Event Detail

This lecture chronicles the remarkable life of Frances Thompson, who was born male and into slavery in Maryland in the 1830s. She was one of a handful of women who transitioned sex while enslaved, and she fled to Memphis after escaping bondage during the Civil War. In 1866, she was violently assaulted during the infamous Memphis Riots, and her testimony to Congress proved pivotal to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ten years later, she was arrested for crossdressing and outed to the nation, allowing reactionaries to spin an aggrieved tale of deception with which they mercilessly prosecuted the end of Reconstruction. Based on new research into Thompson’s life, and other black women like her, this talk will argue the right to transition is plainly part of the history and tradition of the Fourteenth Amendment—and that the Supreme Court’s perspective on this issue is utterly wrong. It will also suggest that the historical origins of political transphobia in American life concern the unfinished struggles of Reconstruction.