From Enslaved to En Vogue: How William Dorsey Swann Became The First Drag Queen

but it was beautiful. We talked about it for like two hours, still still coming up with things to say about it. The performances were so so good and I just can't recommend it. And I've loved it seriously plastic. I thought it was gonna be way more like Baby Spielberg learns to love movies. Yeah, it was that, but it was way more about The Fableman's Like it was a story about a family and uh and a fascinating one. Oh my god, I'm to tie it into aiculous romance.

You know. It's about a couple, about love and romance, and it's about like all the ways that relationships work. What kind of different kinds of love and I don't know, it's just it was just really color. Be surprised a good Steven Spielberg movie had to happen. So I'm telling you, I think this Spielberg guy, he's got it. He's got it. He's really good. We'll we'll see more from him. I'm pretty sure, mark my words. Check it out. I loved it. You heard it here first Ridiculous Romance. Go see The

Fableman's directed by Steven Spielberg in theaters are on demand. Now, wow, that was a good commercial. I'll be expecting my bag of money in the mail, Mr Spielberg, or at least a partner next film. Oh, now that would be You're welcome. One more experience in our I r L media consuming lives that relates into ridiculous Romance. And we're not going to talk about it. I promise you won't give any details.

But this week's the last of US episode. You guys, just if you like Ridiculous Romance, oh my god, well go watch it right now, just this one episode. If you don't want to watch everything, it's fine. Be like, I don't like zombies. I don't want to watch a Gore episode. This is just watch this one. It's its own little movie, and it's just wonderful, wonderful. I loved it,

cried in the best way. It's wonderful, such a cool way to like, I don't know, just have a cool moment and an apocalypse, you know, sett Yeah, isn't that what we're all looking for? I meancase, I'm so sick of the Apocalypse being full of lame moments. Yeah, ohurres the cool moments of the Apocalypse. I'm chilling. I gotta say. In recent years, you know, what's what's the superpower you'd want? Right, It's always a big question. I want to fly, I

want super strength, immortality, whatever I want. Click, I want the Adam Sandler remote where I can just fast forward, because I so often am like this storyline is stupid and I wanted to be over zip. Not even world events, sometimes just like personal stuff like oh I've got a cold, you know, fast forward. I don't This is a dumb chapter and I don't feel like reading it. You know, I think that a lot about days of my life sometimes where I'm like stupid, don't like it skipped today.

I know it's not gonna it's not. It's inconsequential in a long run. So can we just damn can we just move forward? No? What wasn't boring was that I recently got to attend the Orlando Winter Mini Fringe in January. Um, the Orlando Fringe is huge, and they do like kind of a smaller curated fringe in the wintertime, right, and we're talking about the Fringe Festival, performing Arts festival. Diana runs the Atlanta Fringe for you out there who might

not be regularly nurse. That's so true, Thank you. I can talk about fringe like everybody knows exactly what I'm talking about at all times. But but yeah, it was really cool. They had like I don't something like sixteen shows or something twenty shows going on over the course of the weekend. And I got to see a really great solo show called The Real Black Swan from this performer named Les Kirk and Doll, who was a really, really fantastic performer. If you want to look him up.

He's got a podcast called a Lifetime of Hallmark where he talks about Lifetime and Hallmark movies. Just great. He's fantastic and every way, and the show was all about how the first drag queen was a former slave, And of course I was like, roll all out, what did you say? So I had to like hop on the internet and learn everything I could about it. Most of it was in his show, of course, but I was like, let me look it up, and I thought it would

make a great episode for our show. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that this was suggested by less Kirk and Doll without his knowledge. He didn't realize he was suggesting it, but he did. So let's hear all about William Dorsey Swan, who was the former enslaved man who would go on to throw some fabulous underground drag balls and become the first gay rights activist in America. Fantastic. Let's go hey their French, come listen. Well, Elia and

Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a lover. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract constrom a concrete wall. But if there's a story with the second clinch, ridiculous romans a production of I Heart Radio. Before we settle down and commit to this story, let's talk about drag with a quick fling with history. Let's go men wearing women's clothes goes all the way back

to ancient Greece. During those times, the term female impersonator was used, and it most often applied to mostly straight men who were playing the parts of women on stage. Right, because in ancient Greece and all the way up to sixteen sixty one, women were not allowed to act professionally on stage, so men had to play all the ladies roles. Because you still want to have romances and you still want to you know, you need a nurse or a mom or whatever. But dressing up and playing that's a

man's job. That's what. So that the idea of masculinity has changed so much, what it is and how it's expressed. So yeah, I mean, that's partly what makes Shakespeare's cross

dressing place so funny. He's writing it at least already knowing that the men will be dressed as women, so then he puts the women dressed as men, and they're all these shenanigans occur, but it's like an extra layer of funny because you already know that cross dressing is already happening, So like I'm Bruce, and I'm playing viola and I got to wear this big, long wig and I alone can't wait to meet you up maybe remember.

But then she got a dress up as I'm sorry, Ben Foglio, I'm making this up, and she's got to wear a man's wig on top of that playing. Yeah, so I mean, you know, you can see why it's extra funny two people. At that time, all I had to say this was extremely common. It was a very normalized thing to do, and plenty of men had very

successful careers specializing in female performance. One actor in the early nineteen hundred's his name is Julian Eltinge, and he was such a hit that he performed as a female part for King William the Seventh before he abdicated, and he was given a white bulldog as a like a gift from the king, just like I guess, so unless you weren't prepared to take care of a white bulldog. But he's like, oh, I gotta like get this on

a steamship now back to America. But yeah, Julian was so worried about people thinking that he was gay that he would like put on this kind of super masculine persona in his regular life to be like, I'm very different from the lady I play on stage. And I mean I understand it because apparently the first time he was discovered wearing women's clothes, his father beat the ship out of him, So I can see why he was scared.

But it really it's like until cross dressing or gender bending became associated with being queer, which wasn't until like the twenties and thirties, it wasn't really considered to be

a gay thing. In fact, in Brigham Morris Young, who was the son of the second President of the Church of Latter Day Saint Saying on stage as Madame Pettorini, and in fact he once performed as Madame Pettorini at the birthday party for the fifth President of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Lorenzo Snow, which kind of suggests they were all into it. So yeah, just men in drag, especially white men in drag, pretty common throughout the centuries.

But we also can't talk about the history of drag without bringing up that some people say that drag is rooted in racist black face performance from the early nine now, once women were allowed to get on stage, female impersonation sharply declined like, we don't need you to do that got women. But then minstrel and vaudeville shows came along, and there it became a trope in comedy to put a man in women's clothing, right, So you had white

men performing in black face playing black female tropes. The argument being that drag for black people specifically is rooted in racist black face performance is based on this because it was It was basically, these men were already wearing black face, so of course they're going to just include women, you know, black women as part of their mocking and their shitty comedy. And so they were also wearing drag. But those were white men, white men wearing black face

and playing black women. Um So, in terms of like black people themselves doing drag, I don't know, I'm not sure I agree that that's completely accurate. I guess as in like the idea that black men were emasculated deliberately by being made to dress in drag, yeah, or like that they didn't want to do it, you know that there was no black performer out there who wanted to do it. Was just this thing they were forced to

do to humiliate themselves. That's kind of some of the rhetoric I've I've seen interesting, and I don't know how you know widely that opinion is held by anybody, um, but it was just something that really stuck in my crop because I was like, I was like, is that true? And I was really trying to find something to back it up. And that's kind of the only thing I can see is that black face performers were playing black

women in drag. And that's not to say that there is not plenty of racism to complain about within drag ballroom culture, because the reason that black performers struck out on their own to do drag competitions was because all female impersonation and drag competitions were interracial frequently, but the judges were always white, so they never let the black

performers win anything naturally. So they were like, well, we'll go off and make our own thing, and that ended up being the more popular version, and the more you know, what became the modern version of dragon dragon ballroom culture. Figure black people took a piece of culture and said we're going to go off and do our own version of this, and it was way better and more fun

and everybody thousand times more cool, surprise, surprise real. And furthermore, as dragon ballroom culture got more popular and more mainstream in the nineteen sixties and seventies, white people then reco opted kind of like kind of went back in. They co opted the dances, the moves, the attitude to make a bunch of money without actually supporting any of the people that they stole from. This sounds like a unique thing that's only happened this one time. We really lifted,

we totally bifted white people. Fortunately, never did that again. Now if you look it up, there's plenty of discourse about. For example, Jenny Livingston, who directed the nine film Paris Is Burning. She had promised that the queens that she interviewed for that film would get like a portion of the proceeds of the film. They never got anything. Um

Madonna's song Vogue is another good example. She kind of took the moves and everything from it, but she didn't really do much for the community, I suppose, And so that's kind of a good example of that kind of exploitation. There are the two examples that come up the most. As early as eighteen sixty seven, Harlem's Hamilton's Lodge was holding an annual Odd Fellows Ball, and it had both black and white performers compete for prizes for the best

female impersonator. And the terms drag and drag queen did more than likely, as best as we can tell, originate with William Dorsey Swann, who is our subject today now. William was born into slavery in Maryland around eighteen fifty eight.

He was the fifth eldest of thirteen siblings. Channing Gerard Joseph, who's the main reason that we know anything about William Swan at all, says in his paper for the Oxford African American Studies Center that William's mother was an enslaved housekeeper named Mary Jane Yunker, and his father was an enslaved wheat farmer and musician named Andrew Jackson Swan. The

Civil War was very difficult for them. They lived in Hancock, Maryland, which was a Union held town, but it straddled the Mason Dixon line, so there's plenty of people who lived there who saved their loyalty for the Confederate South. What a weird place to live, I know. Literally, you talk about a divided nation and brother against brother and all this stuff. But like literally, you know, Berlin, there's a

wall right through the middle year town. So soldiers would come in and they would eat or destroy crops in this town, making food very scarce. But the family still celebrated Christmas and other holidays together, and Gerard Joseph writes quote from these experiences, Swan learned the importance of unity, self sacrifice, and the pursuit of joy in the face of oppression, values he would carry into his adult life.

And when the war was over and the Swans had their freedom, Swan's parents bought a farm in Hancock, Maryland, and William wouldn't have been much more than like seven years old at this time, but like a lot of formerly enslaved kids, he did not go to school. Instead, he was expected to work as soon as possible and help contribute to the family income. True so likely he did all kinds of like odd jobs and tasks that a kid can make a wage with, until he was

old enough to get hired as a hotel waiter. But then in late in eighteen eighty he felt like he wasn't really making enough money doing that, so he took off to Washington, d C. Coming from sleepy little Hancock. Washington, d C. That capital of the whole country. It was just a very exciting uh sprawled out is full of hustle and bustle and opportunities. So William quickly found a job as a janitor at the Spencerian Business College, and he spent his spare time learning how to read and write.

But one of the best things about Washington, d C. At this time was that there were a lot more men like William. There men who had same sex attraction. And William was a well mannered, very charming guy. He made friends everywhere he went. It's just like a natural party planner. He saw the need for gathering space for all these men, so he started holding secret gatherings that he called drags, which are Joseph says, might be a corruption of grand rag, which was a term for a

masquerade ball. Grand drag, drag, Grand drag drag, Grand Rag. I love it. I mean you can totally see how it how it could have come about so much faster than saying grand reg I know, grand rag, who's got that, who's got the time? And of course if you say come on down to my rag, I mean nobody's coming. No one's come to that now asked for the term queen that came for the annual Emancipation Day parade. This

commemorated the end of slavery. In D. C. Gerard Joseph Wrights quote, the parades highlights were the queens of liberty. They were crowned black women who sat atop elaborate flower covered floats. The grace and beauty of these women, who personified African Americans new found freedom, made a deep impression on Swan, who took the title queen among his friends.

So even though female impersonation and costume balls were popular all throughout history, quote, Swan is the earliest documented person to be known as a queen of a cross dressing ball described by US participants as a drag. Hence William

was the very first drag queen. I love this because you can just kind of picture him, you know what I mean, meeting these dudes and being like, Oh, there's people like me around and we all want to get together, we want to party, we want to do stuff, and then seeing this parade and kind of being like, I'm a queen and just kind of saying, y'all, let's kind of drag. I'm the queen. Come to the house of Swan. Time to party, you know, like you just kind of

see it all come together. We can all be queens. Yeah. But of course these drags, all Williams parties, got him in trouble with the law more than once. So we'll take a quick break and we'll hear about all that right afterwards. Welcome back, everybody. So William Dorsey Swan had his first brush with the law in eighteen eighty two,

when he was twenty four years old. He was caught stealing books from the Washington Library Company and party supplies like silver ware and plates from his employers, who were white educators named Henry and Sarah Spencer. They ran the college that he worked at. William pleaded guilty to petty larceny. He was sentenced to six months in prison for stealing the books and one month for the silverware, but the Spencer's, along with the sentencing judge and the assistant U S attorney,

asked Chester A. Arthur for presidential pardon for Swan. Um. They said he sent his family everything he could spare from his wages, and that he was quote free from vice, industrious, refined in his habits, and associations, gentle in his disposition, courteous in his bearing. And they also said, you know he stole books, he was just trying to become better educated. Why should you punish him for that? Um? And they said that the college would be happy to provide him

lifetime employment as their janitor. Okay, so these like the Spencers were on board with William Swan, right, but like, if the spencer's the judge and the assistant attorney, we're all coming to his defense. Who pressed charges in the first place? Great question? Was it just like, oh, we caught him, so we have to go through this regularole, but we'll try and undo the damage. I don't know.

And it's it's actually not recorded if he ever got the pardon, or if he served his full sentence, or they just kind of let him out after a couple of months writing. It's not it's not recorded anywhere. Um. But I does speak to his character that the Spencer's right, No, this guy is great. What are you talking about. I'm sure they didn't know to what use the silverware was being put perhaps, but you know they were basically like

let him be, you know what I mean? So anyway, at some point he was out of jail and he was throwing parties again because you know, Swan's not going to be kept down by a little petty larceny charge. And of course these parties are underground. Their invitation only um Usually invitations were issued at places like the y m c A. And often the location would be withheld or changed at the last minute to avoid the possibility

of being rated. But so it's kind of a whisper campaign, like a doing tonight right, you gotta come down the fourth and Broadway, except it's not gonna be. We'll text you with the real location five minutes before it starts. Is where I write it down in text on a sheet of paper, and I'm going to tie it to a pigeon and then good luck after that because these are not trained pigeons. Help it flies to you. Yeah, So these parties included dinner and dancing, including the cake Walk.

If you're a regular listener, you might remember from our episode about Ada and George Walker that the cake walk was this dance that was very popular during slavery. But it was all about style, you know. It was the best moves, the funniest, the most ostentatious, whatever, just like you know, come out here on the dance floor and do something wild. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And then the winner of this dance would get a cake as a prize. So the moves involved in the cake walk would eventually

be the inspiration for voguing. So William and his guests, they were dancing, they're dining, they're drinking altogether regularly at these secret parties. And they would all wear, as the Washington critic put it in seven quote, low neck and short sleeve silk dresses, several of them with trains. They all wore corsets, bustles, long hose and slippers and everything that goes to make a female's dress complete. That's right. They had it, all accessories and everything. They would wear

wigs like they were really going for it. They wanted to look the best. Some of the guests included Felix Hall and Pierce Lafayette, who were the first documented same sex enslaved couple. William had been friends with these men for a long time, and at this point in the story he and Pierce were actually lovers. We're not sure if Felix was still in the mix or not. There's not much recorded about him, but we can tell you

a little bit about Pierce. Yes, Pierce Lafayette had been enslaved in Georgia by none other than Alexander H. Stevens, who was the vice President of the Confederate States of America, so sort of close to the seat of power. I guess um stevens legacy is basically that he gave a big speech in eighteen sixty one, straight up saying, quote,

our new government, its foundations are laid. It's cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. Wow. Pretty explicit. This is where this is when I read some ship and I'm like people who try to tell me that it wasn't about slavery. I just don't understand. It's very clearly about slave. They kept saying it over and over again,

secret they were very proud of it. In fact, even though they agreed on slavery, Alexander Stevens and the Confederate President Jefferson Davis did not get along otherwise, and in eighteen sixty four, Stevens gave another famous speech in Milledgeville Georgia, which I didn't know this, but that was the capital of the confederacyne you know that, if I ever was told it, I definitely forgot it. The Millageville I like that the former capital of the Confederacy is now Millageville, Georgia.

I know, all right, you go to Millageville and you're like, oh, this is no offense to people who live in Millageville, people from Millageville, from millage from they left. I'm sure

there's people still living in Villageville who were cool. So, yeah, he's in Millageville and he's ranting in this speech in eighteen sixty four that it was just against white liberty to conscript soldiers and how dare you draft me into the r and so on, and he was advocating for policies that would lead to peace with the North, but without you know, giving up the slavery. So anyway, just kind of going on and on about how it's very important for white people to feel free and have personal

freedom in the quick irony. And while he was giving this speech, according to the New York Times, Pierce decided to grab a little perty for himself and he quote escaped to the Union lines and placed himself in the service of a cavalry unit commanded by General Joseph Wheeler. This guy's given his big speech, and Pierce just slipped out. He's like, see you later, boss, to have a good speech by take my ask to the union line and

be like, how can I help you? Well, Pierce escaping apparently really chocked Alexander Stevens, who, as we said, had given his whole big cornerstone speech all about how, as the New York Times put it, quote, the unquestioning obedience he expected from Pierce and his other thirty odd slaves was a function of their racial deficiencies and white superiority,

he insisted, had been vindicated by modern science. Just guys literally like, well, all of the people I enslaved will inherently be obedient because scientifically I am superior to them. And then they ran off on him right well, and he and that they liked it. That. I think he also had a little bit of that where he's like, not only is it it's natural for them, they prefer it. They're safer and happier when they're enslaved by me and

told what to do. Unbelievable, And the Pierces like, let me prove you wrong right fast, and that he's so taken about what I thought you liked this. The New York Times says that Pierce Leaving haunted Stevens in late eighteen sixty five, after the war was over and Stevens was serving a five month jail sentence awaiting a possible trial for treason against the United States. Because of the treason, because of you know, because of the treason, he quote

recorded several dreams of his once trusted servants. In one of the most vivid, he imagined the life that a wayward Pierce would be living beyond his master's control. Oh lord, what was that dream? Oh my god? I mean, you know, they didn't give us the details. But he's starving in the streets. He's living in a ditch somewhere. It could be sife and comfortable. Well, Pierce and Stevens did cross paths again. Stevens, who did not get a prison sentence

for treason. Actually he was elected to the House of Representatives in eight seventy three, which I'm sorry. The guy who was the vice President of the Confederacy later got elected to the House of Representatives name a healing Well you know, it's just goes to show you that the end of the Civil War did not make everyone suddenly changed their minds. Oh no, not even a little. Well, Stevens did use his influence to help get Pierce a

civil service appointment at the Interior Department. Stevens had apparently tried to train Pierce to be a trusted dependent and assistant to him, and now that he was his own man. As New York Times rights quote, stevens Southern mastery was replaced by a routine act of political patronage. This guy makes no sense. This guy previously enslaved. This man told him, oh, you like it here, genetically, I'm superior to you. When he escaped, he was shocked and said, well, let me

get you a job in government. Then. I mean, it must be really hard to like hold all this weird ship together where you're like, this person's inferior to me, but they're not so inferior that he can't be a trusted assistant to me. But he definitely prefers that to like leaving living, you know, living his own life and doing whatever he wants. But now he does want to do whatever he wants. Will I guess he's still a smart guy. I'll go ahead and help him get this job.

Why didn't he just ever once be like, I don't know, maybe some black people are as smart as white people, and some white people are as dumb as anybody else. Like you know, I don't know why he can't see at all, But there's it's just a brain. That's what's so frustrating about it, because clearly this whole time he thought, oh, you are good enough to be my assistant. I just don't want to pay you or treat you like a person. But now that I have to, I guess I'll just

take you into the same job. But I guess I'll pay you a little bit of money this time, and I won't make you sleep in a barn outside, you know, Like it's just goes to show people like Stevens who knew all along that these are human beings and but convince themselves they weren't. A line. Just like, your brain

don't work, you know what I mean, your brain's broken. Well, it was at Pierce's elegant two story house in Hancock, Maryland, that William was throwing another one of his drag balls in seven and it got busted up by the cops, six men were arrested. As Gerard Joseph Wrights quote, newspapers described several black men wearing bewitching fascinators, silk sacks, or kashmere dresses while on route to balls Um. They also printed the names of the men arrested. So again very

important to point out. These men were risking everything to go to this party. You know, they could lose their reputation, their livelihood, their freedom, their friendships if they were discovered. They were the center of moral panic and scorn. It sounds like just a little party, but it's clearly more important than that. And in the seven raid, according to Joseph, this was quote the first time the wider world learned of Swan and the Motley group of messengers, Butlers, coachman,

and cooks. So now that the group was more widely known, of course everyone had their little hot take, just like today, even though we don't have you know, they didn't have Twitter, they still wrote some dumb ship and of course they didn't have the terms that we have today gender, non conforming, transgender. They didn't even have the term cross dressing really yet. So one researcher named Dr Charles Hamiltons. Hughes described them in a medical journal as quote an organization of colored

erato paths and aleccherous gang of sexual perverts. It sounds like a great time to me, quite frankly. Again, these guys are funny to me because they're just so freaked out by skirt. You know, it's the same people who were not even talking about women wearing pants, which of course we know women were arrested for wearing pants even further than men were arrested for wearing dresses. But like, they're so upset when you wear a different type of

clothing than they think your gender should be wearing. Like they think the whole world's falling apart and it's really not worth all that stress so concerned about, right, And most of it is all comes down to their this idea in their heads that it's something sexual, as if that's the most horrific thing that ever happened in the world, the thing that literally has been happening since before any other human activity happened, literally anything else, before we did

anything else that we're doing today, we were having sex with each other. But it wasn't until during a raid when William would really cement his place in Queer history. It was his thirtieth birthday party, and William was wearing quote a gorgeous dress of cream colored satin. Likely this dress was made by William's younger brother, Daniel J. Swan, who was a tailor, and Daniel made women's clothing for himself and several other people in their community. At least

two of William's brothers regularly attended his parties. Anyway, this party was going great, fabulous ball, lots of people dancing, looking wonderful, I'm sure when suddenly the cops showed up and they barged in. Now William Dorsey Swann, who was not a small man, he charged right up the officers and he fought them at the door, yes, boldly telling one officer quote, you is no gentleman, how dare you, sir? I love it. I wish you would take a glove off,

like smacking on the face. Right. So, you know, he's a blazing this beautiful cream dress and he's fighting off, you know, a whole whole brigade of cops at the door, and he's holding them off long enough that seventeen of his guests were able to escape. But in the process, William's dress was torn to shreds, and he, along with

twelve others, were arrested. Gerard Joseph points out that his choice to resist quote, rather than submit passively to his arrest, marks one of the earliest known instances of violent resistance in the name of gay rights. Hell, yes, amazing, Yeah, I love that. He got so mad. You know, sometimes anger is really really valuable emotion, you know, and when

they're like, don't treat me like this. I'm done coming in with violence to knock you down and make you stop, you know, living your own free life right on my private property or someone's private property, Like what is what's it to you? But William did not stop there. We will tell you all about his clash with Grover Cleveland

right after these words, welcome back to everybody. So after that bust up in that that kind of public airing of their private parties made it a lot harder to throw these drag balls, but William still held them anyway. He's like, I'm going to keep partying. And he had another one get busted up in six. This time he was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, which was a euphemism for running a brothel, okay, because we keep a

disorderly house. I was like, now, there's no evidence whatsoever that William Dorsey Swan ran a brothel or engaged in sex work at all, but you know he had gay parties. So people like Hughes condemned these balls as quote orgies of lascivious debauchery beyond pen power of description, and the prosecutor at the trial even said that it was just a punishment for Swan's sexual relationships with other men and

his quote evil example in the community. So he even straight up was like, yeah, we know it's bogus, but we just want to get you for something. At the trial, Swan was sentenced to ten months in jail, with the judge lament thing that he couldn't make it ten years and saying quote, I would like to send you where you would never again see a man's face, and would then like to rid the city of all other disreputable persons of the same kind. Wow, geez, Like these guys,

they're so full throated with this ship. It's insane, and it kind of shows you how fine it was to be shitty to people a different because it was just so in your face. Well, I'm like, what what anger and hatred is so permeating you that you're given an opportunity to unleash it and you just let it out in the most horrible way you can know? Like, what is everything okay at home? For? This is what you care about with this level of vitriol? Like this, of

all things going on in this is what you're concerned with. Hey, what do you hate most of the world? Well, when people enjoy their time to gather, it really makes me. Man, I hate parties with music like Jesus. Maybe the judge never got invited to a party. It was just like if I can't party, no I can't. So the speculation station, this judge was just a complete loser who didn't know how to make friends. I'm satisfied with that speculation station. I think we can just write that down in the

history books. Now, I didn't get invited to a lot of parties, so no, no offense to my younger self. You were a complete loser who didn't know how to make friends. But that doesn't make you a bad person. I didn't get invited to a lot of parties either. That's why we throw our own. Now you're all invited. Well after this sentencing and this incredibly rude comment by

the judge, William of course was furious. Three months into serving his sentence, he filed at for a presidential pardon, saying, according to Natitia Curry, who's the archives specialist at the National Archives in Maryland, that quote, he was a respectable hard worker with a long record of continuous employment, and that the sentence was severe to the crime, and that if released, he would live a proper and law abiding life, and that that to me just goes to show how

much work William had to do to hold his tongue right and say like, I can't believe how I've been treated. But let me just explain to you why I will continue to be a good, hard working citizen. You know, he contributes and blah blah blah. I mean, when I'm sure in his heart and mind he was screaming some pretty it's a lot of vitriol of his own. I've got some things I would say, like, I don't know, I would be saying some a lot of ill advised things,

let's say. Well, William's petition was signed by thirty of his friends and allies, possibly some who were part of the drag work or community. But the U S Attorney A. A. Bernie scoffed at it, saying, quote, the prisoner was in fact convicted of the most horrible and disgusting offense is known to the law, an offense so disgusted that it is unnamed. Jeus Bernie unnamed. Is we're an address party. I mean, I'm assuming he's talking about the actual like

gay sex that they're really objecting to. But like, bro and yeah, William Swan was like, I'm looking at other people who got probably for real, the charge of keeping a disorderly house, and they didn't get ten months in jails, got much shorter sentences. So even if I was, you know, so this guy's like, but it's worse that you did it. It's worse that it was a bunch of men. You know. He's like, Hey, I've got a friend whose former enslaver was the vice president of the Treasonist Confederacy and he

is now a representative for the US government. Meanwhile, I had a party with some men in dresses and I have to go to jail for you wish ten years. Well, Alexander Stevens is some property and you see it's different. Well, anyway, this petition made its way to the desk of the President, Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland, now he took his time answering it, perhaps read it in nonconsecutive possession. And while it was still pending review, Williams friends started calling Bernie's office because

they were worried about William's health. Now, everything had been fine when he got a doctor's check up when he entered the jail in March, but then the same doctor in July diagnosed William with heart disease that he said was made worse by the prison conditions. So the friends are like, listen, he's like his life is endangered because of this prison sentence. Is in there some way you could commute it. But Grover Cleveland denied the pardon on

July eighteen, nine six. Naticia Curry rights that he quote stated in summary that the implications of his health were not sufficient to counter the character of his offense. So basically was like, go ahead and die in jail. But even though he was unsuccessful channing through our Joseph points out that this makes swan quote the earliest recorded American to take specific legal and political steps to defend the queer communities right to gather without the threat of criminalization, suppression,

or police violence. Another first, So really really like one of the first queer rights activists. He was the first to have violently resist arrest and the first to try political means um too to kind of state his piece, you know, in the late e Dreids, And it's so interesting to look at that and think about, uh, you know,

the Stonewall riots or something like that. And also it's really disheartening to look at this and say, well, this was a hundred and thirty years ago, I know, and here we are well, and like I know, I'm feeling

like real turned up about it myself. Because there's bills currently in legislation that are trying to outlaw cross dressing, and it's they're very anti trans. They're specifically I think targeting trans youth or anyone adults as well, but I mean essentially they're writing it like you can't wear pants, men can't wear tights, you know. Like it's like insane to me to to one tell me that I live in a free country and that I can't wear pants, Like,

I just think that's stupid. So anyway, it's like, as you say, we're looking at a very very early on and then nineteen sixty nine and then still now still still arguing about this, just like, can't we move on? Speaking of click fast forward? Ng, can I not fast forward through this shitty fascist part please, because we already know how this goes fastward or rewind and then just record over? Okay, that works too, I'm into it. How much can this click remote do? I never? Can it

change reality? Can I just like implant new memories in people's brains and make them less shitty? Please? I don't know, I know him like going on and on, but it just makes me mad because it just seems like such a simple freedom, a norm of what what you put on your body, and I don't know, I just don't

care walk around an address. Well. When he got out of prison, Swan was totally done with Washington, d C. And he moved back home to Hancock and he retired from the drag scene after about nine but his brother Daniel continued the parties, and he continued providing costumes for the drag community until his death in nineteen fifty four. He dressed notable Black DC drag queens like aldn Garrison

and mother Louis Diggs Williams. Drag balls were organized as house of Swan with mothers or more experienced performers mentoring the younger ones, and today the modern ballroom scene maintains this same format. You have your houses, the mothers, the queens. Even a lot of the language remains. Gerard Joseph writes,

quote striking Lee. Descriptions of balls from the nineteen thirties are sprinkled with phrases like strike a pose, sachet, across the floor, and vogue, the same terms that are heard today on TV shows like RU Paul's Drag Race or pose that's so fun that they didn't change? Why would they sat across the floor? What else do you need? Is there a better way to say that? You can hop in a time machine and go to back many many decades and say vogue, and people know what you mean.

They will start to vogue. William Dorsey Swan died in nine and this was the same year and around this era when the queer culture started to really be linked intrinsically to drag and they would use slurs against queer people to describe some of these events as well, like Hamilton Lodge odd Fellow's Ball, which you know, we'll even need to say what they called that here, but it's it's the point in time at which the idea of cross dressing, you know, putting on clothes of the of

a different gender, was associated with being gay or queer, yes, having the same sex attraction, which is not, as we pointed out this top of the episode, was not true for much. Right, it was just like, oh, you specialize in female performance, and not just that they associated those two things together, but they did so pejoratively, right, like it was a negative as opposed to being an extreme positive,

because no one does it as well. Come on and to his death, authorities burned William Swan's home and everything in it. I don't know what the point of that was except to be shitty. Um. So unfortunately, there are no photos of William Swans, we can't look at any of his personal papers. We don't know anything about him

beyond uh, basically what's in this episode. Because channing through our Joseph is also uh, I guess an ex drag queen, and he was like just looking through clippings one day and he found this newspaper clipping the said thirteen negroes were arrested outside this party and they were all dressed in women's clothing, and he was like, what's this and he ends up like busting this whole story open. So

big ups to Channing, to our Joseph. He's also writing a nonfiction book called The House of Swan, where slaves become queens. Um So if when whenever that comes out, gonna try to read that because good. Also part of William Swan's like a see, this is pretty great. There's a road in DC called Swan Street, and for a very long time they were like, oh, it's named for

the slave owner whose name was Thomas Swann. But in two they adopted a resolution to say no, it's named for William Dorsey Swan, the first drag queen, the first LGBT rights activist, who may have been born a slave, but damn it, he didn't let anybody tell him what to do. Yeah, and I love that. They was like, you know what funk that guy? Make it Make it be about this guy. Yeah, thats what we want you to learn about him instead. That's awesome. Isn't that a

crazy story? I love it. I'm very fascinating. I mean this is this kind of history, well exactly what's happening. I learned about this as an adult, and I'm like, where was this all my life? Right? You know? I mean I've I've been seeing drag shows since probably high school, yes, definitely college, and I have known a little bit about the history like Stonewall and things like that, but but never no one, I mean, like said this history has

been kind of lost. So I'm glad that Channing Gerard Joseph is putting it together because it seems like something kind of important to know, I know, and what a great character and stuff. I mean. He also points out he's like, it's really I mean, it sucks that they got arrested and their names printed in the newspaper because it made them less safe in their time and in their space, and you know it, it just wasn't great. On the other hand, he's like, if we didn't have that,

we wouldn't know they existed at all. So in a way, very grateful for the record of them being arrested and having to ask for these pardons, because otherwise they would be lost to history completely. We wouldn't have any idea about anything about them. So and then even that. You know, you can see someone reading the very same article and going, oh, there's a place I can go and party with guys like me. Okay, I'm gonna try to get to the y m c A, find out the address, get the

the discord or whatever. I gotta do. Very interesting. Um, it's just sort of that terrible double edged sword where you're you're like, He's like, if it weren't for this, we wouldn't know. If they hadn't done that, it wouldn't have been a shitty for them. I don't know which one I'd rather get rid of. So you hear that everyone Diana is advocating to arrest marginalized people. We can't have a record at their story later. Don't say that.

I would never No, no, I would say the opposite. Actually, hey, everybody out there, you know, every time you cause a fuss about someone that you don't like and you want to marginalize them, if you want to oppress them, you know you might be building up their own case against you.

You might be you know, history is not going to look kindly on you, and they're going to see what you were doing to people, and hopefully the story will change later on or you could just not treat people shitty to begin with, right, just stop giving a fuck if someone is wearing a skirt or whatever. Who cares? Who cares? Who care? I'm going to measure from the beginning to the end of my life, okay, and I'll

look back, and there's two versions. One where I really gave a ship about people in about men wearing dresses or whatever, and one where I don't. And I guarantee you at the end of those two lives, everything is the same, except that I probably had more and better friends in the one where I wasn't an ask Okay, for real, this, I'm like, do you need a hobby?

Do we need to find you a volunteer job, like cleaning up some trash somewhere so you can do something useful because this energy you're putting into this dumb ship, it's just such a waste, exactly, such a waste. I'm like, you have so much drive, so much emotion and passion, can you not like put it somewhere? Well, you're embarrassing yourself, you know, it's a big part of it too. Yeah, Well, I'm embarrassed for you because you're dumb. Dumb, that's that

be can't stay silent. It has to speak up, and you're Abe who can't stay right the bee can't stay silent. Well, anyway, I want to thank less Kirk and Doll for a beautiful performance of this and you do get a chance to see the real black Swan. He does perform it several different places around the country. He might do even an online version. It's really really great show. He kind of like weaves his own life in with William Dorsey

Swan and it's really great. That's so cool and uh so, I just loved it and I was really excited to be introduced to this guy. So thank you Less Kirk and Doll, and I hope that you liked this story as much as we did. You know we want to hear from you. Our email address is ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right, or find us online on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli and I'm Dynamite Boom. The show is at ridic Romance on

those platforms and Ridiculous Romance on TikTok. Yes, and you are awesome. Thank you for spending time with us today. Thanks so much. You'll see soon. Bye bye.