The Black Drag Queens Who Fought Before Stonewall

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from truthdig:


The Black Drag Queens Who Fought Before Stonewall

Posted on Sep 24, 2015
By Channing G. Joseph


When the police burst through the door that night, all the dancing suddenly stopped. The men—adorned in the finest silk and satin dresses—looked on in shock for a brief moment before scurrying to make their getaway.

Many “danced about in almost a nude condition,” The Washington Post reported, as they struggled to strip off their garments, their ribbons and their “long, wavy-haired wigs.” Others raced immediately to the back doors or leapt out of second-floor windows and onto the roofs of neighboring buildings.

A large man named William Dorsey Swann—the queen of the ball—was himself “arrayed in a gorgeous dress of cream-colored satin,” but unlike the others, he ran frantically toward the officers in a vain attempt to keep them from entering the two-story residence in northwest Washington, D.C., just half a mile from the White House.

The raid caused such a commotion that roughly 400 people arose from their beds, gathered outside to watch and even followed the police and suspects back to the station that night. In total, 13 men—all black—were arrested and “charged with being suspicious characters.” They were ordered to pay a bond or serve 30 days in jail, and their names were published in the local papers the next day for all the city to read.

It was April 12, 1888, long before the Stonewall uprising or the sexual revolution of the 1960s—by which time many gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people were already living openly and unashamedly in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities. ....................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_black_drag_queens_who_fought_before_stonewall_20150924