Vanity Williams, a 34-year-old Black transgender woman was an Air Force veteran who had recently begun nursing school, with the goal of opening a med spa. Tragically, before she was able to realize this dream, she was shot and killed in Houston, Texas on August 3, 2024. Vanity is at least the 25th violent killing of a transgender or gender expansive person in 2024. We say “at least” because too often these deaths go unreported — or misreported. The Human Rights Campaign is deeply saddened to report on Vanity’s passing.
Speaking to reporters for ABC 13, Vanity’s friends described her as someone who “would always makes you smile or laugh,” and who “created and made a safe space for everyone.” Grieving her loss, they spoke to her passion for “lifting the Black community and women,” and her ability to “speak truth to power about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a woman of color.”
Vanity was also connected to HRC though her close friendship with Johnae Wright, a community advisor of HRC’s Next Level program. In remembering Vanity, Johane says “Words can’t explain the pain that cuts deep into my soul. She was my friend, my sister, my heart. Never knew your last text to me would be ‘WYD’. I will always hold a special place in my heart for you and continue to fight for you and our community.” Vanity’s memory will clearly live on in the hearts of her family and loved ones. Her light will continue to shine through those she has touched.
On social media, where she also went by Chanel Williams, friends and loved ones reminicied about her “resilient soul, brilliant mind, and beautiful spirit,” and her love of makeup, nail art, and fashion. A GoFundMe has been created to provide support for her family, and cover funeral expenses.
Across social media, Vanity’s friends echoed a quote she often said: ‘I don’t fear death! I fear injustice!’ Vanity spent her life serving her country and community, and she should still be here today, continuing to pursue her own dreams. Instead, in another senseless death, she was let down by the same forces that continue to plague our community – transphobia, misogynoir, and gun violence. I grieve alongside her loved ones, including those in our NextLevel community.”
Tori Cooper, Human Rights Campaign Director of Community Engagement for the Transgender Justice Initiative
Vanity was shot and killed in the lobby of her apartment building in downtown Houston, where she was found by the police and pronounced dead at the scene. A man has subsequently been arrested and charged with her murder; he is currently being held in jail in Louisiana, where he fled after the shooting, and is awaiting extradition. Authorities have not released details on the relationship between Vanity and her killer, though her friends told reporters the two knew each other.
More than 25,000 hate crimes in the U.S. involve a firearm each year, which equates to almost 70 cases a day, according to a 2023 report from Everytown for Gun Safety in partnership with HRC and The Equality Federation Support Fund, “Remembering and Honoring Pulse: Anti-LGBTQ Bias and Guns Are Taking Lives of Countless LGBTQ People.”
And nowhere is that clearer than in Texas. Since HRC began tracking fatal violence against the trans community in 2013, we have recorded the deaths of 37 trans and gender-expansive people in Texas, more than 1 in 10 of every victim identified to-date, and more than any other state. In this year alone, Vanity is at least the third transgender or gender-expansive person killed in Texas in 2024, with her death occurring less than two weeks after Dylan Gurley, a 20-year-old white transgender girl, was killed in Denton, Texas. In March of 2024, another Black trans woman, Diamond Brigman, also lost her life to gun violence in Houston. Texas itself is no stranger to gun violence, with Everytown for Gun Safety noting that gun homicides in the state have increased 77% over the last decade, with Black people over six times as likely as white people to die by gun homicide.
At the state level, transgender and gender-expansive people in Texas are not explicitly protected from discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public spaces. Texas does not include sexual orientation and / or gender identity as a protected characteristic in its hate crimes law. Though we have recently seen some political gains that support and affirm transgender people, we have also faced unprecedented anti-LGBTQ+ attacks in the states. In June 2023, the Human Rights Campaign declared a National State of Emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans, as a result of the more than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced into state houses that year, over 80 of which were signed into law—more than in any other year. As of this writing, over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced into state houses since the beginning of 2024, with 46 bills passing to-date across 16 states.
We must demand better from our elected officials and reject harmful anti-transgender legislation at the local, state and federal levels, while also considering every possible way to make ending this violence a reality. It is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of color, especially Black transgender women. The intersections of racism, transphobia, sexism, biphobia and homophobia conspire to deprive them of necessities to live and thrive, so we must all work together to cultivate acceptance, reject hate and end stigma for everyone in the trans and gender-expansive community.
