Metro Weekly

M2F Transgender killed in Memphis [video]

Rodney Johnson

”Transgendered individual are often the victims of crime mainly because we know that people are homophobic or transphobic.”

Jonathan Cole of Tennessee Equality Project remarking on the murder of Rodney Whitaker, whose body was found next to a day care center and a strip club. (WREG-TV)


”We consider these two recent crimes, combined with the still unsolved murder of another African American transgender woman, Tiffany Berry on February 16, 2006, to be totally unacceptable…. The lack of response by the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County to the beating of Duanna Johnson has set a tone in the community that the lives of transgender people, especially African American transwomen, are irrelevant.”

Marisa Richmond, president of TTPC, responding to the latest murder of a transgender individual in the Memphis, Tennessee area, and also to the case of Duanna Johnson, who was taped during a beating by police officers. (Out and About)

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