Transgender activist Gloria Allen (Mama Gloria), who founded and ran a charm school for homeless trans youth and was the subject of the award-winning documentary Mama Gloria and the critically acclaimed play Charm, has died at the age of 76.
This blog is about parenting, but although Allen did not raise children in the traditional sense, she deserves note here because her impact upon young people was incalculable. Allen was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on October 6, 1945, and grew up in Chicago. She became part of Chicago’s South Side drag ball culture and transitioned four years before Stonewall, with the support of her mother, a former showgirl and Jet magazine centerfold, and her grandmother, who sewed clothes for crossdressers and male strippers. Allen also experienced traumatic violence in high school, lost friends to AIDS, and was harassed by police, but survived to become a nurse and a community leader. She earned a LPN and worked at the University of Chicago Hospital and in private homes as a nurse’s aide.
In 2011, she pioneered a charm school for young, homeless transgender people at Chicago’s Center on Halsted, where she passed on the lessons of fashion, makeup, and etiquette, and love that she had learned from her mother and grandmother. She also taught about safe sex, dealing with substance abuse, healthy relationships, and more. “It’s not about manners. It’s about love,” she told The 19th News in 2020. “It’s about somebody who hears these kids and loves them for who they are. It’s about caring, mothering.” The young people nicknamed her “Mama Gloria.”
For her work with the charm school, Allen was awarded the Living Legend Award by Janet Mock and Precious Brady-Davis at the 2014 Trans 100 Awards. She famously appeared on the cover of the book To Survive on This Shore, with photographs and interviews of trans and non-binary elders, by Jess T. Dugan.
Her life and activism were featured in the Chicago Tribune and served as inspiration for the hit play Charm, by Philip Dawkins. In 2020, she became the subject of the acclaimed documentary feature Mama Gloria, directed by Luchina Fisher. The film was broadcast on Afropop: the Ultimate Cultural Exchange on World channel and PBS and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. Fisher, who has a trans daughter, said of the film and of Allen:
[The film] is a gift that I want to show my daughter and other young trans people—so they can imagine themselves growing old and having a long, meaningful life. Gloria is their connection to aging and to their future. She is their connection to the past and living proof that transgender people have always been part of our lives and our communities. She is a shining example of how family support—from birth families and chosen families—can impact life outcomes for transgender people.
The documentary brought Allen new audiences and new fame. Her story was featured in People magazine, The 19th News, the BBC and NowThisNews. In 2021, she received SAGE’s Advocacy Award for Excellence in Leadership on Aging Issues at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual Creating Change Conference.
Allen is believed to have died peacefully in her sleep Monday morning in her apartment at the LGBTQ-friendly senior residence Town Hall Apartments in Chicago. She is survived by several siblings and numerous nieces and nephews, as well as her chosen family.
“I hit walls that were up against me, but I pressed through the walls and made myself known to everybody because I’m not ashamed, and I want people to know that,” she said to The 19th News.
Condolences to all whom she considered family, and all whom her life touched.