Digital Transgender Archive

Interview with Elle Hearns

Elle Hearns identifies her gender as Black and her assigned birth as Black. She’s also identifies herself as a black trans woman. She was always tiny, she says, but in her mind, she was always big. She grew up feeling loved by her single mother in a lower middle-class predominately black neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio where she felt connected to other black people. She is the middle child of 3. She grew up in an Apostolic church from around age 8 to 13 singing choir, speaking in tongues, and going to bible study and youth night. Her father lived in the next neighborhood over with another household. She felt different, always very feminine and feeling like a little girl, and she didn’t know how to embrace that at the time. Hearns felt a certain pressure to be the man of the house by providing emotional support since her household was all women. She felt extremely loved but also extremely bullied by her family, experiencing different levels of violence that she would never excuse now that she’s older. She was bullied in school for being perceived as gay. She came out early, forced out by her family when she was 12. As a result, she became suicidal but at 16 she began to wear women’s clothes that her friends gave to her. Avoiding going to the barber shop where they masculinized her, which she did not like, she grew her hair out into a big afro and dyed it. Without any knowledge of trans identity, she couldn’t articulate who she was. She went to Central State University, an all-Black college in Wilberforce, Ohio, but she left school early since she could not afford it and since she was beginning to realize she was trans. At 25 she began to really bloom. She lived in New York as a trans woman without articulating her identity as a trans woman. After two trans women were murdered, Hearns began seeking more information online about what it meant to be trans. Not feeling comfortable in LGBTQ spaces since others would look at her like she didn’t belong since she was a hood girl, she always created her own community. When she began to name what she was to others, requiring them to honor her pronouns, she started to lose relationships. She also had a hard time finding jobs, became homeless, found herself in a verbally abusive relationship that led to sexual assault, and ended up in jail because an officer could not identify her gender. She finds joy in organizing, wanting to help and support other people find freedom. She organized other trans women by starting the Trans Women of Color Collective of Ohio. Their first action was at the Columbus Health Department where they had a trans health care summit. They went up to the microphone to talk about their lack of support for black trans women and shut the place down. The following year the Columbus Health Department opened a clinic. Hearns later became the first paid staff for the Black Lives Matter Network.