Before there was RuPaul, there was William Dorsey Swann, the original âQueen of Dragâ
In light of the Juneteenth holiday, one of our firsts is someone who found liberation in more ways than one. Let’s go!
William Dorsey Swann is the country’s first “queen of drag”
Don’t let the politicians fool you: Queer history is American history. Did you know that the first person in the United States to call himself the “queen of drag,” was a Black man born into slavery? William Dorsey Swann was born in Maryland in 1860. After the end of the Civil War and emancipation, his parents worked and bought a small farm. As he grew older, Swann began to organize a series of underground drag balls around the D.C. area. Many of the people who attended the balls had formerly been enslaved. They gathered in a spirit of celebration and subversion to mock their former plantation owners. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, this gay Black man stood up to police in the face of multiple arrests and continued to organize and advocate for queer Americans, paving the way for a movement that would continue long after he died in 1925. In 2022, Washington, DC, officially renamed Swann Street after William Dorsey Swann.
Seth Marnin is the first openly trans male judge in the U.S.
Reckon Firsts is a group project of the Reckon team, but the newsletter is written and compiled by me, Aria Velasquez, Reckon’s Newsletter Strategist and chief writer behind the weekly Reckon Report. My goal with this newsletter is to introduce you to new people who are powering change in our communities.
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