‘National treasure’: Trailblazing transgender Kentuckian Joanne Wheeler Bland dies at 79
Activists and Democrats around the state mourned the death of Joanne Wheeler Bland, one of Kentucky’s most prominent transgender figures, earlier this month.
Bland served as a Special Justice to the Kentucky Supreme Court. Later in life, after she’d come out as transgender, she was elected as the first transgender Democratic women’s club president in the country.
Bland died Jan. 8 at the age of 79 at her home in Elizabethtown following a multi-year battle with cancer.
A longtime trial attorney in the Hardin County area, she did not hold her role as Special Justice to the Kentucky Supreme Court when she was out as a transgender woman.
Bland began her transition in her mid-60s.
“I should’ve gotten an Academy Award for best actress because I was playing a role… of a male person named John,” Bland told KET in a 2015 interview. “I did it very well, to the point that nobody had any idea that this is what I was facing and dealing with inside.”
Her continued advocacy in the public eye as a trans woman inspired transgender Kentuckians who came after her.
Rebecca Blankenship, who earned a spot on the Berea Independent School Board in 2022, always emphasizes that she’s the first “openly” transgender elected official in Kentucky because of Bland’s legacy. She cites Bland as a hero.
Bland’s personal style left as much or more of an impression as her political legacy. The two had exchanged messages and phone calls over the last several years as Blankenship, formerly a member of the state Democratic State Central Executive Committee and now a law student, became more involved in politics.
“You would think, at least I would think, that somebody who lived the kind of life where she had to fight for so much would have some aspect of sadness to them. But no,” Blankenship recalled. “She seemed overwhelmingly, completely, comfortable — at ease, thoughtful, brilliant, confident.”
Bobbie Glass, an educator and activist known for her fiery committee testimony on GOP-led legislation like 2023’s Senate Bill 150, said she developed a strong friendship with Bland ever since she came out as transgender.
“She was a national treasure right here in our own backyard,” Glass said.
Glass and Bland both took the position that higher personal visibility would mean greater acceptance for trans people.
“People are scared of what they don’t understand and what they don’t know,” Glass said. “We both kind of made it our business to be very public and visible and to meet new people every day, because that’s the only way you get rid of bigotry: you have to form a relationship with someone who represents the object of your bigotry.”
Discussion on this topic roiled the state legislature in 2023 with large protests at and around the capitol building as the GOP-led legislature passed Senate Bill 150. That bill, which banned most all gender-affirming care for Kentucky’s trans youth including puberty blockers, gained passage over the veto of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.
It exemplified a major political rift between Democrats and Republicans over transgender issues that has continued to play out in political fights local and national; it was a topic of contention both for Beshear’s 2023 reelection win and Republican President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential victory.
The most public post Bland took as a transgender woman was as president of the Democratic Women’s Club of Kentucky. Serving in that role from 2020 to 2023, she became the longest-serving president since 1972.
Glass said that Bland had political aspirations, but guessed that she wouldn’t be able to win elected office as a transgender person in Hardin County, a place she loved and did not want to leave. She was born in Alabama, but raised in Hardin County — mostly in the tiny community of Sonora.
So she sought to be a leader in the Democratic party.
“That just says so much to me about the Democratic women of Kentucky that they would elect her. It was one of the most glorious things I’ve ever seen,” Glass said.
As president, Bland wasn’t afraid to share her opinion on the state of the state party.
Kenny Fogle was the deputy political director at the Kentucky Democratic Party during her terms as president of the Kentucky Democratic Women’s Club. He said she was a “relentless caller” to the headquarters in Frankfort.
“She was a very fine person, and she was a relentless caller. She came across as very strong. Some people probably thought that was difficult to deal with, but that was just her personality,” Fogle said.
She spoke to Fogle about trans issues, but he said her focus extended beyond issues surrounding her identity.
Glass said that’s key for trans people wanting to make it in politics: not being “one-trick ponies.”
She highlighted the election of Blankenship and newly-minted Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilwoman Emma Curtis, mentioning Curtis’ particular focus on the state of Nicholasville Road traffic in Lexington.
“The one thing they have in common is they’re not a one-trick pony. People didn’t elect them because they were trans. They elected them because they had great ideas and were substantive.”
Post-transition, Bland was also a board member for the Kentucky chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and served on University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law’s Diversity Committee.
Bland was cremated in Hardin County and did not hold a formal visitation or funeral.
