James "Jim" McHarris

Note: Pronouns in this biography may be inconsistent. As far as we can tell, McHarris personally used he/him/his and referred to himself as male/a man, though third party sources use she/her/hers and refer to him as female. In light of McHarris’ personal pronoun use, we will use he/him/his as well.

James McHarris (formerly Annie Lee Grant) was born in 1924 in Meridian, Mississippi. McHarris’ parents died while he was young, and he was raised by foster parents. Little is known

James McHarris. From Ebony Magazine, 1954.

regarding McHarris’ earlier years, though Bishop Smiley Jones of Kosciusko’s True Tabernacle Church of the First Born, who had known McHarris since he was little, stated that McHarris had “funny habits” and that he would “sleep in a room with two or three other girls. But the girls said she was acting ‘funny’ so I had to change them up. We put her in a bed with an old lady, and there wasn’t no more trouble.” McHarris also apparently had a penchant for running away to the neighboring town of Jackson, Mississippi.

Some time before he turned thirty, McHarris, who was 5’5” (167 cm) and, according to Ebony Magazine, weighed about 175 lbs (79 kg) began to dress in men’s attire and go by masculine pronouns and names. He smoked, sought tough physically laborious jobs, talked ‘rough’, and often regaled others with stories of his “triumphs over women.” First he moved to Memphis for a time, then to Chicago and other cities in the American midwest. McHarris moved back to Kosciusko in 1953. Bishop Jones said that, “She was wearing a dark coat, odd pants and looked very nice. If a person didn’t know it, he wouldn’t have guessed it. She walked up to me and said: ‘Don’t you be telling people I’m a woman. I’m a preacher now.’”

McHarris lived consistently as male for just over fifteen years. He had several girlfriends in that time, including one high school-aged girl he had been intending on marrying, and one woman from Memphis whom he had been sending regular money to. He worked in a variety of blue collar jobs, like short order cook, cab driver, gas station attendant, auto mechanic, shipyard worker, and the aforementioned preacher position.

McHarris at work as a car mechanic. From Ebony Magazine, 1954.

While living in Kosciusko, he lived in a local boarding house and was scheduled to be elevated to the level of deacon at the True Tabernacle Church.

James McHarris’ sex was outed to the public in 1954, during an otherwise average traffic stop. The officer had noted that McHarris had been driving with improper lights and that a pint of whiskey had been found in the car (for context, at this time, Mississippi was considered a “dry state”, so only drinks “having an alcohol content by weight of four percent or less” were permitted by law). According to the officer’s testimony, as he went to conduct a search, McHarris told him “Take it easy. I’m a woman.” It should be noted that, at this time, the concept of identifying as transgender had not yet been “invented.” The term transsexual had been coined in the early 20^th century by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and many people who sought to transition their sex may have experienced a relationship with their assigned and personal gender differently than how modern trans folk do. Or, perhaps more reasonably, McHarris might have believed that he would receive less intense treatment from the officer as a Black woman rather than a Black man. We are unfortunately unable to provide a concise answer on the matter.

Regardless, the police officer did not initially believe McHarris’ claim that he was a woman. When McHarris was brought before Mayor T.V. Rone, Rone stated “Annie Lee, if you want to prove to me you’re a woman you can do it. But you don’t have to unless you want to.” McHarris did so; he removed his shirt to expose his makeshift bandage binder.

McHarris in his makeshift binder. From Ebony Magazine, 1954.

He was given a choice in his punishment – pay a $100 fine (equivalent to $1,250 in 2026 money) or serve thirty days in jail at the prison farm. McHarris chose the latter option. During his prison stay, he served his sentence in men’s clothing and worked in the prison kitchen. Notably, he was housed with a female prisoner. 

McHarris’ outing created a controversy in the town. McHarris had built up a reputation as a “hard-working, God-fearing young man” that was “as tough with the ladies as anybody you even seen.” According to Ebony Magazine, the arrest became the talk of the town quite quickly:

McHarris working at the prison farm. From Ebony Magazine, 1954.

“White folks gathered in the town square, fanned away flies and chuckled over the news. Father back, along the tin-top stores of the “Negro street” and the frame houses of the Negro section, people who knew her well gathered and discussed the news in shocked seriousness.”

The only person in Kosciusko who had known McHarris’ “secret” had been Bishop Jones, though when pressed by townsfolk who thought it “indecent” for him to have permitted a “known woman” to join him in the church as a man, the Bishop gave a fairly courteous response in McHarris’ favor: “I don’t feel like I did no harm though, cause everyone must be saved.” The consistent narrative in Ebony Magazine and other contemporary sources covering the topic considered McHarris’ crossdressing and masculine lifestyle to be a masquerade, or that he was “fooling” everybody with his appearance and personality. 

After he left prison, McHarris prepared to move to the capital city of Jackson. When asked about his crossdressing lifestyle, he replied, “I ain’t done nothing wrong and I ain’t breaking no laws.” He explained to Ebony Magazine that he had gotten a sex-change operation “up north.” McHarris continued to live as male after his outing and subsequent prison stay.

McHarris (middle) with his mother Mrs. Katie Lee Edwards (right, presumably). From Ebony Magazine, 1954.

When asked if he would ever sign up for the mandated selective service draft for all men over the age of eighteen, he quipped, “Man, I ain’t crazy.”

Note: After this point, McHarris' story runs dry. We unfortunately have no surviving record of the rest of his life after 1955 -- what happened after he moved to Jackson, if he ever got married, etc. He might have changed his name after this time. If he lived to the age of 80 (average life expectancy in the US for men & women), he would have likely passed away in the early to mid 2000s. Rest in power.

Bibliography

Helstrom, Finn, ed. “Annie Lee (Grant) McHarris (1924 - Aft. 1955).” WikiTree, October 3, 2021. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Grant-25443.

Roberts, Monica. “Black Trans History-Jim McHarris.” Web log. TransGriot (blog), September 15, 2012. https://transgriot.blogspot.com/2012/09/black-trans-history-jim-mcharris.html.

Snorton, C. Riley. "'Still Restive': the Shadow theater of McHarris/Grant" in Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. 2020, pgs. 166-74. University of Minnesota Press.

“THE WOMAN WHO LIVED AS A MAN FOR 15 YEARS.” Ebony Magazine 10, no. 1, November 1954. https://archive.org/details/sim_ebony_1954-11_10_1.