Police arrests at a Drag Ball, NYC

In her essay “Queens in Exile, the Forgotten Ones,” Sylvia Rivera discusses the lavish drag balls she attended at the Manhattan Center in the 1960s and 1970s:

“You had drag balls up in Harlem and you had them downtown. We had Phil’s Black ball, we had the April in Paris ball…those were the two main ones. And there were balls constantly going on. I know the April in Paris ball used to be held at the Manhattan Center on 34th Street. Balls gave us a social affair. If you didn’t go, you just weren’t part of the in crowd. And what talent you saw there! There were women who spent a year sewing and designing their costumes just to get ready for one ball. And the hairstyles with 20 wigs… I’m exaggerating– we’ll say 7 or 8 piled on top of one another. Being brought in in a gilded cage carried by half-naked young men. It was something extravagant and beautiful, something you don’t see in balls today.”

Photographs and much of the archived historical information for this site was found through newspaper articles, police reports, and arrest records of folks charged with gender impersonation. Though hard to believe, dressing in clothes of the opposite gender was illegal at the time. In the 1960s and 70s, drag balls in New York City focused on female impersonation and their formats were akin to beauty pageants like Miss America. In 1977, Miss Crystal LeBeija coined the name The House of LeBeija to refer to her family of LGBTQ folks involved in the ball scene. Thus began the tradition of Houses within Ball culture which remains today. For more information about Ball culture, there is an extensive Wikipedia page with a wealth of information about Houses, Ball categories, and participant histories.

The following is an excerpt from an early documentary about drag balls called The Queen (1968), starring Crystal LeBeija in a candid scene.

(Thanks to Alexis Heller for her archival work.)