Lucy Hicks’ transgender legacy remembered

OXNARD, Calif. - In honor of Pride Month, we're taking a look back at the first transgender woman to defend her identity in court.

Photographs of Lucy Hicks are rare, and so are the people who knew her, which includes Margaret Tatum and Leroy "Buddy" Gibson.

Tatum, now 97, met Hicks on a bus when she was a young woman in Oxnard.

"I'm sitting on the bus saying who is that?“

Gibson was a just a boy when Lucy Hicks was his family's babysitter.

"My sister and myself, we actually knew Lucy Hicks as 'Miss Lucy.'" said Gibson, "She babysat us when we were 7 or 8-years-old."

Gibson's relatives cooked for Miss Lucy's Oxnard parties.

She often invited guests from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles to parties at a local community center.

"She would always come in and see how our welfare was, bring us snacks, and make sure we had toys," said Gibson.

"They bragged about knowing Lucy because she was flamboyant," said author and historian Jeffrey Maulhardt.

He said she wore hats and made her own clothing.

Maulhardt remembers his father and rancher John Mcgrath swapping Lucy Hicks stories.

They said she was a six-foot tall African American and babysat for prominent farming families, too.

 "They respected her because she was a good cook," said Maulhardt. "But she'd also go out there and participate with the kids. Lucy could hit the ball a lot farther."

She also served award-winning desserts.

"The earliest reference I can find is 1923, that is when she won first place for a fruitcake in the Ventura County Fair, and in 1926 she won first place for a custard pie, and 1928, a pumpkin pie was an award winner," said Maulhardt.

Her Elite Cafe business card advertised fried chicken and BBQ and for a quarter-century she gave back to the community.

"She gave back to the Baptist church, she gave back to the Boy Scouts, she gave to the Red Cross, she even bought $50,000 worth of war bonds," said Maulhardt.

$50,000 would be worth a million dollars today, but Lucy Hick's wealth wasn't just from cooking and care taking.

She earned money as a bootlegger with a speakeasy, and as the owner and operator of a busy brothel made up of cottages along the 600 block of South B Street in Oxnard.

The area along the block is now a parking lot sandwiched between the old Vogue Theatre and Heritage Square.

Gibson said he remembers napping on comfy green military duffel bags in her home where she kept her cash.

"That is one of the things I remember, the duffel bags, and how soft they were, and we found out later they were bags of money," said Gibson.

Tatum could see Hick's business from her nearby church.

"I used to go to a Baptist church, St. Paul Baptist Church there and we would go there on Sunday evening to the evening services and I would see all this line of men over there so I asked my husband what are all those men lined up, he knew, but he told me, he said they are all lined up over there for bacon."

Tatum also remembers Hicks getting arrested.

"I remember when she was picked up and taken to jail."

"She was arrested quite a few times, mostly during prohibition for bootlegging," said Maulhardt.

During one run-in with the law, banker Charles Donlon bailed Hicks out.

"Charles Donlon had a big dinner party and he needed her to go ahead and cook for it," said Maulhardt.

One of the rare photos of Lucy Hicks shows her with two of Donlon's children in a go-cart.

When local sailors contracted venereal disease they blamed their companions in Hick's house of ill repute.

Dr. Hilary Mangan checked everyone, despite Hick's protests.

"That's when Lucy was checked out by this doctor and then found out that she was a he," said Maulhardt.

That did not suprise Tatum.

“In my mind, I am saying she looks more like a man than a woman."

Critics called her the "Madam who was a man" and a female impersonator.

In hopes of making a film, filmmaker Shane Davis learned Lucy was born Tobias Lawson in Waddy, Kentucky in 1886 and not 1901 as she had claimed.

"She may have been intersex. When she was 3-years-old her mother took her to a doctor, he said she was more female than male," said Davis.

Years later, her first marriage to Clarence Hicks fell apart on their honeymoon.

She later said "no one objected" to her second marriage to Corporal Reuben Anderson, a white military policeman.

"She went to prison for a year because of falsifying a Federal document and that Federal document was her marriage license," said Davis.

The popular local paper at the time was the Press Courier.  The newspaper's building is now a senior apartment complex that still has a Press Courier sign and mural out front.

In 1945, Press Courier reporters covered Lucy Hick's perjury trial in Ventura at what is now the Ventura City Hall.

Lucy Hicks is considered the first transgender person to fight for her rights in court.

She is quoted in the paper saying, "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... It's only petty maliciousness that is trying to cause me heartache and harm."

Time magazine ran a short article about the arrest entitled 'Sin and Souffle.'

In 'Sin and Souffle' Maulhardt said, "they also referred to her abilities to cook and then some."

The publicity drew the attention of United States Army that soon accused her of fraud for receiving her husband's military allotment checks.

"She was married to a military guy and she was getting a pension from the government for being his wife, and they found out she was a man, and here she is getting a pension from another man," said Tatum.

Instead of just probation for her marriage license, she was arrested again and ended up serving time.

Afterwards a judge ordered her to wear men's clothing and banned her from Oxnard for years.

"That ruined her life. She could not come back to Oxnard. She died, I guess, alone in Los Angeles," said Davis.

Members of the transgender community and their allies wonder how she might have been treated differently today.

Many people would like to commemorate Lucy Hicks.

"She's a legend to Oxnard and I believe she should be honored," said Davis.

Davis recommends putting a plaque in Oxnard's Plaza Park or better yet making a feature film about her life and legacy.