Transgender Day Of Remembrance

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is observed each year on November 20 to mourn and honor transgender people whose lives were taken by anti-transgender violence. Advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith started it in 1999 with a vigil in San Francisco for Rita Hester, a Black transgender woman murdered in Allston, Massachusetts in 1998 in a case that drew little media attention. Smith also created the 'Remembering Our Dead' web project. Today, candlelight vigils, name readings, and memorials are held worldwide during the week of November 20. Black and Latina transgender women are heavily overrepresented among those killed, a pattern shaped by the overlap of transphobia, racism, and misogyny.