TRAILBLAZERS

 

The LGBTQ community is one of strength, resilience and beauty. As we celebrate Pride this month and always in June it's important to remember those of the Stonewall Uprising among many others who were brave enough to be outspoken, and brave enough to live their lives and not be hushed. Today, as we celebrate Pride, we know that recognizing a community so beautiful, diverse, and resilient isn't just reserved for one month of the year, because a community isn't reserved for a moment in time because creating an inclusive and equitable society is not reserved for a moment in time. It's an ongoing fight for a world where all people-are valued and treated with respect. In celebration of the month, here is some of my list of trailblazers we should know, who came before us, and helped pave the way for getting us today a better life, acceptance, and civil rights in some form or other, and refused to run and hide. You can also check out this month's In Three Words too.

Marsha P Johnson

Miss Marsha was right on the frontline of the Stonewall Uprising and was one of the most vocal that night when the raid took place. She took no shit. Though she was practically one step from a street person, she was always very vocal and involved in civil rights and formed the Gay Liberation Front. Marsha was extremely frustrated with the absence of the trans community's rights in the conversation. Her and good friend Slyvia Rivera were both the founders of the Street Transvestite Activists Revolutionaries, a safe place and home for young trans who lived on the street.

Slyvia Rivera

I'm amazed at how many don't know who she is. She has a unique place in LGBT history as not only a trans woman but also a Latina who helped lead the charge on the night of the Stonewall riots in NYC. While Rivera had a very turbulent life, she always led charges, protests, would never back down and was quoted as saying "I'm not missing a moment of this-it's the revolution!" Yet she remains little known even in our community, and at one point was even whitewashed out of a recent movie about Stonewall in favor of a fictional white character. Mind you she was only 19 when she and Marsha founded the STAR home.

Bayard Rustin

Bayard was an openly gay Black man, and first worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr in the civils rights movement before turning his attention to LGBT rights. In fact, he was a key player in organizing the March on Washington. As with most societal issues, he brought to light the intersectionality of economic equality within the civil rights movement and the need for social rights for the LGBT.

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk finally proved a gay man could get elected...and made history when he became one of the first openly gay officials in the US in 1977 when he was elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors...and went to do a lot of good things for the community till his assassination.

Barbara Gittings

Hailed as being one of the longest-serving and the most fearless activists in the lesbian community, Gittings founded the New York chapter of The Daughters of Bilitis, picketed the White House in the 60's numerous times, and set up and helped counsel gay people who were discriminated by the government.

Jewel Box Revue

WAY before Drag Race there was the spectacular Jewel Box Revue. In 1939, during a time when gay people were viewed as abhorrent subversive and a threat to society, two gay lovers, Danny Brown and Doc Benner created and produced America's first racially and in your face inclusive traveling revue of all female impersonators and drag queens. Surprisingly it was a hit, and tickets were often hard to get and sold out. Many famous people were often seen in its audiences. The revue launched and made nationally famous the careers of Laverne Cummings, Lynne Carter, Mr. Titanic, Jan Britton, and the fabulous Guilda, who later took Paris by storm. Not to mention Storme De Laviere, the only female who was a drag king with the revue. I've done to many posts to mention about the Jewel Box.

Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer was a high-profile, high-volume, one-man crusade against the AIDS disease and a titan of activism and protest. Kramer was known as the founder of Act-Up, whose collective organizing pushed for more AIDS drugs research and an end to discrimination against the gay community. When he founded the organization in 1987, the AIDS epidemic was devasting the gay community.

Gladys Bentley

Gladys was a wildly popular singer, pianist and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance and her career skyrocketed at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a speak easy in the 1920's. But this Blues singers, who often sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular songs, was also black, lesbian, tough, and one of the very first drag kings around, dressing as a man 24/7 and reportedly married her lover publicly in 1931. Enough said.

Barbara Jordan

In 1972, Jordan became the first southern black female, and closeted Lesbian elected to the US House of Representatives. Although she never came out publicly, those she knew and worked , and friends and family, were aware, and she was with her partner Nancy Earl for 20 years. Yet we don't hear of her extraordinary accomplishment.

April Ashley

April Ashley was a pioneering model, socialite and a major key figure in trans history. She is well known for being outed in the press in the early 60's for her divorce case, and her work towards transgender equality when little was even known about it. In the 30's she was among one of the earliest people known to have had sex reassignment surgery. Now that is making new territory not to mention brave.

Allan Horsfall

These days he's often called the grandfather of the gay rights movement, for openly campaigning as a gay man when homosexuality was still extremely illegal. In 1964 he and a group of friends set up the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee, even giving out his home address as the base for the organization. To be SO open at that time was very brave.

We must always remember them and their work and bravery.

Happy Pride!!!!!

GAY PRIDE-GLADYS BENTLEY

 Gladys Bentley, one of the original and iconic gender bending performers and singer of the early 1900's. It's important to note that although Bentley was billed as a "male impersonator" in the 1920's, there's every possibility that she would have identified as trans or non-binary had those terms existed at the time. But since they didn't she chose the term male most times. Bentley's early life was spent in Philadelphia before settling in NYC where she added to her already packed repertoire as entertainer and pianist, during the Harlem Renaissance. Her career skyrocket, one of the few drag kings to do so, with her appearances at Harry Hanberry's Clam House, as not only a female and black performer, but a open lesbian, performing as a male.  Talk about shattering may barriers! How's that for brave and ballsy? She often headlined in the early 30's at Harlem's Ubangi Club and at the legendary Jewel Box Revue where she was often backed up by the infamous chorus line of drag queens at each venue. She always dressed in men's clothes played piano and sang her own material , often raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day, in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. Bentley was among one of the first to live open and publicly  as a open lesbian. What a role model she would become.

DRAG KINGS OF THE CASTLE

Drag Queens have  become a popular fixture in the entertainment industry over the years, but their trousered counterparts – Drag Kings – are less widely known of. In fact, women have been dressing as men and ‘performing masculinity’ on stage for centuries, from regency actresses in breeches to music hall stars in top hats and tails. Here is a rundown of the long history of the drag king.

Throughout history, women have generally been prevented from acting in public, from as far back as ancient Greece. Instead, women’s parts were played by male actors in drag, which probably started the whole drag thing, and well into the Shakespearean era. The first woman to tread the English boards was in 1629, as part of a visiting French company – she was booed off the stage.

Vaudeville consisted of variety acts including comedy sketches and sing-alongs to popular songs. Both male and female impersonators were sought after acts.

Vesta Tilly was the most successful male impersonator of her day, touring both Britain and America for more than three decades. A child star, Tilly first appeared on stage when she was three years old, with her father who was a comedy actor. At six, she appeared dressed as a boy for the first time, singing opera. After this, she preferred to perform in exclusively male clothes.

Tilly was largely a comedic actress, most famously in the part of the London ‘swell’ Burlington Bertie, strutting across the stage in a tuxedo and flirting with the girls in the audience. Her songs such as ‘Following in Father’s Footsteps’, ‘The girls I’ve left behind me’ and ‘Naughty Boy’, portrayed a rakish young ‘man about town’, though she also performed more sentimental love songs directed at women.

Another popular entertainer was Ella Shields, an American woman from Baltimore who became famous in the London Halls for her parody of Vesta Tilly’s ‘Burlington Bertie’. Shields’ version was ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’ – a young man who dressed the part of an aristocrat without the money to match.Shields toured the world as a male impersonator, and was known as ‘Bertie’ rather than Ella almost everywhere she went.

During the heyday of Music Hall (from the mid-1800s to the 1920s) it was also common for male impersonation acts to play soldier boys – adopting the uniforms of the British army in the Boer and First World wars. Hetty King popularized a number of songs from the trenches of World War One in her 1916 act ‘Songs the Soldiers Sing’.

The first male impersonator to become famous in America was an English performer, Annie Hindle, who immigrated to New York City in 1868. Hindle toured the country and was extremely successful, earning rave reviews wherever she went.

While Vesta Tilly, Ella Shields and Hetty King all generally dressed in women’s clothes in their private lives and all married men, Annie Hindle’s career came to an abrupt end in 1886 when she fell in love with and married her dresser – Annie Ryan. Hindle dressed in male attire for the Baptist ceremony, giving the name Charles. This was not to be her last marriage; by 1892 Ryan had passed away and Hindle was re-married to a woman called Louise Spanghel.

By the 1920s Music Hall and Vaudeville were in decline due to the advent of cinema as well as the American Depression. Social norms and gender identity continued to be challenged in other ways – step in Gladys Bentley.A hugely talented jazz pianist and singer, Bentley began her career as a nightclub singer in a gay speakeasy in Harlem.

Bentley, a lesbian was big, bold and irreverent. She performed dressed in a white tuxedo and top hat, sang raunchy songs backed up by a chorus line of drag queens and flirted wildly with the women in the audience. She even claimed to have married another woman. The rise of McCarthyism in America meant that Gladys Bentley had to tone down her act. She began to wear dresses, married a man and, even more tragically, attempted to ‘cure’ herself of homosexuality. Bentley was not the only LGBT woman to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. Other popular Jazz singers included Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, both of whom had relationships with other women.

And we can't forget this legendary king.On 28th June 1969, the New York police carried out a raid on the Stonewall Inn.

Things began to escalate when a woman – described by witnesses as a ‘typical New York butch’ was escorted into a police wagon from which she repeatedly escaped, running back into the crowd each time.Since that night, the woman has been called ‘the Rosa Parks of the gay community’ and has been identified by witnesses and by herself as Stormé DeLarverie, a butch lesbian drag performer. DeLarverie had already made a name for herself on the entertainment circuit as a drag king, and had been photographed by Diane Arbus. She performed as part of the Jewel Box Revue, America’s first racially integrated drag revue during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Even after Stonewall, Stormé DeLarverie continued to serve New York’s LGBT community. In the ‘80s and ‘90s she worked as a bouncer in various lesbian bars and was also the Chief of Security and later Vice President of the Stonewall Veterans Association.

A modern day king I enjoy immensely is Murray Hill.

A former fixture of the downtown Village scene, Murray Hill is making a wing-tipped footprint in the mainstream arena, traversing stages, states and seas to find his next act, whether as an emcee to a burlesque show, a standup comedian, a film sidekick or a television personality. Riding on the success of such shows as RuPaul’s Drag Race, Hill’s success has also become emblematic of the burgeoning transgender performance scene, once just simply known as “drag”.He is Mr Showbiz, the hardest working man in the biz and a true delight every time he hits the stage. His self-deprecating humor and entertaining skills are legendary.

Next time you have the chance to see a  drag KING show...go! Their just as entertaining as the queens.