Charlotte Frances McLeod Collection

Charlotte Frances McLeod was born in Nashville, Tennessee on February 26, 1925. Her parents moved the family to Dyersburg, TN to live with her grandparents, and she spent the majority of her childhood raised in this small West Tennessee town.

In a 2002 interview with historian Susan Stryker, McLeod said she always thought of herself as a girl. Her soft facial features often led to classmates believing she was a girl in boys' clothes. She also struggled to choose which bathroom to use at school.

As a young adult, McLeod traveled the country to Minnesota, California, Louisiana, and Massachusetts. She was living in New Orleans when she picked up a newspaper and read about Christine Jorgensen, the first North American to get gender reassignment surgery in Denmark. She decided she needed surgery, and followed in the footsteps of Jorgensen by traveling to Copenhagen in April 1953.

The surgeries McLeod endured in Denmark were complicated and dangerous for the time. She nearly died during her first surgery, which a shoddy doctor conducted on the kitchen table inside his apartment. Her second procedure occurred at a hospital, but still painful.

She returned to the United States in 1954 as Charlotte Frances, adopting the name Frances from her great grandmother.

McLeod held various jobs throughout her adult life, including night club performer, model, and receptionist. She eventually got married and moved to California, where she stayed for many years and met fellow transgender Tennessean Aleshia Brevard.

After the end of her second marriage, she returned to Dyersburg, Tennessee. She died in Dyersburg in 2007 and was buried in Fairview Cemetery.