Biography

Lucy Hicks Anderson was a trailblazing African American transgender woman who lived her truth with courage and defiance decades before the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. Born in Waddy, Kentucky, in 1886, she began identifying as a girl at a young age. On the advice of a physician, her parents allowed her to live as a girl and wear dresses, and she adopted the name Lucy.

As an adult, she moved to Oxnard, California, where she became a well-known chef and socialite. She ran a boarding house that also served as a brothel and a speakeasy during Prohibition. In 1944, she married her second husband, Reuben Anderson.

A year later, when a sailor claimed he had contracted a venereal disease from her establishment, a medical examination revealed that Lucy had been assigned male at birth. The district attorney charged her and her husband with perjury for signing marriage documents that identified her as a woman. During her trial, Anderson famously told the court, "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman." Though convicted, her case stands as an early and powerful assertion of transgender identity and the right to marital recognition.