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On a Friday evening in February 1926, a crowd of some 1,500 stuffed the Renaissance Casino in ny City’s Harlem neighbor hood for the masquerade that is 58th civil ball of Hamilton Lodge. Almost 1 / 2 of those going to the function, reported the latest York Age, seemed to be “men for the course referred to as ‘fairies,’ and several Bohemians through the Greenwich Village part whom. inside their evening that is gorgeous gowns wigs and powdered faces had been hard to distinguish from most of the females.”

The tradition of masquerade and civil balls, more popularly known as drag balls, had started back 1869 within Hamilton Lodge, a black colored organization that is fraternal Harlem. By the mid 1920s, in the height for the Prohibition period, these were attracting up to 7,000 folks of different events and social classes homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and right alike. Stonewall (1969) is generally considered the start of forward progress into the rights that are gay. (more…)