In the Early 20th Century, America Was Awash in Incredible Queer Nightlife

[HuckleB]

Then Prohibition ended, and the closet was born.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-the-early-20th-century-america-was-awash-in-incredible-queer-nightlife

"In the Civic Ballroom of Hamilton Lodge of 1920s Harlem, satin heels beneath delicate gowns and feathers swept across smooth dance floors. Men who waited to take the stage adjusted their stockings, touched up their rouge. At tables nearby, women sitting together loosened their ties, drawing their hands and foreheads close. “Wigs, where necessary, were in evidence,” says The New York Age in March 1927. “From the garb of a biblical virgin...down to the very sparse attire only seen on burlesque stage of today, accentuated with feminine gesture and lingo, to say nothing of contortions of the hip, formed the make-up of these male masqueraders.”

It was only the last line that pointed at the radical nature of the event. “All’s well that ends well,” noted the Age, “The police did not find it necessary to raid.”

During the “Pansy Craze” from the 1920s until 1933, people in the lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer (LGBTQ) community were performing on stages in cities around the world, and New York City’s Greenwich Village, Times Square and Harlem held some of the most world-renowned drag performances of the time. While dominant American society disapproved of LGBTQ people, they were very fond of their parties. “It’s pretty amazing just how widespread these balls were,” says Chad Heap, a professor at George Washington University and author of Slumming, about the era. “Almost every newspaper article about them has a list of 20 to 30 well known people of the day who were in attendance as spectators. It was just a widely integrated part of life in the 1920s and 30s.”

All of this activity existed during cultural time that, as historian George Chauncey writes in his book Gay New York, many people believe “is not supposed to have existed.” Popular belief often holds that LGBTQ rights and acceptance was a forward-moving machine beginning with the Stonewall Riots in the 1960s, but when comparing Prohibition Era acceptance versus that of the 1950s, it isn’t so. “It’s not just that they were visible, but that popular culture and newspapers at the time remarked on their visibility—everyone knew that they were visible,” says Heap.

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A worthy read, IMO.