Fast History: The 20th Century Origins of Drag Balls (Patreon)

It was 2012. My first time in a gay club was actually my first time in a club. I was 18 and boy was it an experience. A mildly drunken one. So many nights have passed since my first club cherry was popped, but one thing I remember about Club Scorpios in Charlotte was the ballroom scene. Heel wearing men and women, cis and trans, battled it out in the center of the club while a stylish Beyonce-inspired drag queen hyped the crowd. They danced fiercely and boldly, doing what I came to know later as voguing. They hit the catwalk and posed in front of a squad of judges. Many wore wigs and fabulous make-up. I had never seen anything quite like it. But interestingly enough, these fabulous balls have been occurring since the 1910's... most prominently in New Orleans, Chicago, and Baltimore. Sometime in the 30s The Club Alabam in Los Angeles began hosting a yearly halloween drag ball. 

But the most renowned was the Hamilton Lodge Ball in Harlem, which first gained steam in the 1920s. It was a spectacle that drew out mixed crowds of New Yorkers. It was a largely white event, but black drag queens and kings were quite commonplace.  

Balls were modeled after debutante balls, and it was supposed to be a "coming out".  From Mickey Weems' The Fierce Tribe:

The Baltimore debutantes, after all, came out in the presence of hundreds of straight as well as gay and lesbian spectators at the public hall of the fraternal order of Elks. Their sisters in New York were likely to be presented to thousands of spectators, many of whom had traveled from other cities, in some of the best-known ballrooms of the city, including the Savoy and Rockland Palace in Harlem and the Astor Hotel and Madison Square Garden in midtown.

These events were facy and fabulous. Not all spectators were gay, trans, or into crossdressing. Some just wanted to dance. Some just wanted to ogle. Some just wanted to drink. The diversity of the crowds is actually what caused outrage among square citizens. The homosexuality was bad enough but the race-mixing?! Drag balls were routinely forced underground by the 1940s, though still flourished in cities like Harlem. Jet, Ebony, and local black newspapers covered and/or advertised drag balls until the mid 50s-- though how they discussed these events changed over the years. When black media outlets first began reporting on drag balls, they often did so without judgement, or with mild amusement. By the late 40s, they had a different tone. Los Angeles Sentinel often published advertisements for drag balls, but in 1947 they were dragging the events:

"There are some few things in this world that violate all canons of decency or morality. We frankly can't understand how anyone who witnessed or assisted in the promotion of the various 'Drag balls' last Hallowe'en evening can possibly look at themselves in the mirror for several days to come." (October 30 1947) 

Consider the socio-political atmosphere of America at that time: the cold war, the 2nd Red Scare was just beginning, and racial violence was intensifying. There was also an increased desire among mainstream white Americans to return to "traditional American values" and morality. Many black community leaders wanted no reason for the black population to be accused of or associated with sexual deviance. 

In the Spring of 1948, the publisher of Los Angeles Sentinel said people who participated in balls were "a group of degenerates and sexual perverts." This was a part of a larger trend in the black community to "clean up" for white respectability politics. Drag balls were almost completely underground by the time of the Civil Rights Movement and eventually gave way to the ballroom scene in the 70s. Though however, every now and then a newspaper or magazine might comment on something negative from a drag ball. Consider the below clipping from Jet in 1967.

References

• Containining "Perversion": African Americans and Same-Sex Desire in Cold War Los Angeles
• The Color of Discipline (Thaddeus Russell)
• A History of Festive Homosexuality (1700-1969 CE) in The Fierce Tribe (Mickey Weems)
• Jet Magazine
• Ebony Magazine