Gloria Allen, transgender activist who ran a charm school, dies in Chicago

Gloria Allen, a transgender activist whose experiences running a charm school in Chicago for at-risk transgender youth inspired an acclaimed documentary film, “Mama Gloria,” and play, “Charm,” died June 13 at her home in Chicago. She was 76.

The cause was respiratory failure, said Luchina Fisher, a close friend and the director of the documentary.

Allen overcame intolerance and sexual violence in the era before the Stonewall Inn uprising of 1969 to become a celebrated figure in the transgender-rights movement in Chicago and beyond.

Mama Gloria, as she was known, operated her charm school out of the Center on Halsted, a community center for LGBTQ people in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. The school was informal, free — Allen often paid for students' meals out of her own limited budget — and short-lived; it opened in 2012 and ran for less than a decade.

Attendees were usually transgender people in their teens or early 20s who were drawn from the economic margins. Lessons covered table manners, dating etiquette and job interview comportment, as well as tips on hygiene, dressing and makeup. The goal was to help those who gathered to find jobs and confidence, said Philip Dawkins, who wrote the 2015 play “Charm,” a fictionalized account of Allen's work with the school.

The woman The Chicago Tribune once called “the Emily Post of Halsted Street” did not come from privilege. She spent her adult years working as an X-ray technician, a licensed practical nurse, a motel clerk and a nurse's aide for older people.