Janice Covington Allison papers

Janice Covington Allison was born in 1947 in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1964, she enlisted in the army and served in Vietnam and Korea as a combat engineer. After leaving the military, Allison got a job at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, where she waited on notable figures such as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Gene Autry and The Supremes. During her time in San Francisco, she was arrested on several occasions when police raided gay nightclubs in the city. Allison met her future wife, who was originally from North Carolina, in 1971 and they relocated to the Charlotte area a few years later.

She began her career as a volunteer firefighter at the Pitts Fire Department in Cabarrus county, where she dressed as a male by day but lived privately as a female. In February 2003, she founded TranCarolina, a group that fights for workplace rights and serves as a social group for transgender people. In 2005, Allison stopped presenting publicly as a male and in 2012, North Carolina's 8th Congressional District elected her to be the first transgender woman to represent the state at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. In 2013, Allison became the first transgender member of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Women's Association and served as the chair of diversity and outreach for the North Carolina Democratic Party. One of her primary issues was securing passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to protect transgender individuals in the workplace.

In 2015, she visited a woman's restroom at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center during a City Council debate over whether to extend nondiscrimination protection to LGBT citizens. Allison was escorted out of the restroom by police, but it was an example of the fierceness with which she fought for causes she believed in and helped bring the issue to the forefront of the city's eyes. Janice Covington Allison died on October 1, 2021 at Atrium Health Mercy Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Sources: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article254706257.html

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/janice-covington-allison-charlotte-transgender-rights-advocate-dies/275-82dd7645-9494-4be3-a2ee-82862caed286