Though she was assigned male at birth, when she entered school she began wearing dresses & calling herself Lucy. Physicians advised her mother to raise her as a girl. In a time, most people weren’t discussing gender identity or expression.
They certainly didn’t have language like transgender to describe identity or the medical structure to support medical or legal transition.
In 1944 she married Reuben Anderson, a soldier stationed at New York. She was charged with perjury because she was assigned male at birth. The belief was that she committed perjury when she signed the application for a marriage license .She was convicted and placed on probation for 10 years, successfully avoiding a prison sentence. During her perjury trial she was quoted for 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.”
Lucy Hicks Anderson was a pioneer in the fight for marriage equality. She spent nearly sixty years living as a woman.
And she made history by fighting for the legal right to be herself with the man she loved
According to the link below Anderson was her second husband – she’d already married and divorced once with no trouble. She and her husband were both charged with perjury two years after the marriage because as an Army wife, she was entitled to an allotment, and somebody must have wanted to declare the marriage invalid so the couple couldn’t have that extra bit of money.
Mooncustafer 