14 minute read
Q News
Cold
Tracking Atlanta’s missing and murdered trans people through the decades CASES
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By Patrick Saunders
METRO ATLANTA’S MISSING AND MURDERED
transgender and gender nonconforming victims are not forgotten. Thanks to a pair of forensic genealogists in Massachusetts, trans cold cases across the U.S. are finding new life. The Trans Doe Task Force is personal for Anthony and Lee Redgrave, who are both trans. The couple founded the project in 2018. They use genetic genealogy to identify trans and gender nonconforming “Doe cases” gone cold. They’re tracking five cases in Georgia and 174 across the world. The Georgia cases include victims found in Atlanta, Cobb County and Eatonton going back as far as 1978. “Every day I wake up and think that I could be one of those people on this list,” Anthony told Project Q Atlanta. “For that and the fact that we’ve continued to survive, we have to continue going back to the people who didn’t make it.” The Redgraves created a company to provide private genetic genealogy services in 2015. In 2018, someone murdered a good friend and trans activist named Christa Steele-Knudslien.
“It sort of was a situation where it was the stars aligning because we were dealing with Christa’s
death and also it was an anniversary of another trans friend’s suicide,” Lee said. “It felt like what do we do with all this grief and frustration that we have with all this death that keeps happening in our community?” They joined the all-volunteer nonprofit DNA Doe Project. “We worked two cases with them then started looking for trans cases, because we just knew that they had to be out there,” Lee said. “We assumed we’d be able find maybe a few, then we just kept finding more and more.”
SMALL DETAILS TELL LARGER STORY Among cases in Georgia, Trans Doe Task Force wants to identify someone found in an alley behind an Atlanta building in 1985. The victim was assigned male even though they wore panties traditionally worn by women. In another case, a person was found dead inside a train car carrying coal at the Georgia Power plant in Eatonton in 1978. They wore long fingernails and curled eyelashes (top photo left) but police assigned them as male. Little details like that are what the Redgraves are looking for as they search the database of the missing and murdered for cases to add to their map. “We look for contextual clues when limited information is released,” Anthony said. Yet another Georgia case involves a person shot in DeKalb County in 2017. Assigned male, they wore a wig and bra and gave their name as Justine. Police claim the person was shot after attempting to burglarize a home. “But we really lack details here, and this could have been somebody who was homeless and trying to find someplace to stay because they were outdoors, or somebody who was trying to survive, or a case of misinterpretation on the part of the homeowner,” Lee said. There was only a postmortem image of Justine available, so Anthony created a new forensic image (top photo center). The Redgraves included Justine’s in a series of case writeups posted to the r/UnresolvedMysteries subreddit last November to mark Transgender Awareness Week.
FROM SIDE PROJECT TO NONPROFIT What started as a side project for the Redgraves with a group of grassroots activists is now a nonprofit organization. Three years in, solving cases is a rare occurrence in their line of work.
“The biggest reason we haven’t had more cases solved with DNA so far is because it’s very difficult to get [police] departments [and medical examiners] to submit the cases to us — usually because of budget reasons,” Lee said. “We’re hoping that incorporating as a nonprofit will help with that. We’re hoping to fund these cases for the departments going forward.” Meanwhile, TDTF keeps scouring records for other unidentified transgender and gender nonconforming victims. “We have the ability and knowledge and experience, so we feel a responsibility to do this because nobody else was doing this work,” Anthony said. Visit transdoetaskforce.org
Now Hear
Now Hear THIS
Gay Atlanta WABE reporter returns to airwaves after heart surgery
By Patrick Saunders
WABE RADIO’S JIM BURRESS IS BACK ON
the airwaves after a six-week break to recover from congenital heart surgery. Unfortunately, heart conditions are all in the family for the gay Atlanta local host and senior producer for “All Things Considered.” He’s been with NPR’s Atlanta affiliate since 2008.
“My genes are awful,” he told Project Q Atlanta.
“My dad had a heart attack when he was 43, my sister had a heart attack when she was 43 — which was just last year. I just turned 42.” Burress’s doctor diagnosed him with an enlarged heart after a routine X-ray in March.
“It’s something that would have been easily overlooked if she wasn’t as good as she is,” he said. “It would have eventually caught up with me, but it could have been in the
ER. They said it could have killed me within a year.”
Anxiety grew as Burress did more research on the surgery. “I couldn’t get past the notion that they actually chemically stop your heart,” he said. “It’s a miracle almost to me that they can do what they do, and the surgeon is brilliant and capable, but at the same time to think about what is happening is kind of grotesque.” He forced himself to stop researching, which helped with the anxiety in the few weeks before the surgery.
Burress doesn’t remember anything about the July 30 procedure. “I do remember waking up and not being able to lay down the pain was so bad,” he said. He returned home after about five days at Emory St. Joseph’s Hospital. The recovery was slow for six weeks, but Burress returned to the air on Labor Day. “You really, really start to miss work,” he said. “Even getting the phone calls and emails at weird hours and worrying about am I going to be able to tackle this story today.” “My coworkers I missed a ton. Everyone I worked with was so amazing during this time. It’s almost like I got homesick,” he added. The post-surgery pain has subsided. “A couple of weeks ago, I just woke up and felt better and I’ve felt better ever since,” he said. “It was like a light switch. It almost seems like something I experienced in the distant past.” Burress continues doing all his duties from home, including hosting WABE’s The Brief. The podcast recapping the day’s news launched in June. The heart surgery was Burress’s second health scare in the last two years. He temporarily lost his voicefollowing surgery to repair collapsed spinal disks in 2019.
“You can’t pick the genes you get, and everything that’s happened has been genetically related,” he said. “But what choice do you have?” “I still consider myself young at 42, and I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet. You suck up the pain and get through it,” he added.
Pioneer
SPIRIT
By Patrick Saunders
HAMILTON, GA., MAYOR PRO TEM
Ransom Farley was around 11 or 12 years old when his grandmother told him he was “special.” He realized what that meant a couple of years later when he thought he liked a girl. His mother asked him why he was “wasting that girl’s time” if he didn’t really want her. He asked his grandfather about it. “And he told me, ‘Junior, you don’t have the right to mess with nobody’s emotions. If you don’t mean them no good, you need to leave them alone. You think this girl is who you want, but she’s not.’ That was it,” Farley told Project Q Atlanta. He realized he was gay. That was in 1965. In the pushing-six decades since, Farley left Hamilton, went to college, served in the U.S. Navy on a submarine and aircraft carrier on multiple continents, worked as a nurse in D.C., performed multiple roles at an Atlanta bathhouse,
returned to Hamilton on his mother’s orders and got elected to the city council. Farley also made national headlines earlier this year after helping uncover body camera footage showThis small-town ing Hamilton’s police chief making racist comments about slavery and Atlanta Mayor Georgia official Keisha Lance Bottoms. The town later ousted the chief and has been another police officer. out and proud And Farley’s not nearly done making waves. The 70-yearfor 55 years old is considering a run for the town’s top job.
Hamilton to Antarctica
Farley was born in Hamilton in 1951. The town — which counted about 400 residents at the time — sits on about three square miles of land and is roughly 25 miles north of Columbus. Farley said he didn’t hide his sexual orientation after coming out in his late teens. He was young, Black, out and proud in small-town Georgia in the final years of the civil rights movement.
Hamilton Mayor Pro Tem Ransom Farley at work
“I walked the streets of Hamilton just like everybody else,” he said. “Everybody knew who I was and nobody made a big deal out of nothing. I never hid it.” He graduated high school in 1969 and went to Western Kentucky University, dropped out and worked for Mammoth Cave National Park. Then he joined the U.S. Navy. He was the only Black sailor in a class of 80 during basic training. “I was thinking I’d have to do battle with these boys from the South and I didn’t,” he said. “These white boys shielded me and made sure that I graduated. I’ve been lucky all my life.” He served on the USS Bluefish submarine and the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. He went from places as balmy as the Philippines to as frigid as Antarctica. Farley worked at a hospital in Washington, D.C., after leaving the Navy, bounced around a few other places, got his nursing degree and worked at a nursing home. And he sowed his oats. “You know how it is when you’re young and hot,” he said. “I was experiencing sex and everything, running amok.”
Ransom Farley during his Flex days in 1995
Ransom Farley in the U.S. Navy in 1971 Atlanta and a health scare
Atlanta came calling for Farley in 1990. He took a job as a maintenance man at Flex Spas in Midtown soon after arriving. “I had never seen so many fine men walking around naked,” he said. “I had my share of fun there.” He earned promotions to clerk and then assistant manager in his 15 years there. “Sex and drugs go together, and we could not have people doing drugs in the club,” he said. “If I caught you on drugs or with drugs I didn’t call the police, but I would throw you out of the club.” Farley had a heart attack in 2005, which triggered his return home to Hamilton.
“My momma insisted that I come home,” he said. Fed up with how Hamilton treated its Black residents , Farley ran for city council in 2014 and won. “Nobody was representing the Blacks,” he said. “When I looked at it, it wasn’t nobody’s fault but ours that we were not represented. We let four councilmen and a mayor decide what was going to happen to us.” Since Farley won his council seat, the city hired its first Black female clerk and first Black police officers. “Hamiliton ain’t never had no Black policemen,” he said. “The only time a Black woman was in city hall she was cleaning up.” Farley was appointed mayor pro tem in 2018.
Hamilton hit the national headlines for all the wrong reasons earlier this year. A city employee found body camera footage of the police chief using a racial slur while making lewd comments about Bottoms and Stacey Abrams. The footage also caught an officer making racist statements about slavery. The footage was recorded as the two prepared to patrol a Black Lives Matter rally. The city employee showed the footage to Farley. “I had known [the police chief] for about 10 years,” he said. “I was flabbergasted.” Farley alerted the city attorney and city administrator about the video. The mayor and the city council met that night to discuss the incident. The police chief resigned, and the officer was fired. “I own the fact that I am Black and I am gay,” Farley told the New York Times. “If you’re a bigot, if you’re a racist, own it.” Farley is up for re-election to council in 2023, but he’s considering a new post. “If I listen to the people, they’re saying they want me to run for mayor,” he said. “They want me to be the first Black mayor in Hamilton.” “I told them I don’t know at this time. At my age you don’t know about my health. I got a chance to think about it,” he added.
Hamilton Police Department Chief Gene Allmond (left) made national headlines after Ransom Farley (above) turned in video of the chief and an officer making racist and sexists comments.
Sixty years after his grandmother first told him he was special, Ransom Farley is now Hamilton’s resident LGBTQ elder statesman. Young LGBTQ people in Hamilton often visit him and bring him trinkets. “They want to know how the hell I did it,” he said. “Nobody’s given me hell for it. It makes me feel good that this young crowd thinks enough to ask me questions. It really does. And it keeps me young in a way. I love it.” “I’ve caught more hell here in Hamilton being Black than I have about being gay,” he added. Farley said the older LGBTQ crowd in Hamilton asks him why the younger ones always come around. He tells them it’s because he’s just being himself. “Two things I will not do,” he said. “I will not apologize to nobody for being Black and I will not apologize for being gay. I’m who I am. All my life I’ve laid it out there. Everywhere I’ve went I’ve laid it out there.”
“It’s in your hands now. You can choose to do whatever you want with it. You should never lie about who you are and what you are. You can own it in a good way or in a bad way. I choose to own mine in a good way.”
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The Best LGBTQ Things to Do in Atlanta This Week
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13
The Craft
Your queer goth obsession is back on the big screen with a Craft costume contest plus drag hosts Dotte Com and Szn Alxndr @ Plaza Theatre, 7 p.m. plazaatlanta.com THURSDAY, OCT. 14
Town Hall on Pride Committee
The contingent of LGBTQ Atlantans pushing for change and transparency at Atlanta Pride hosts a second public meeting. All are welcome @ My Sister’s Room, 7 p.m. facebook.com/msratl
Game Night
DJ Darlene finds you playing games with drink specials and other surprises @ Hideaway, 8 p.m. Before that, do your daydrinking, 2 p.m. facebook. com/atlantahideaway
SATURDAY, OCT. 16
Deviant: Homecoming
Get into your minimalist football and jock gear for a body-positive, sex-positive dance party with the recurring party exclusively for Black gay men @ Heretic, 10 p.m. hereticatlanta.com SATURDAY, OCT. 16
NFFLA Fall Ball
The LGBTQ and allied National Flag Football League of Atlanta begins a quickie autumn season @ Silverbacks Park, 2 p.m. Attend for the scoop on a Third Half social hour. nffla.com
ATL United Watch Party & Pop Up
The LGBTQ pro soccer fans of All Stripes host the game party, but be ready. A Better Buzz apparel, All Stripes merch and a food vendor are popping up too @ Georgia Beer Garden, 6 p.m. gabeergarden.com
SUNDAY, OCT. 17
West End Artist Market
LGBTQ makers sell their wares while you enjoy the beer, music, Beltline scenery and outdoor party @ Wild Heaven, 12 noon – 5 p.m. wussymag.com
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 20
Bianca Del Rio
The Drag Race comedy queen hits Atlanta with her “Unsanitized” tour @ The Eastern, 8 p.m. theeasternatl.com
Switch!
The drag show you need midweek, hosted by Mutha Taylor Alxndr and her House of Alxndr, plus DJ sets and a cool crowd @ My Sister’s Room, 10 p.m. mysistersroom.com Find the full weekend calendar of LGBTQ events each Thursday at theQatl.com
