There were lots of queens around. But Cei was different. She was unashamedly trans, which was unusual at the time.”
Gary L. Day, a friend of Bell and PGN contributor, praised her attributes.
“She was the sweetest thing,” Day told PGN. “Such a kind-hearted, sweet person who was a pleasure to be around. She didn’t show any bitterness or anger toward whatever adversity she may have experienced. She was very much ‘in the now.’ She had class. Her passing is a loss to all who knew her.”
As of presstime, details for a memorial service honoring Bell hadn’t been finalized.
Friends of Bell are raising funds to honor Bell via the crowdfunding platform, GoFundMe.
“Her friends seek contributions to help defray the costs of her cremation and memorial service, costs related to re-homing her beloved cat, and collecting and archiving a lifetime of her artwork and writings, which will be placed in the William Way LGBT Center’s archives,” the page reads.
To donate to the GoFundMe, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/Paying-Tribute-The-Trailblazing-Life-of-Cei-Bell. A Celebration of the Courageous Life of Cei Bell will be held 3-5 p.m. on May 19 at William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St. Attendees can also attend via Zoom at bit.ly/44Mwvrj.