A candle for Rita Hester

On 20 November 1999, a vigil took place in San Francisco whose impact is still felt around the world today. It had been organised by the trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith. It was the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember trans people who were killed because of who they were.

The occasion lay a year back and at the other end of the country. In Allston, a neighbourhood of Boston, Rita Hester had been stabbed to death in her flat at the end of November 1998. The thirty-four-year-old African American woman had long lived openly as a trans woman and was well known in the neighbourhood. She had probably let her murderer in herself. He was never caught.

For many, the way the crime was reported hurt almost as much as the crime itself. Newspapers took over the details from the police report, called Hester by her former name and wrote about her as a man. For those close to her, it was a second wound. Just a few days after the murder, more than two hundred and fifty people gathered for a first candlelight vigil.

Smith wanted more than a single moment of grief. She collected the names of trans people who had been killed and created an annual day of remembrance from them. She chose the date deliberately: 20 November is the anniversary of the death of Chanelle Pickett, another Black trans woman from the Boston area. Only a few months before her own death, Rita Hester had expressed concern in a newspaper that the perpetrator in the Pickett case might get off too lightly.

What began as a small vigil is now an international movement. In Switzerland, Germany and Austria too, candles are lit and names read out on this evening. The lists are long every year. The violence hits Black trans women particularly often, and victims are still misnamed in police and media reports. The day is a reminder that visibility alone does not protect.