Bryanna Jenkins advocates for the Black transgender community
Bryanna Jenkins was in Baltimore in March 2015, when National Security Agency police shot and killed Mya Hall outside of Fort Meade. Hall, a 27-year-old Black transgender woman, had been driving a stolen SUV that crashed into a police vehicle at the military base.
A couple of weeks later, Baltimore police arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, over the possession of a knife. Gray sustained severe spinal injuries while in police custody, and he later died.
While both incidents were deaths resulting from police encounters, Gray’s death sparked protests nationwide, while what happened to Hall went mostly unnoticed, says Jenkins, who founded the Baltimore Transgender Alliance in January 2015.
“There was no outcry,” she says. “It wasn’t met with the same sense of urgency. I saw that as an opportunity to unearth some of the other things the trans community had been dealing with in Baltimore.”
Later that year, Jenkins, who is transgender, led the first Baltimore Trans Uprising march to bring more awareness to the city’s transgender residents, and particularly to those who are Black. She helped organize another march and other events to commemorate the Transgender Day of Remembrance, marked annually on Nov. 20, which honors individuals who lost their lives because of anti-transgender violence.
“It really helped galvanize the community and let them know we were there, let them know we were a presence,” says Jenkins, who was also the Baltimore Transgender Alliance’s executive director. “From there, we just continued to build our presence.”
Jenkins stepped down from the organization in August 2016, when she decided to take what she learned as a community organizer and become a lawyer. She already had a master’s degree in legal and ethical studies from the University of Baltimore.
“I saw law school as the natural next step after my organizing and activism work,” says Jenkins, who graduated from DePaul University College of Law in 2019. “I wanted to figure out how I could use the law as a tool to push forward my agendas for helping the trans community and helping Black folks.”
Making connections
Jenkins, a native of Baltimore who was raised by her mom, says she “recognized her queerness” during high school in the 2000s.
“It was definitely a different time to be queer,” she says. “There wasn’t a lot of support. There weren’t a lot of resources or the language that we have now. But I always had a strong sense of my identity.”
Jenkins transitioned when she was at Morgan State University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in marketing in 2011. Even then, she knew she wanted to give back. She worked for a nonprofit organization that provided emergency shelter and other services to women in Baltimore. She also worked for the city’s housing department while leading the Baltimore Transgender Alliance.
After law school, Jenkins was a fellow with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C. She assisted with Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and related cases, in which the organization advocated for race-conscious admission policies. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately struck down those policies.
Jenkins later worked as a civil rights and employment fellow at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington, D.C., and as a staff attorney with Advocates for Trans Equality’s Name Change Project in New York City. While she enjoyed handling high-impact litigation, she missed strategizing and coalition- building as a leader in an organization.
“I wanted to get back to my movement roots,” says Jenkins, who in April 2023 became the national organizing director for the Lavender Rights Project, a nonprofit in Seattle that provides legal and social services to the Black LGBTQ+ community. As part of her work, Jenkins brought together Black transgender-led organizations, including two in Houston.
“When I first came to the organization, one of my goals was to build relationships with other Black trans-led organizations, particularly in the Deep South and in the Midwest, which are areas that are severely overlooked and underfunded,” Jenkins says.
Jaelynn Scott, the executive director of the Lavender Rights Project, notes that Jenkins’ long tenure in organizing and advocacy has helped the organization greatly expand its reach.
“She has been willing to network, make those connections and find the right people to push forward initiatives,” Scott says. “She is quite open to creative ideas and coming up with something that feels genuine and authentic to us as Black people, and genuine and authentic to us as people who really embody intersectionality.”
Leading the fight
In November 2023, Jenkins became the Lavender Rights Project’s policy director.
Her recent priorities include advocating for legislation that would amend Washington state’s “parents’ bill of rights” initiative, which gives parents access to their children’s textbooks, curriculum, and academic and medical records. Jenkins says stronger protections are needed for transgender students and students of color as well as the school staff who support them.
Jenkins also is continuing to build a national cohort of Black transgender leaders, which she says is even more vital as President Donald Trump’s administration advances a series of anti-transgender policies. This includes eliminating federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people, restricting access to gender-affirming care and banning transgender girls from school sports.
“We are strategizing how we plan to resist and survive over the next four years and beyond,” says Jenkins, who organized the first Black Trans Policy Convening in Atlanta in October. This year’s summit will take place Aug. 21-24, once again in Atlanta.
“This is something that’s going to take us about 20 to 30 years to effectively be on the other side of,” she adds. “There has to be a culture shift. There has to be a culture change around trans people, and not just transness but all identities that have been historically marginalized.”
Jenkins, who now lives in Houston, is a vice chair of the ABA Civil Rights and Social Justice Section’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee. She is also vice chair of the National Bar Association’s LGBTQ Division.
Antonio Lee, the chair of the division, has worked closely with Jenkins to form an inclusive space for Black LGBTQ legal professionals and focus attention on issues facing their communities. He also credits her national prominence and network for much of their success.
“In this area that we are trying to tap into to cultivate and grow, she is the true bridge that connects everything together to progress forward,” says Lee, who is also a member of the ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. “She is a true leader, a true inspiration and someone who always is willing to give unconditionally.”
Among her other roles, Jenkins volunteers for the Diverse Attorney Pipeline Program, a nonprofit that supports first-year law students who are women of color. She was a scholar in the program while in law school.
Jenkins reiterates that both the legal profession and the greater community benefit from diverse perspectives.
“We need to be always bringing people in—bringing young people in, bringing our elders in, bringing people with disabilities in,” Jenkins says. “Life is all about perspective and points of view, and we have to do the work to make sure we have all the voices in the room.”
This story was originally published in the June-July 2025 issue of the ABA Journal under the headline: “Voices in the Room: Bryanna Jenkins advocates for the Black transgender community.”
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