#rita hester

[queerasfact]

This is Rita Hester. Rita was born in 1963, in Hartford, Connecticut. She loved rock music, food, and dancing. She often holidayed in Greece. She had a pet cat, and a boa constrictor.

In 1998, Rita was murdered. In 1999, Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded in her honour.

Today we mark Transgender Day of Remembrance and remember Rita, and everyone else who has been murdered because of transphobic violence.

[makingqueerhistory]

Rita Hester — Making Queer History

When I write my articles, I try to keep them from becoming personal. I replace the I’s with we’s because I am not representing myself, but m

Transgender Day of Remembrance is a one-day event, not a week or a month, like Pride. When researching this article, there is an apparent reason for that: it is too much. It is too much for any person to bear to have a full week of scrolling through the names. It begins with Rita Hester, who was murdered a week before her 35th birthday, and her murder inspired the first Transgender Day of Remembrance. The First Day of Remembrance was then just a small candlelight vigil held in her honour and has since grown to include ceremonies worldwide.

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[gwydionmisha]

Boston opens new park named after murdered Black transgender woman Rita Hester

The Rita Hester Green opened on June 30 in Boston to mark the end of Pride Month.

[poeaxtry]

TDoR- A LGBTQ+ History Lesson

The First Transgender Day of Remembrance On November 20, 1999, the first Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR) took place. This was organized by activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith to honor the life of Rita Hester. A trans woman of color murdered the year before. Gwendolyn’s web project, Remembering Our Dead, launched to aggregate names of trans people lost to violence. Thus making our stories…

TDoR- A LGBTQ+ History Lesson

[whosoeverdotorg]

Rita Hester's 1998 murder sparked the "Remembering Our Dead" web project that became the catalyst for the annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

To this day, the 1998 stabbing of Rita Hester — whose murder sparked the “Remembering Our Dead” web project that became the catalyst for the annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20 — remains a cold case. 

Rita’s death occurred in an era when the “trans panic” defense — a defendant melodramatically pleads temporary insanity for a killing — was a legal strategy. 

On November 28, 1998, Rita was found in her first-floor Boston apartment with 20 stab wounds to her chest, just two days before her 35th birthday. 

Her murder occurred six weeks after Matthew Shepard’s in Laramie, Wyo., which became an internationally known homophobic hate crime. In 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

[blackqueernotables]

Rita Hester: her brutal murder inspired the creation of Transgender Day of Remembrance.

[blackqueercharacters]

[huffpost]

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance, designated to honor transgender and gender non-conforming people who have been lost to anti-LGBTQ violence. ❤️ 

The honorary day was created by trans advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith in 1999 after Rita Hester, a transgender woman, was murdered in 1998. 

At least 22 transgender and gender non-conforming people ― the overwhelming majority of whom are Black transgender women ― have been killed in the U.S. in 2019 according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group. 

Today we share their names and honor them. Learn their stories here.