Drag in the Windy City

Minstrels and Drag

 In 1864, Donniker’s Minstrel’s performed an “Africanized Opera Bouffe” at the Academy of Music, 91 Washington Street, a performance that featured female impersonators in blackface. Hooley’s Theater at 119 North Clark Street also offered cross-dressing minstrel shows, as well as a male impersonator, Ella Wesner, in 1874 (De La Croix). These minstrel shows allowed “white men to experiment with race, ethnicity, gender – and sexuality” by combining drag and blackface (Elledge, 32). These shows were meant to be humorous depictions of black and female identities.

Bronzeville “Black and Tans”

Chicago is commonly understood to be an ethnically segregated city. While the popularity of “black and tan” clubs in Bronzeville during the early 1900s suggests that white patrons were welcome on the south side, the same courtesy was not extended to people of color in Towertown. While black entertainers could perform in most clubs regardless of location, the patrons were predominantly white in Towertown. Some queer white people were allowed more freedom of movement around the city but not those who exhibited non-normative gender practices. “Cross-dressers” and “pansies” might be easy to spot in public, a vulnerable visibility heightened for queer people of color outside of Bronzeville or other primarily black neighborhoods on the south side of the city.  

Black Panthers and the Chicago Gay Alliance

In November of 1970, James Clay, Jr., a 24-year-old black man was killed after being shot in the back eight times by the Chicago police. Clay was wearing women’s clothing at the time and had previous arrests for impersonating the opposite sex. This incident led to the formation in 1971 of the Transvestites Legal Committee, Chicago’s first transgender political organization (Stewart-Winter, 61). With a focus on stopping police harassment and raids on queer people and spaces, the Chicago Gay Alliance began working with the Black Panther Party in Chicago, a group focused on ending police surveillance after the police shot and killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. The Mattachine Midwest, a group for gay activists in Chicago, issues a joint statement with the Black Panthers critical of the police account of the raid (Irv Kupcinet, “Kup’s Column, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 23, 1969, p. 50).

 Focusing on entrapment, police harassment and raids on public spaces became a common point for the Black Panthers and queer activist groups, a point used by black politicians to gain votes. A heterosexual black Alderman, Clifford P. Kelly, was the first to try to repeal Chicago’s cross-dressing ban because he observed that most arrests of black transvestites were made by white police officers (Stewart-Winter, 67). And the first black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, appealed to gay voters by acknowledging their suffering “at the hands of brutal policemen” (Ibid.). When laws against sodomy and homosexuality were repealed in the 1970s, coupled with an increase in gay people coming out of the closet, this coalition split because white queer men no longer worried about being arrested and “outed” in the press. However, police harassment of queer people of color, particularly transgender women of color, continues to be a danger.

Queer Nation and Joan Jett Blakk

On January 19, 1992 in Chicago, Joan Jett-Blakk announced her candidacy for President of the United States on the Queer Nation Party ticket. Her slogan was “Lick Bush in ’92.” Jett-Blakk campaigned very publically, including walking in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the Gay Pride Parade, engaging in community activism, performing in clubs and attending more staid political gatherings – all in drag. Jett-Blakk also infiltrated the Democratic Convention in New York – walking in as Terence Smith but changing into Joan in a bathroom at Madison Square Garden. Jett-Blakk had previously run for Mayor of Gay Chicago in 1990 and after moving to San Francisco ran for President again in 1996 (“Lick Slick Willy”). The political materials produced for and by Jett-Blakk go beyond gender performance. Note the explicitly queer symbolism, as well as the provocative replication of Black Power imagery. Joan Jett-Blakk’s campaign undermines the hegemonic conventions of the gender binary, hetero-normativity, and the conventions of political campaigns. Politicians are overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. Jett-Blakk subverts this normative ideal through her performance and political platform.