Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Portrait of an Unidentified Person circa 1710 Guilded Age scene HBO Max show historical photo believed to be William Dorsey Swann ...
You don’t hear the name William Dorsey Swann often enough these days, but Dorsey was a trailblazing 19th-century Black activist who carved out a space for not only himself, but other individuals like ...
Before Stonewall. Before RuPaul. Before the word “drag” entered the mainstream, there was William Dorsey Swann—a formerly enslaved man who, in the 1880s, crowned himself “The Queen of Drag” and hosted ...
Born into slavery, William Dorsey Swann went on to become known as the "Queen of Drag." Swann hosted covert gatherings of drag performances, which became legendary among the Black working class ...
Les Kurkendaal-Barrett is William Dorsey Swann in ‘The Real Black Swann’ at Orlando Fringe 2025 Credit: courtesy photo While stuck in a hospital bed awaiting surgery, writer-performer Les ...
From William Dorsey Swann — the first self-proclaimed drag queen — to sayings like “spill the tea,” Black history and drag are inexplicably intertwined. But with growing attacks on both Black history ...
Cleveland.com: Before there was RuPaul, there was William Dorsey Swann, the original ‘Queen of Drag’
Before there was RuPaul, there was William Dorsey Swann, the original ‘Queen of Drag’
After the Civil War, Dorsey Swann led groups of formerly enslaved Black men in the first documented drag balls. Demonstrators who took to the streets after George Floyd’s killing sued D.C. police, ...