This dissertation argues that African American girls’ displacement from normative standards of American childhood makes possible creative representations of African American girls that unsettle the fallacy of innocence. I consider displacement from Western childhood as something other than a loss, and I center what I characterize as resourceful vulnerability. By “the fallacy of innocence,” I describe two related but distinct notions: first, distance from whatever might be considered politically controversial or morally complicated, and second, non-sexual character. Focusing on novels, photography, and selected archival materials produced between 1970-2005, my methodology puts close reading in dialogue with queer and Black feminist theorists. I write after Habiba Ibrahim’s concept of Black age, and Hortense Spillers’s concept of ungendering. I argue these concepts inform African American gender performance as it relates to innocence. Contributing to conversations in Black girlhood studies and queer theory as well as African American literary studies and visual culture, my project highlights that African American girls’ vulnerability can be resourceful in ways that are intraculturally significant.