There is a limited amount of information that we know about Sally-Tom, a trailblazing Black trans woman who was born in 1839, who is one of the first – if not the first – trans person in the history of the United States to have her gender recognized by the government.
I first read about Sally-Tom in Eli Erlick’s Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950. After she was emancipated from being enslaved, Sally-Tom moved to Georgia, where it was reported that the state’s Freedmen’s Bureau recognized her life as a woman. This allowed her to dress and present and live as her authentic self – something that was often prohibited for gender-nonconforming people in the 19th century.
She worked as a cook, gardener, and at one point she worked for Confederate officer Thomas Walker, but white newspapers in the 1880s reported on her as if she was a spectacle and often with hostility (nothing much has changed, huh?). Despite that, she lived a fairly quiet life and seldom put herself in the public eye. Apparently, even her neighbors did not know she was trans until it was revealed later.
A trailblazer and maverick before she knew she was one, documentation and photos of Sally-Tom are minimal, with the exception of newspaper articles, obituary accounts, and some historical research long after her death.
