As well as rent parties and buffet flats Harlem birthed the first-ever ‘drag’ or ‘costume’ balls. ‘Decidedly safer [and] where both men and women could dress as they pleased and dance with whom they wished, called "Spectacles in Colour" by poet Langston Hughes, they were attended by thousands’ (Garber 1990:324). However, as years went on the anonymity of the balls started to fade and the ‘spectacle’ of the balls attracted large amounts of white audiences from downtown New York. ‘Too far away to be dangerous yet close enough to be exciting’; white visitors came in search of sexual and homosexual adventures but did not fear social ostracism or the loss of family ties and employment, as they could retain a sexually inconspicuous image in their everyday white environment (Schwarz 2003).
Hamilton Lodge annual balls were ‘the largest annual gathering of lesbian and gay men in Harlem – and the city’ (Chauncey 1995). Running since 1869, the annual ball first started to attract queer participants, most notably because of its acceptance and presence of female impersonators to the event. Soon, what was at one point known as Masquerade and Civic Balls were soon labelled as ‘Faggots Balls’ by a vast majority of the public after the knowledge grew that they were attended by queer people.
Garber also informs of the other venues for such events: ‘only slightly smaller were the balls given irregularly at the dazzling Savoy Ballroom. [..] The organizers would obtain a police permit making the ball, and its participants, legal for the evening. The highlight of the event was the beauty contest, in which the fashionably dressed drags would vie for the title of Queen of the Ball’ (1990:325). The first prize often going to the queen with the sparsest outfit—it was once awarded to a man wearing an apron, silver sandals, apple-green paint, and nothing else (Watson 2001).
But with this growing publicity also grew backlash. A Harlem minister, Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church until 1937, campaigned against what he called ‘the growing scourge of sexual perversion and moral degeneracy’. Often referred to by scholars of the time as ‘indeterminates’, ‘third sex’, or ‘degenerates’, many of the black queer figures who attended such events were sent to psychiatric institutions in multitudes; some were also arrested and thrown into reformatories. Augustus Granville Dill, one of the more well-known figures during the time and business editor of the NAACP's Crisis, was arrested and career ended when he was caught participating in homosexual activity in a public restroom in 1928 (Wirth 2002:22).
Chauncey, G. (1994) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. United States: Basic Books.
Garber, Eric (1990) A Spectacle in Colour: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem. In Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: Penguin, pp. 318 – 331.
Russell, Thaddeus (2008) The Color of Discipline: Civil Rights and Black Sexuality. In American Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, pp. 101-128.
Schwarz, A.B. Christa (2003) Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Watson, Steven (2001) Hub of African-American Culture. In Harlem Renaissance, ed by Christine Slovey and Kelly King Howes. Detroit: Gale.
Wirth, Thomas H. (2002) Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance. Durham: Duke University Press.
Photo 1: Newspaper clipping from The New York Age titled 'Hamilton Lodge Ball an Unusual Spectacle' (1926). Image courtesy of queermusicheritage.com.
Photo 2: Newspaper clipping from The New York Age titled ‘Hamilton Lodge, No. 710 In Annual Masquerade and Civic Ball’ (1927). Image courtesy of queermusicheritage.com.
Photo 3: Newspaper clipping from The New York Age titled ‘Hamilton Lodge Ball is Scene of Splendor’ (1930). Image courtesy of queermusicheritage.com.
Photo 4: Unknown (1939) The Hamilton Lodge Ball. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.
Photo 5: Unknown (1939) The Hamilton Lodge Ball. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.
Photo 6: Unknown (1939) The Hamilton Lodge Ball. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.
Photo 7: Yale, Joel (1949) Contestants Parading for Judges for The Costume Prize During The Urban League Ball at The Savoy Ballroom. Image courtesy of For LIFE Magazine.
Photo 8: Unknown (1937) Savoy Ballroom Marquee. Image courtesy of welcometothesavoy.com.
