The First Pictured Self Proclaimed Enslaved Drag Queen 1880's
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| No known photographs of Swann survive. This 1903 postcard depicts two Black actors, one of whom is dressed in drag, performing a cakewalk in Paris. Public domain via Wellcome Collection |
In the late 1880s, a formerly enslaved man named William Dorsey Swann started hosting private balls known as drags, a name possibly derived from “grand rag,” an antiquated term for masquerade balls. Held in secret in Washington, D.C., these parties soon caught the authorities’ attention. As the Washington Critic reported in January 1887, police officers who raided one such gathering were surprised to encounter six Black men “dressed in elegant female attire,” including “corsets, bustles, a long hose, and slippers.” The following April, the Evening Star reported on a raid that targeted men in “female attire of many colors,” as well as “gaudy costumes of silk and satin.” On both occasions, authorities arrested the party guests and charged them with “being suspicious characters.”
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