Community advocate Caprice Carthans came of age among a generation of Black trans women who survived by taking care of one another.
“It was a whole different set of dynamics back then because we were all unified,” Carthans said. “If you were in the life, folks scooped you up and nurtured you and trained you. It wasn’t exploitative. It was all about love and commitment to being who you are.”
With more than 40 years of experience advocating for LGBTQ+ issues, Carthans spent her entire life carrying that tradition forward by mentoring young people, connecting them with healthcare and recreating the kinds of support systems that have enabled her to thrive.
“People need much more than the basic services we’re providing,” Carthans said. “That means sometimes it has to come out of your own pocket or you might spend more than your regulated hours of time with someone. Sometimes we have to get beyond the idea of doing what’s required.”
Carthans grew up on the West Side of Chicago in a large, loving family. She knew she was trans when she was a child and, with her family’s support, began living her life authentically and building friendships with other queer people in her neighborhood.
She began her career in activism in New York City in the 1980s, with a focus on increasing access to healthcare throughout the HIV/AIDs epidemic. After about 30 years, she moved home to Chicago to continue her efforts.
“I do things that feel natural to me, but it’s special for the people I meet,” Carthans said. “I do it because I remember that, when I was young, someone went beyond their role for me. Even if I transition from this world today or tomorrow, my legacy will live on.”
Last year, one of Carthans’s mentees—whom Carthans refers to as a “granddaughter” and who goes by Dr. Z—opened a school in Carthans’s name. Caprice Carthans Academy is an adult high school diploma program for students ages 18 and up. About 40 students, many of them Black and LGBTQ+, are currently enrolled, including people with learning disabilities, justice-impacted backgrounds or disrupted schooling.
“[Carthans] taught me that activism is about building programs and mentoring people, giving people access to the tools they need to break cycles,” Dr. Z said. “She let me know that activism isn’t just about challenging systems, it’s about refusing to let those systems challenge who you are. Even when people try to silence your voice, your perseverance alone can create change.”
‘Someone went the extra mile for you, now you need to go the extra mile’
Carthans met Dr. Z when she was a teenager living on the streets of Chicago in the 2000s. Carthans was working as a community health navigator at the time, and approached Dr. Z with food, clean clothes and an offer to become her grandmother.
“I definitely didn’t want any family or anything like that,” Dr. Z reflected. “I was so used to being neglected by my family. Life was so tough for me then, but she’d always see me and be like, ‘Hey grandbaby, here’s $20.’ She’d see me on the bus and give me coats. And I was just like, ‘What does this woman want from me?’”
Dr. Z eventually agreed for Carthans to help her sign up for health insurance because she was eager to begin accessing gender-affirming care. But when Carthans presented her with the paperwork, Dr. Z’s face fell, and Carthans realized she couldn’t read.
They stumbled through the forms together that day, but the next time Carthans saw Dr. Z, she brought a stack of picture books from the library. The pair sat and read them together. At first, Dr. Z struggled to mouth the words, but Carthans was there to celebrate every small win until the day Dr. Z bought a newspaper and read the first few pages aloud to her.
“Some people might just give you a book and move on, but she would always follow up,” Dr. Z said. “She’d ask me, ‘How’d the book go? Tell me what you learned in the book.’ Over the years, I kept in contact with her. She became my grandmother instantly, and I was just so grateful for her.”
Carthans remembers the day Dr. Z came to her and said she wanted to earn her high school diploma. Not long after, they printed the document and framed it together. Carthans continued celebrating Dr. Z as she got her bachelor’s degree and her doctorate.
“I watched as she began to read more and more, and she got so excited about reading,” Carthans said. “Her vocabulary increased. Her whole demeanor changed. Her confidence had shot up. I was pouring into her, but I needed her to excel even further, and she did. It was up to her to do that.”
Dr. Z promised Carthans she would open a school in her honor, to help others facing similar barriers to education the same way her grandmother helped her. Carthans recently learned that one of her nieces is attending Caprice Carthans Academy, and felt honored that her family will benefit from a resource that was created in her name.
“It’s rewarding for me when I see I’ve actually helped someone get to a position where they’re able to help themselves,” Carthans said. “I always make them promise to me, you gotta pay it back. Someone went the extra mile for you, and now, you need to go the extra mile.”
‘I knew I was different, but I knew that there was a community of trans women’
The kind of care Carthans offered Dr. Z was shaped by the people who once nurtured her: her endlessly supportive family and the older trans girls in the neighborhood who she said “taught [her] how to grow up.”
Born on the West Side of Chicago, Carthans and her twin were the eighth and ninth of her mother’s 23 children. She was about 11 years old when she sat her mother down at the dining room table—the place where all important conversations were had—and told her that she was a girl.
Although they had very limited language to describe Carthans’ identity, her mother immediately accepted her and announced to the family that everyone would address her as “she and her” from then on.
“She was my first support,” Carthans remembered. “I knew I was different, but I knew there was a community of trans women. We called them drag queens back in the day, and all of us little baby queens hung around them because we wanted to be like them.”
Carthans was close with a group of three trans girls who were siblings and loved going to the thrift store together to pick out outfits. They would all change together and help each other “transform” before going out anywhere, she said.
“They were absolutely fabulous,” Carthans said. “I got all my tips from them. We’d stuff all the clothes in a bag and transform in the hallway, or a bathroom, or wherever, and change into our girl stuff together. That’s just how it worked back then.”
‘As you get it, learn to give something back’
Empowered by the girls who took her under their wings, Carthans carved out a life for herself in New York City, where she lived for nearly 30 years and first became involved in LGBTQ+ causes. Her early career on the East Coast included serving as the Trans Coordinator for Gay Men’s Health Crisis and as an independent consultant for Gay Men of African Descent and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Centers.
While serving public health organizations, she also worked as a sales rep at Saks Fifth Avenue and “was so delicious” at what she did that she became a buyer.
Carthans moved home to Chicago in 2009 and served as a Housing monitor for Chicago House’s Translife Center and then as Peer Health Navigator for the Affordable Care ACT, where she “enrolled 327 individuals, with 204 being of Trans experience,” according to AIDS Foundation Chicago’s website.
The culmination of Carthans’s many years of advocacy is the non-profit she founded, Equity Alliance Health of Illinois. The organization aims to ensure access to essential health and social services with unwavering integrity and compassion. Carthans created the organization because she wanted to support LGBTQ+ causes by building relationships between people, making recommendations and streamlining funding toward direct-service organizations.
“I’ve been around for a while and I’m multi-talented,” Carthans explained. “I didn’t want to do direct-services because so many people are involved in that, so I find ways to reinvest money into the community. So many folks do great work, but don’t qualify for grants so I try to partner with them and do great work together.”
After decades of activism, Carthans advises young people to be “be committed and consistent” and remember that no one can do the work by themselves.
“You can’t collaborate with everybody, but you can connect with everybody,” Carthans said. “Everybody has a gift. Find out what yours is, then bring somebody in who’s just as gifted as you are. Share the roles, share the responsibilities, and split the proceeds. As you get it, learn to give something back. Encourage those who want to be where you are. Train them, show them. Say, ‘This is what I did,’ but be open if they have their own way of doing it.”
‘My auntie, who has been true to herself since I have known her, taught me how to navigate this’
Carthans remains deeply involved in advocacy work. She’s proud to celebrate 28 years of sobriety this year, a process she said has allowed her “to become fully who [she is]” and start truly investing in herself and the people around her.
She and her twin, now the matriarch and patriarch of their family, spend much of their time surrounded by their loved ones.
Carthans’s many nieces, nephews and granddaughters love showing up for her events and heckling any man who dares flirt with her. Each branch of the family gets a day of the week to drop into Gigi’s house and share what’s on their minds.
“I love to have conversations with folks in my family, talking about my experience and explaining how to be respectful of queer people,” Carthans said. “I love that they take that out in the world with them, and that they can say, ‘My auntie who has been true to herself since I’ve known her, taught me how to navigate this.”
The parts of those days that she loves the most are when she can just sit back and enjoy the sound of her family’s laughter and chatter surrounding her.
“So many trans folks, back in my day and even now, don’t get that kind of support and it’s unsafe for them because they try to seek it elsewhere,” Carthans said. “I am so fortunate to get to have it all, exactly the way I want it. I’m a happy, Black trans woman who loves living her life, transparent and fabulous.”
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