On the streets, working-class queer African Americans (drag entertainers, for example) were respected because of their relatively well-paying jobs, which often enabled them to provide for their families’ needs.ĭuring the Great Migration, Bronzeville's queer population grew rapidly.
Evans) and its most famous musicians (Tony Jackson, Rudy Richardson, Sippie Wallace, Frankie “Half-Pint” Jaxon, and George Hannah) were queer. From State Street to Cottage Grove Avenue, along 43rd and 47th Street, Bronzeville’s commercialized and jazz-influenced urban culture offered African-American queers several venues where individuals interacted across the color line (the Plantation Café, the Pleasure Inn, the Cabin Inn, Club DeLisa and Joe's Deluxe), attended yearly popular Halloween “Drag Balls” popularized by Black gay hustler Alfred Finnie, visited semi-safe locations (the Wabash YMCA, The First Church of Deliverance, Washington Park, Jackson Park), and patronized a “vice district.” Bronzeville's most powerful inhabitants (Reverend Clarence Cobb and Reverend Mary G.
Bronzeville is often thought of as one of Chicago’s most prominent, African-American neighborhoods, but it was also home to a vibrant, well-accepted queer culture that emerged in the 1920s.
