By Ariel Wilder
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first Transgender Day or Remembrance in North Texas. The long legacy of this important community event, honoring those lost to anti-trans violence, started with the advocacy of Pamela Curry.
Pamela Curry’s journey as a trans activist began when she returned to Dallas in 2001, after spending fourteen months in Austin trying to escape an abusive relationship. While in Austin, she had started going back to church and attended her first meeting with an organization called Act Now, a national initiative that supports community groups and organizations working toward social change. At this meeting, in 1999, she was told by a man from Fort Worth that the organization did not need “you or your kind.” This anti-trans sentiment was ubiquitous, but it did not keep Curry from working as an advocate for her community.
When she returned to Dallas, she began attending Cathedral of Hope, which is the largest LGBTQ serving church in the world. Curry was hesitant to get involved because she had never attended a church of this size. In November of 2001, Curry was talking to a friend, “Aunty T,” Tamara Ching of San Francisco, in an America Online trans chat room. Ching, who had been one of the so-called “Screaming Queens” at the Compton’s Cafeteria riots in 1966 San Francisco, introduced Curry to Transgender Day of Remembrance, an international event held annually in November to remember and memorialize those who are killed by anti-trans violence. Shortly after this conversation, another friend of Curry’s, Moonflower (Vanessa Foster) of Houston prompted: “You’ve got that big, beautiful church in Dallas; how come there is no Transgender Day of Remembrance?” As a new member who did not know many people at her church, Curry knew she could not make it happen in November 2001, but she committed to making it happen the following year. Curry approached an individual at the church named Linda Freeman who suggested that Curry work with Reverend Mona West. Curry asked Freeman to accompany her to the meeting since she did not know Reverend West. After scheduling the meeting and making the pitch, Reverend West agreed that they needed to make this event happen. On November 24, 2002, as a result of Pamela Curry’s advocacy and action, Cathedral of Hope hosted North Texas’s first ever Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honored 27 people who had been lost to anti-trans violence around the world.
That same year, Curry’s began her first attempt at HIV advocacy...in defense of a Muppet. 2002 was the year that Sesame Workshop, the non-profit that produces the show Sesame Street, announced they were bringing a new Muppet to their South African show, Takalani Sesame: an HIV+ Muppet named Kami. This character was meant to destigmatize HIV in a region that was being decimated by AIDS. The Republican party during this time signed off on the attack of Kami, which caused PBS to delay the introduction of the character. Curry wrote a letter to every Republican who had signed off on the attack. She also sent copies of the letter to PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, and Sesame Workshop. Shortly after these letters, she received a call from POZ Magazine, which centers the lives and experiences of people living with HIV. In October 2002, POZ ran a short news story about the so-called controversy titled Mup Roar, which highlighted Curry’s advocacy as an HIV-positive parent, who fought against the stigma that this censorship represented.
A couple of months after the first TDOR and as a result of her campaign against HIV stigma, Curry was invited to a meeting at Health and Human Services. In January 2003, she traveled to this meeting with a group from Act Now. She brought with her a poster she had designed to communicate the high cost of HIV meds. With this poster, Curry began her speech:
“My name is Pamela Curry, I am a forty-five year old transsexual female, a resident of the city and county of Dallas in addition to being diagnosed with HIV in 97. I’m an active member of the Cathedral of Hope, the Dallas Transgender Alliance, and I want to thank Act Now for providing the means for me to be here today. We cannot afford cuts to the Texas HIV medication program.”
Her speech continued with information about the exorbitant cost of the HIV medications that she and so many others needed to stay alive. The cost of her medications surpassed her monthly social security check of $1,004. Her money was gone before she was able to pay for rent or food. Before her speech, the news media who had covered the event was already starting to leave; when they heard her rousing story and saw her visual aid, they came back into the room. The next day, a photo of Curry holding her poster, which read “No Cuts to HIV/AIDS Medication,” appeared on the front page of newspapers across the state. A couple of weeks after this exposure, she got a call asking to be a regional coordinator for Act Now. Curry still received a lot of pushback in her position because of anti-trans sentiments. Eventually, the hostility from some in the organization caused her to quit.
In 2004, Curry was in a patient advocacy summit in Philadelphia. In an interview she was asked the question, “Why do you advocate for people?” She replied with, “It’s simple. The reason I help anybody is because some day I may be too weak, too sick, too ill to speak for myself.” Over the years, Curry has helped trans women with name and gender marker changes and has been an advocate for the trans community. In 2014, Curry shared her story at an Outrageous Oral event and in 2018, she wrote an article for the Dallas Voice about her work to organize the first TDOR and in Norh Texas.
