Community Conversation: Out Of The Shadows

Tracee McDaniel
Trans Human Rights Advocate and Author

Trans Human Rights Advocate and published author Tracee McDaniel is motivated by a strong desire to ensure that all Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people also receive equity, justice, civil and human rights protections. Tracee was born and raised in South Carolina. Tracee became the first Trans person invited in 2007 to deliver a key-note speech at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration march and rally. Almost a decade later in 2015 she was invited to brief the White House Washington’s “Trans Women of Color Women History Month Briefing” on Employment and Economic Equity and how those inequities affect Trans Women of Color. In 2013 Tracee published “Transitions-Memoirs of a Transsexual Woman”, which chronicled her unordinary life growing up Trans in the South and then eventually in 1990 escaping to Los Angeles, CA from a domestically violent intimate partner relationship. “Transitions” also details her evolution working in the corporate world by day and effortlessly transitioning into her performance artist Alter-Ego Destiny Your Mistress of Illusions by night to make ends meet, by being in the right place at the right time to be a featured background singer for living legend and Icon Diana Ross’ in her music video “I Will Survive” and also making a featured appearance in Television Miniseries “The Jackson’s-An American Dream”. Currently, after retiring from organizing Atlanta’s annual Trans Day of Remembrance Vigils for ten years, Tracee is serving on Trans Housing Atlanta Program’s Board of Directors, Center for Civil and Human Rights TLGB Advisory Board and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottom’s TLGBQI Advisory Council. Conclusively, Tracee always and unapologetically puts the “T” first.