Can’t Erase Queer/Trans History: Presentation and Panel Discussion

Join The History Project and coach justice of Fitness 4 All Bodies for a morning of reflection, resilience, and remembrance as we honor the legacy of LGBTQIA2S+ communities in Boston and beyond.

At a time when queer and trans lives are under attack and LGBTQIA2S+ histories are being erased from classrooms and the public record, this event invites us to gather, remember, and affirm that our stories matter.

🗓 Sunday, August 10, 2025

🕚 11:00 AM ET

📍 Club Café, 209 Columbus Ave, Boston, MA

🎟️ Tickets support speaker honorariums and light bites — limited free tickets available.

We’ll begin with a short presentation from The History Project, tracing national milestones and local moments that have shaped Boston’s queer and trans communities across generations.

Then, coach justice of Fitness 4 All Bodies will lead a dynamic panel discussion with:

• Grace Sterling Stowell, Executive Director of BAGLY
• Ricardo Martinez, Executive Director of GLAD Law
• Ellice Patterson, Founder & Director of Abilities Dance
• Ifé Franklin, multidisciplinary artist behind The Indigo Project

These incredible leaders will share stories of community care, activism, artistry, and resistance — inviting us to reflect on the past and recommit to the future.

🎤 This is a cabaret-style seated event. We will offer light bites included with your ticket — and their full menu and bar will also be available for you to purchase.

- Free tickets are available in limited quantities. If free tickets are sold out when you go to register, email us at info@historyproject.org and we’ll get you set up!

- If you would like to donate to sponsor the honorariums or more free community tickets, please give here.

Let’s gather. Let’s remember. Let’s resist erasure, together.

Grace Sterling Stowell has been a pioneering activist and leader in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) youth, transgender and social justice communities for over 40 years.

As a gender non-conforming child growing up queer and transgender in the 1960’s, Grace’s personal experiences of harassment, discrimination and violence served as a catalyst for her activism in the feminist, racial justice, holistic health, and LGBTQ movements of the 1970’s.

In 1980, Grace joined the founders of the newly formed Boston Alliance of LGBTQ Youth (BAGLY), one of the earliest LGBTQ youth groups in the nation. As BAGLY’s first (and only) executive director, Grace led youth and adult leaders in its expansion from a Boston-based, all volunteer, grassroots social support group, to an established statewide non-profit organization, including the AGLY Network of Massachusetts. BAGLY’s youth-led programs were among the first of their kind, and have served as a local and national model and resource for LGBTQ youth leadership development and community organizing.

In the 1990’s, Grace was a leader in the pioneering national movement to expand community organizing, advocacy, and support for the LGBTQ youth and transgender communities. Grace was a founding member of several local and national LGBTQ youth and transgender advocacy organizations, including the National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC) for LGBTQ youth, and she is believed to be the first openly transgender person to address the health care issues of trans youth with senior staff at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA.

As executive director of BAGLY, founding member of both the MA Commission on LGBTQ Youth and the MA Unaccompanied Homeless Youth Commission, Steering Committee member of the MA Transgender Political Coalition, and Board member of Breaktime, Grace continues to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ youth and transgender communities throughout the Commonwealth. Most recently, Grace was among the leaders of the successful effort to add gender identity to the Massachusetts non-discrimination laws in 2011, expand gender identity protections in public accommodations in 2016, and defend gender identity protections at the statewide ballot box as part of the Freedom MA Yes On 3 Campaign in 2018.

Grace is now the longest-tenured transgender executive director in the nation (and one of the few leading a non-trans-specific organization), and she has been the recipient of numerous awards for her work, including the National LGBTQ Task Force’s “Susan J. Hyde Activism Award for Longevity in the Movement” award in 2010. While Grace has served many roles in her community work over the past four decades, she remains especially honored to be known as “Mother” (and now “Grandmother!”) by three generations of LGBTQ youth.

—

Ricardo Martinez (he/him) joined GLAD Law as Executive Director in the summer of 2024 after serving on the front lines of state and national LGBTQ+ advocacy in Texas and Arizona. A first-generation immigrant from Mexico who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, Ricardo has amassed twenty years of nonprofit fundraising, advocacy, and leadership experience.

His experience includes roles at PENCIL, Summer Search, GLSEN, Stand for Children, and most recently, as CEO of Equality Texas. During his tenure as chair of the Phoenix, Arizona chapter of GLSEN, the organization became an instrumental coalition partner in overturning Arizona’s “no promo homo” law, which prohibited K-12 schools from including LGBTQ+ representation in their curriculum. In his time at Equality Texas, Ricardo ensured the organization was able to maximize its impact at a time of intense and sustained anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and under his leadership, increased staff capacity and supporter base.

Ricardo has an undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University and a master’s degree in nonprofit management from The New School in New York City. He was honored by the Obama Administration as an emerging LGBTQ Leader in 2012 and awarded the Stony Brook University’s 40 Under 40 award for his impact in Civil Service and Activism.

—

Ifé Franklin’s practice involves several genres of artmaking inspired by the lives of her ancestry which includes, folk tales, slave narratives, dreams, dance, song, culinary arts, varied indigenous African spiritual traditions, photography, and film making. Over the last decade she has been developing Ifé Franklin’s Indigo Project which honors the lives and history of formerly enslaved Africans/African Americans who labored to produce materials that generated the wealth of nations. At the center are Franklin’s Ancestor Slave Cabins which often incorporate Adire fabric, an indigo-dyed cotton cloth decorated using a resist technique from the Yoruba culture. These assemblages are built in collaboration with the community and cultivate connections that promote understanding and healing from the hard history of enslavement. In 2018 Franklin published, The Slave Narrative of Willie Mae, a fictional account of her great-grandmother’s escape from slavery to freedom. The book was adapted into a short film in 2021. The trajectory of this project is to futurize the work, linking concepts of Afrofuturism, with connections to the celestial world that include the north star and the star cluster Sirius B discovered by the Dogon of Mail West Africa.

Franklin’s work has been exhibited at The Slave Dwellings Project in South Carolina, the North Charleston Arts Festival, and throughout the Boston area including, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Medicine Wheel Productions, Villa Victoria, The Eliot School of Applied Arts, Franklin Park, and the Royall House and Slave Quarters. Her work is in the permanent collection of The Fitchburg Museum of Art, Fitchburg MA, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington D.C. In 2017 Franklin has been awarded several Grants by the New England Foundation for the Arts, The Boston foundation, The Tanne Foundation, and Olmstead Now. Originally from Washington D.C, she graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and has lived and worked in Roxbury MA for over 30 years.

—

Ellice Patterson is the founder/ executive and artistic director of Abilities Dance, a Boston-based dance company that welcomes artists with and without disabilities. She currently serves on the board of Massachusetts Cultural Council. She was an artist in residence with the City of Boston’s transportation department, using dance as a way to promote more accessibility on the streets and sidewalks of the city 2022 - 2023. She has won the 2020 Ten Outstanding Young Leaders Award from Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the 2024 Bill Allan Award for Grassroots Advocacy from Disability Policy Consortium. Abilities Dance under her leadership has won the 2020 UP Award from Mass Cultural Council for our achievements in accessibility across the Commonwealth and the 2023 Equity Award from Boston Cultural Council for our commitment to equity in the arts. Outside of self-produced Abilities Dance's shows, her choreography has appeared in the MFA, Links Hall in Chicago, Gibney Dance in NYC, The Series: Vol IV at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre in NYC, and more. She has given lectures and workshops at schools, universities, and organizations across the country, including Harvard Graduate School of Education, Fidelity Investments, Boston University, and more. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences from Wellesley College and her Masters of Science in Management Studies from Boston University Questrom School of Business. Patterson sailed from Massachusetts to Ireland and conducted research in the Atlantic and Caribbean oceans on coastal runoff, sponge species, and spider habitats! She is a passionate researcher and science communicator, dedicated to uplifting Black women in STEM through her ongoing series with the Discovery Museum.