We Speak Their Names: For the Black Trans Women Murdered This Year
Yaz’Min Shancez (pictured above), nicknamed ‘Miss T’ by her loved ones, was 31 years old when she was brutally killed in Fort Myers, Florida. Her body was then set alight and dumped behind a garbage bin where it was discovered on the 19th of June. Her family described her as a woman who was ‘full of life’ and ‘didn’t deserve to go out like that.’
Mia Henderson, was a woman ‘comfortable in [her] own skin’ according to her brother, noted basketball player Reggie Bullock of the L.A. Clippers. She was only 26 years old when she was found murdered in Baltimore’s westside with signs of ‘severe physical trauma’ to her body.
Kandy Hall of Northeast Baltimore was found dead in a field on the 3rd of June. She was just 40 years old. At a memorial service held for her and Mia Henderson in August, a local trans woman Tona Brown was quoted as saying “Everyone is rejoicing in the lives of these women…We are just like everyone else. We are mourning the lives of our sisters. I didn’t know them personally, but it could have easily been myself.”
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