Frances Thompson, a transgender woman and anti-rape activist became one of five Black women to testify before a congressional committee that, at the time, was investigating what occurred during the Memphis Riots of 1866. As a result of the testimony, Thompson is the first transgender woman in United States History to testify before a committee of the United States Congress.
Thompson was born into slavery in 1840 to unnamed parents in Alabama. Much of her early life is unknown, but by the time she was 26 years old, Thompson was living as a free woman in the Black community in Memphis, Tennessee. Thompson made a living doing laundry and lived openly as a woman.
The Memphis Riots began on May 1, 1866, after Black soldiers, women, and children began to gather in a public space in South Memphis. Gunshots broke out following the police’s attempts to break up the group and arrest two soldiers. For three days, a white mob targeted communities of Black residents throughout the city. Forty-six Blacks and two whites died during the riot. There were also at least five rapes and 285 people were injured.
During the riot, Thompson and a roommate, Lucy Smith, were gang-raped by seven white men including two police officers. Thompson testified that the seven men came to their house and ask if they could have supper. Thompson gave them food including biscuits and coffee. As they ate supper, they told Thompson and Smith that they wanted some Black women to sleep with. Thompson responded, “We were not that sort of women,” and then told them, “You must go.” They responded by saying, “That didn’t make a damned bit of difference.” The men attacked and gang-raped both Thompson and Smith and then robbed them.
On June 1, 1866, one month after the riots, Thompson and 170 women and men testified before the House Select Committee led by Illinois Republican Politician Elihu B. Washburne. The Committee traveled to Memphis and assembled at the Gayoso House Hotel. In this rare Congressional hearing outside the US Capitol Building, the women and men testified about the events that occurred during the Memphis Riots. This resulted in Thompson becoming the first known transgender woman in United States history to testify before a US Congressional Committee.
A decade later, in 1876, Thompson was arrested and jailed in Memphis for cross-dressing. Thompson’s biological gender was also be exposed after she was forced to undergo numerous physician examinations in which four physicians confirmed that her biological sex was male. Southern Democrats used her arrest as a “man dressed in women’s clothing” to discredit her story of being raped during the Memphis Riots ten years earlier. Her arrest and male identity were also used to discredit other Black women’s claims of rape by white men. The Democrats suggested that the entire congressional report was used mainly to manufacture propaganda to support Reconstruction.
After her arrest and conviction for cross-dressing, Thompson was sentenced to the city chain gang, where she was forced to wear men’s clothes and suffer sexual abuse. Frances Thompson was eventually released later in 1876, but she died later that year from dysentery at the age of 36.
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“Frances Thompson,” Human Rights Campaign, https://www.hrc.org/news/hrc-honors-frances-thompson-a-black-transgender-hero; “Frances Thompson,” The American Yawp Reader, https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/reconstruction/a-case-of-sexual-violence-during-reconstruction-1866/; “Frances Thompson,” Autostraddle, https://www.autostraddle.com/10-lesser-known-trans-women-pioneers-from-history-316582/.
