“A lot of drag forms started among African American drag queens, which then spread and became widely appropriated,” says Rusty Barrett, a linguistics professor at the University of Kentucky and author of From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures. You ended up taking home a hangover and six new ways of talking.”ĭrag became a linguistic sponge in queer communities of color.
“You were running into people from all over a 400-mile radius and you mix and you talk and you listen. “These were splendiferous events,” Leap says of the drag balls. During the height of the New Negro era and the tourist invasion of Harlem, it was fashionable for the intelligentsia and social leaders of both Harlem and the downtown area to occupy boxes at this ball and look down from above at the queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor, males in flowing gowns and feathered headdresses and females in tuxedoes and box-back suits Prizes are given to the most gorgeously gowned of the whites and Negroes who, powdered, wigged and rouged, mingle and compete for the awards.
