Lucy Hicks Anderson

Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886–1954) was a socialite and chef best known for her time spent in Oxnard, California, from 1920 to 1946.[1][2][3] She was assigned male at birth but adamant from an early age that she was a girl, and supportive parents and doctors reaffirmed her in living as one. She established a boarding house in Oxnard, where she became a popular hostess. In 1945, a year after she married her second husband, she was arrested and tried and convicted of perjury, as the government said she had lied about her sex on her marriage license.[4] After release from prison, she and her husband moved to Los Angeles.

Lucy Hicks Anderson
Born1886
Waddy, Kentucky
Died1954 (68 years old)
Los Angeles, California
NationalityAmerican
OccupationSocialite, chef, hostess
Spouse(s)Clarence Hicks (1920-1929) Reuben Anderson (1944-1954)

Early life

Lucy Hicks Anderson was born in Waddy, Kentucky, in 1886.[5][3] From a very early age Anderson was adamant that she was not male, identifying as female in a time period before the term transgender existed,[6] and naming herself Lucy.[3] Doctors told Lucy's parents to let her live as a young woman, so they did, and she began wearing dresses to school and being known as Lucy.[1][7]

Marriages and time in Oxnard

At the age of 15, Lucy left school and did domestic work as a means to support herself.[5][3] At age 20, she headed west to Pecos, Texas, where she worked in a hotel, and then to New Mexico, where she married her first husband, Clarence Hicks, in Silver City, New Mexico in 1920.[8][7][3] She later moved to Oxnard, California at the age of 34.[8] A skilled chef, she won some baking contests.[7] Her marriage to Clarence lasted only nine years, but during the course of the union, she saved up enough money to buy property that was a boarding house front for a brothel; it also sold illegal liquor in Prohibition America.[8][7] Outside of her time as a Madame, she was a well-known socialite and hostess in Oxnard, and would later use her connections to avoid serious jail time. According to scholar C. Riley Snorton, "When the sheriff arrested her one night, her double-barreled reputation paid off—Charles Donlon, the town’s leading banker, promptly bailed her out [because] he had scheduled a huge dinner party which would have collapsed dismally with Lucy in jail."[9] In 1944, Hicks remarried Rueben Anderson, a soldier stationed in Long Island, New York.[5][8]

Trials

In 1945, a sailor claimed that he caught a venereal disease from one of the women in Anderson's brothel, so all of the women, including Anderson, were required to undergo medical examination.[7] When the Ventura County district attorney learned from this examination that Anderson had been assigned male at birth, he chose to try her for perjury, arguing that she lied about her sex on her marriage license and impersonated a woman.[5][7] During the trial, she stated “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman,” and “I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.”[7] However, the court convicted her of perjury on her marriage license and sentenced her to 10 years of probation.[5] At the time, marriage was only valid between a man and a woman, and she was not deemed a woman, so the marriage was declared invalid.[7] As a result, the federal government charged her with fraud for receiving the financial allotments wives of soldiers got under the GI Bill,[5] and initially also with failing to register for the draft, until she proved she had been too old to register.[7] In this trial, she and Reuben were found guilty and sentenced to a men's prison, where Lucy was forbidden by court order to wear women's clothes.[7][3]

Death and legacy

After being released from prison, Anderson was barred from returning to Oxnard by the police chief, who threatened further prosecution.[7] She and Reuben relocated to Los Angeles, where they resided quietly until her death in 1954,[7][9][3] at 68.[6]

The Handbook of LGBT Elders calls Anderson "one of the earliest documented cases of an African-American transgender person".[5]

See also

Further reading
  • C. Riley Snorton, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (2017), chapter on Anderson

References
  1. Hannah, Jewell (2018-03-06). She caused a riot : 100 unknown women who built cities, sparked revolutions, & massively crushed it. Naperville, Illinois. ISBN 9781492662921. OCLC 1008768117.
  2. Lewis, Taylor. "Learn the Inspiring True Story of Black Trans Pioneer Lucy Hicks Anderson". Essence.com. Retrieved 2018-05-11.
  3. Lester Fabian Brathwaite, The Fountainheads: Lucy Hicks Anderson, Mother of Marriage Equality and Transgender Rights, October 12, 2018, NewNowNext
  4. M.D, Eric Yarbrough (2018-03-08). Transgender Mental Health. American Psychiatric Pub. p. 33. ISBN 9781615371136.
  5. Harley, Debra A.; Teaster, Pamela B. (2015-08-05). Handbook of LGBT Elders: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Principles, Practices, and Policies. Springer. p. 109. ISBN 9783319036236.
  6. Leonard, Kevin (2007-06-27). "Anderson, Lucy Hicks [Tobias Lawson] (1886-1954)". The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed. Retrieved 2018-05-11.
  7. Anita Sarkeesian, Ebony Adams, History vs Women: The Defiant Lives that They Don't Want You to Know (2018), page 31
  8. Tess deCarlo, Trans History (ISBN 1387846353), page 58: "She later moved to Texas, then to New Mexico, where she married Clarence Hicks, then to California" (also has 1886 birth year).
  9. Riley, Snorton, C. Black on both sides : a racial history of trans identity. Minneapolis. ISBN 9781452955865. OCLC 1008757426.
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