Fliers for missing activist Elise Malary are distributed near the CTA Howard Red Line station on March 17, 2022, in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Malary had been reported missing on March 11. | Source: Chicago Tribune / Getty
The recent death of a prominent Illinois-based LGBTQ activist is renewing fears of violence against Black trans women.
The body of 31-year-old Elise Malary was discovered in Lake Michigan on Thursday of last week. Officials from the Evanston Police Department responded to a report of a woman’s body found on the rocks near Garden Park in the 500 block of Sheridan Square. Malary had been missing since March 9.
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Malary’s sister, Fabiana, said the two of them briefly communicated that day via text but she had no clue that it would be the last time they would be in contact.
“She’s never done anything like this before,” she told CBS News. “So that’s why it’s been just so alarming for us.” According to Fabiana, maintenance workers entered Malary’s apartment to find the front and back doors unlocked, but there were no signs of forced entry or items missing from inside her apartment.
A vigil was held for Malary on Sunday night, when attendees urged more protections for trans women — Black trans women, in particular, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“Being who I am, and us being who we are, this is what I fear happening to us,” KJ Whitehead said to attendees in reference to targeted attacks against the transgender community. “I feared this every day since I came out.”
Another attendee said they were “tired and angry of burying our trans sisters. Dulce Quintero asked: “When will it be enough?”
Source: Activists’s Death Renews Black Trans Women Violence Fears
