xoxo ladd forrester

Description

Journey with us from prohibition to the late ‘60s as we explore how Queer bars have shaped and influenced Queer community in D.C. Featuring Odessa Madre (aka the Lady Al Capone), Black Broadway, the Lavender Scare, the longest running Black Queer bar in the district, journey entries from Ladd Forrester, and much more, as we explore some noteworthy spots in history and investigate how and why the Queer bar community has changed so much. 

In this episode, we’ll explore some noteworthy spots in history and investigate how and why the Queer bar community has changed so much. 

Special thanks to the Rainbow History Project, the DC Public Library, and the countless other academics and historians, whether featured in these episodes or not, who helped inspire and guide us through this process. 

Audio editing by Madalyn Reagan 

You can also find works cited and in text citations for the episode in this pdf. A full transcript is below or accessible in this pdf version.  

transcript

You can read a full transcript below or in pdf version. You can find a pdf version of the transcript with in-text citations here.

Dance music playing in the background

Voicemail one: “Every gay needs to have one dive bar” 

Voicemail two: “I’ve never experienced a Queer bar that is friendly to women, so this is a new experience to me, and it’s lovely and it feels like a gay awakening all over again.” 

Voicemail three: “Today was my first time going to a gay bar here in D.C., and I had a lot of fun, and I met two really cool people, so love As You Are, and come back here again.”

Voicemail four: “We having a good time, the music good, everybody is drinking. We're having fun. I love it here.” 

ABBY: It’s hard to picture Queer life in Washington, D.C. without bars. It’s often one of the very first Queer spaces that people journey into. Bars are some of the only establishments where your Queerness isn’t just accepted but celebrated. From Thurst Lounge to As You Are to Trade bar, today, Queer folks take to the streets almost every night to gather amongst their community. 

Fade music 

But the collection of bars we see today is vastly different from the Queer bars of the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Drag shows used to be held on large stages with dramatic spiraling staircases. We used to have warehouse discos that could hold up to 2,000 people. Petworth used to be home to one of the most legendary house music clubs for the Black Queer community in D.C.  And, one of the longest running lesbian bars in United States history was just a couple blocks away from the Capitol. 

Those iconic Queer bars are now replaced with trendy new restaurants, the Nationals stadium, apartment duplexes, and more. The Queer bar landscape has changed MASSIVELY. In this episode, we’ll explore some noteworthy spots in history and investigate how and why the Queer bar community has changed so much. And trust me folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is an unlimited amount of stories still to be told. 

To get a more full picture of how we got to where we are today, we have to jump to the roaring twenties, where prohibition was the law of the land. 

Jazzy piano music plays in the background 

ABBY: We start in 1917 with the passing of the Sheppard Bone Dry Act, which prohibited the sale and production of alcohol in D.C. I know what you’re thinking…but Prohibition wasn’t passed and enforced until 1920. You’re right, but in 1917, D.C. had no locally elected government, so Congress, along with the President, appointed leaders called the Presidents Board of Commissioners who had all of D.C.’s governing power, and they decided to make the District a sober "role model” for the rest of the country. This is just one example of how Congress has used the District as a test trial for national legislation and regulation. 

Despite the prohibition of alcohol, many Washingtonians found ways to bend the rules.

Cheers and clinking of drinking glasses 

Especially Cleon Throckmorton, a recent George Washington University graduate, who opened the bar, Krazy Kat, in 1920. 

Known for its rowdy jazz scene and a tree house outside, we start our journey at one of the first bars recorded that catered to Queer clientele in D.C. 

Cheers and glasses clinking

The not-so-secret speakeasy was located in Thomas Circle, between 14th Street Northwest and Massachusetts Avenue, near what is now the popular gay bar, Green Lantern. 

Jazzy music fades out

Some historians, like author Paul Williams, claim that the speakeasy was named after George Herriman's popular strip comic character, Krazy Kat. Krazy Kat was an androgynous character that Herriman explained, “could some days be a girl and other days be a boy.” This gender expansive mascot could’ve been what signalled safety and acceptance to the Queer patrons who later attended the club. 

In Genny Beeymn’s book, A Queer Capitol: A History of Gay Life in Washington D.C., they said that the Krazy Kat is where white gay men went to “find some excitement.” But like most Queer history before the 60s, many Queer stories are left undocumented, so our understanding of what Queer happenings were going down in the Krazy Kat are still pretty unknown. 

While the white Queer community gathered in downtown D.C., near the White House, a few neighborhoods away was a thriving middle-class Black community. 

people talking, cars honking, whistle, and light jazzy music starts in the background

KATIE KIRKPATRICK: “U Street had become this, like, concentrated Black neighborhood, where you had a lot of institutions that were set up to support that community and allow for it to grow and thrive, including having financial institutions. You had Howard University, of course, which was really the root of a lot of that, with many of the thought leaders of the Black Broadway, and then later on, Harlem Renaissance, coming from Howard.” 

ABBY: From the mid 1910s to the late 1960s, the Black Broadway era cultivated some of the most iconic Black musical artists, literary writers, and poets, such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Marvin Gaye. Katie Kirkpatrick, owner of Off the Mall Tours in Washington, D.C., runs a tour through U Street and the Shaw neighborhood called, “Queer Black Broadway,” which runs through the history of Queer influence on this iconic age. 

KATIE KIRKPATRICK: “During the 20s, when you had prohibition, you had, like, speakeasies and all these clubs where people were drinking, which was already illegal, and so it was like, well as long as we're doing one illegal thing. And that's when you started having a lot of Drag coming in. Like, that's when you start having a lot of Drag scene, [which] was really big in the 20s and 30s. You had the Pansy Craze.” 

ABBY: The Pansy Craze, an era named by gay scholar and professor George Chauncey, emerged in the late 1920s to mid 1930s. During this time, Drag, or pansy performers, became extremely popular in the underground party scene. 

One major Black Broadway establishment, Republic Gardens, which opened in 1929, was bit by the Pansy Craze bug. 

Music fades out

As straight patrons gathered on the first floor to listen to nightly live jazz and mingle in the summery backyard, the Queer folks would walk up to the second floor. 

someone walking up the stairs, cabaret type music, and cheers and whistles

Katie said up there was a well-known secret backroom that held D.C.’s rowdiest Drag shows. 

Music and cheering fades

But under the consistent threat of police, the staff had to find ways to protect their Queer patrons. 

Alice Blue Gown Song starts playing in the background

Peering through a small glass window, the nightly live singer in the second-level backroom would warn Queer patrons of a police officer coming inside by singing the 1920 Broadway song, “Alice Blue Gown”. 

Song swells, with the lyrics “In my sweet little Alice Blue Gown, when I first wandered down into town, I was both proud and shy, as I felt every eye, but in every shop window I kept passing by,” music fades into background again

KATIE KIRKPATRICK: “I think the reason why Black Broadway ended up being this space where Drag took hold is, again, because of the fact that it hosted so many jazz clubs and theaters and places where Drag could easily find space, where it was welcomed and hidden but still with an audience.” 

ABBY: The Pansy Craze was a brief, worldwide phenomenon ending around the mid 1930s. But, this didn’t signal a decline of Queer community in D.C., in fact —

DR. GREENE: “It was a gay, very gay city in the 30s and 40s” 

ABBY: That’s Dr. Greene, author of Not in my Gayborhood: Gay Neighborhoods and the Rise of the Vicarious Citizen, he is one of QTDP’s reigning experts on Queer D.C. history. His book breaks down decades of D.C. LGBTQ+ history, one being the huge population boom in the 1930s, all due to new jobs created under FDR’s New Deal. 

FDR: “I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people.”

DR. GREENE: “You saw a critical mass of LGBT people coming, the gays and lesbians, coming to work for FDR. It is that period of time when you're going to see D.C. transform to this little southern town into this major city, where, again, you're going to see thousands of people come because there are job opportunities here.” 

ABBY: The population boom from the New Deal brought a new heightened visibility of Queer folks, meaning more people were being exposed to homosexuality. More jobs but less housing meant roommates…which often meant same-sex roommates…which feels like the beginning of a Queer rom-com trope.

Jazzy piano music begins to play in the background

And where did those new gaybies go with their lover roommates? Maybe to the Maystat Lounge, which had a large lesbian clientele.

It was commonly known as the “Foreskin” and featured professional illusionist performances, better known as Drag performers. One of the most notable illusionists was the scandalous Ray Bourbon, who performed risque monologues and was actually later arrested for being an accomplice in murder…the drama.

Fade music 

The 1930s also brought the fall of Prohibition in 1933, where the picture of gay nightlife gets a bit clearer all thanks to Ladd Forrester, a pseudonym for a gay man who recorded his ventures into gay bars in the 30s. While we know Queer folks were meeting up before this, records can be hard to find to tell us how and where they were gathering. Forrester’s diaries are some of the earliest recorded stories of gay nightlife in D.C. 

Now I know nothing of how or where he wrote this diary, but when I read Forrester's entries, I imagine him doing it with some campy gay flair. 

Key turns and opens a lock, door squeaks open, footsteps walk in, key is placed on a table, match lights a candle

After an illustrious night on the town (chair scraping as it is pulled out), he sits at his studio desk, dramatically whipping out a match and lighting a large candlestick (match being lit), where he then takes his diary out from a super secret compartment (drawer opening) buried in his desk drawers. Under the glow of candlestick, he writes (quill scratching), “You can only get lit, if you sit.”

Forrester is referencing an amendment in the abolishment of the Prohibition that states patrons could only drink alcohol at restaurants if they were sitting. They even required restaurants with liquor licenses to close by midnight on weekends. Business owners also feared allowing same-sex dancing in their establishments because they thought it would increase police raids. But, Queers persisted and found ways to communicate with each other and gather within the bounds of these new restrictions. 

DR. GREENE: “You saw as restaurants sort of transitioned over and alcohol was being served, if someone liked someone, they would have to signal to the server, which was usually a woman, was a waitress, to pick up the drink, and then they would follow that person from one table to the other to meet a particular individual.” 

ABBY: It’s important to note that the Queer culture being built in these new restaurants and bars was most accessible to gay men. Women had a lot less economic freedom in the 1930s. I mean they couldn’t even open their own bank account. Many hotels, like The Mayflower, took it a step further and either banned women outright or required them to have an escort. Dr. Greene explained that lesbians and gay men would evade these rules by accompanying each other to those bars, cosplaying as a heterosexual couple, calling themselves, “Trojan Horses.” 

DR. GREENE: “They had to be very careful because of police surveillance and the threats of attack, right? So, Trojan Horses becomes a very important kind of code for gay men and lesbians when, you know, again, women want to go out and be able to enjoy the company of other women that they often would go in pairs or in groups with the understanding that they were kind of appearing as if they were heterosexual couples.” 

ABBY: One place where the Queer community found solace outside of their Trojan Horse facades was The Showboat, which opened in 1936, and it drew in a mixed crowd of Queer folks and army servicemen.

Flairy piano music playing

The segregated basement bar had a rail in the middle of the room, dividing one side for soldiers and sailors and the other side for Queer patrons. 

Faint sounds of people yelling

The soldiers would yell profanities to those on the opposite side of the rail, forcing many Queer customers to quietly leave. 

But instead of appealing to the soldiers' bias, the owner pleaded with the Army to ban servicemen from entering his establishment. The Army quickly agreed, as they didn’t want their boys congregating with so-called “degenerates.”

Music and yelling fades out

With the stench of serviceman prejudice washed away, the white Queer community flooded to the establishment, where Queer lovers, Chloe, the quiet demure pianist, and Lover Boy, the small androgynous singer, performed together. 

Song “Chloe” starts to play in background

This primarily lesbian joint would gather to see a celebration of their Queer love. 

Forrester wrote, “A sentimental moment each night occurred when ‘Lover Boy’ hung over the piano and directly to Chloe, sang a popular song of the period by the same name.

Music swells with lyrics, “Oh me, I gotta go where you are” and then fades out

Fast paced song with heavy drums and horns start to play a bit muffled

Just a couple blocks away from Chloe and Lover Boy’s stage, sat an empty table that was filled with nothing but a dozen roses at the center. In this lively club, you could see patrons dancing and drinking to some of the most iconic voices and performers in jazz: Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, even the comedian Moms Mabley, who was rumored to be having an affair with the club's owner. 

Footsteps, doors open, music gets louder and is no longer muffled 

Then, in walks Odessa Madre, aka the Lady Al Capone and the owner of Club Madre. Dawning the finest mink coat, with half a dozen girls on her arm, some were sex workers to draw in customers, others were just for her. Madre would enter the club and walk to her private reserved table, where her fresh roses waited for her.

The legend of Lady Al Capone began several years earlier, around Georgia and Florida Ave Northwest, which was once called Cowtown, named after the cows, sheep, and pigs that used to freely roam the streets in the 1870s. 

Cow moos, music fades out

Ashley Bamfo, treasurer for the Rainbow History Project and partner of the Off the Mall Walking Tours, explained that Madre grew up in an integrated neighborhood with lots of Irish neighbors, some who became close friends. But at Dunbar Senior High School, Madre felt like an outsider and was ostracized by her peers. 

ASHLEY BAMFO: “She felt very discriminated against in high school and that was part of, I try to say, like her villain origin story, sort of, kind of.” 

ABBY: Ashley said that the racism, colorism, and fatphobia that Madre endured from her high school peers was a motivator for her to enter the unsanctioned society of the District. 

ASHLEY BAMFO: “She turned into being more of D.C.’s underbelly, right? From what we read, she kind of enjoyed it. She wanted to be there because she didn't want to be like some of the classmates she grew up with, who were lighter skinned, who were thin, you know, things like that. So, that was her way of saying, you know, I'm gonna be subversive, I’m gonna do this.” 

ABBY: Madre went on to have many business acquisitions. She ran a bookkeeping operation for horse betting. (horse hoofbeats)

She was a Madam of several brothels in the city (whistling), and a seller of narcotics and bootleg liquor. (glasses clinking)

Her childhood connections with her Irish neighbors came in handy when many of them began to work in the police force. So whether through childhood loyalty or bribes, they often looked the other way, ultimately helping her avoid criminal prosecution for years. Within Queer history in D.C., she stands out not only for her iconic club during the Black Broadway era, but because she was always her proud Queer-self. 

ASHLEY BAMFO: “She was an openly Queer woman. She came into her clubs with…two women on her arm like, clearly no question about what type of—you know, what kind of person this person was.” 

ABBY: While Queer icons and community thrived in the underground society of Black Broadway, there were many people who were part of the Black community that rejected public displays of Queerness. They viewed it as a threat to Black acceptance. Ashley described the talented 10th concept, a term coined by Henry Lyman Morehouse and then popularized by W.E.B Dubois and how this affected Black communities across the nation. 

ASHLEY BAMFO: “We get 10% of our population as Black individuals, and we make sure they are the absolute best so we can show, like white people that we are on equal footing with them. So it was very much like, you cannot be gay, you need to dress a certain way, you need to act a certain way. You need to be educated….all of these different things that really came out of survival. But, it also influenced how people reacted to individuals living their lives.” 

ABBY: During the Black Broadway era, parts of the Black community ostracized the Black Queer community in order to gain legitimacy within the white literary and art scene. Many Black Queer people, like Alain Locke, a Black gay man, believed that respectability politics, a concept conceived by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, was necessary for Black voices to be heard on the national stage. 

KATIE KIRKPATRICK: “Alain Locke was very concerned about respectability politics. He said, ‘if we want to be taken seriously, you know, not just by the Black community, but by the larger literary world,’ aka the white literary world, ‘we need to be reflective of their values,’ which means respectable, well dressed, well composed, all of these things, and to be openly gay in the middle of that would have blown it all away.” 

ABBY: It’s important to remember that D.C. is still deeply segregated at this time. For the Black community in D.C., your family, work, and social life all existed in the same area. Respectability politics made it extremely difficult for people to find safe spaces to explore their sexuality or gender identity without disrupting their place in the Black community. Dr. Greene discussed how segregation created another barrier for Black Queer spacemaking and gathering, something the white Queer community didn’t have to face. 

DR. GREENE: “Gays and lesbians had lived among their families and friends, people they knew, people connected with the church or other institutions. It was much harder for them to sort of create the kind of distance between themselves the way that gay white men could, living in one neighborhood and going downtown or going to Georgetown.” 

ABBY: However, he does note that before desegregation in 1954, there was a mild acceptance of Queerness that would later become more hostile in the 60s and 70s. 

DR. GREENE: “There were a number of bars that featured Drag performers that were in those spaces that were very, very popular among Black residents that they would patronize them, and they would come to them. They would participate at the barbecues and at the house parties, and, so, it was a more accepting world by design, to a certain extent. And then, eventually, as we see the desegregation sort of taking place, and we see, again, the kinds of shifting attitudes, that’s where you begin to see the Black Queer community kind of beginning to create a greater distance between themselves and their local residents.” 

ABBY: While the District and nation continued to grapple and face change due to the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation in the 50s, the Federal government was going through a frightening transformation. 

President Eisenhower: “Under the standards established by the New Employee Security Program, more than 2,200 employees have been separated from the Federal government. Our national security demands that the investigation of new employees and the evaluation of derogatory information respecting present employees be expedited and concluded at the earliest possible date.”

ABBY: “Do you identify as a homosexual or have you ever had same-sex sexual relations?” In 1950, this became a common interview question for anyone applying to work in the federal government. If you answered yes, you’d be quietly dismissed. This action was made perfectly legal, with the 1950 Employment of Homosexual and Other Perverts in Government Act. But, this was just the beginning. 

JAMIE KIRCHICK: “Right after World War II, America becomes this global power, and homosexuality transforms from being a sin in the eyes of religion, it was a crime in the eyes of the law, and it was a mental disorder in the eyes of the medical community. With World War II and then the Cold War, homosexuality now becomes a national security threat.”

ABBY: James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, described a tumultuous time period for the Queer community in D.C.: the Lavender Scare. Happening alongside what became known as the “Red Scare,” during which the government began mass investigations into and firings of anyone they believed could have communist sensibilities, the government also began to directly target gay federal workers, claiming that they were a threat to our nation's democracy and security. 

The argument was that the Soviet Union could use someone’s homosexuality as blackmail, thus forcing them to do espionage for them. Essentially saying that anyone gay was susceptible to being a spy or at least an accomplice of one. 

In 1953, President Eisenhower decided that disqualifying new gay candidates from government jobs wasn’t enough to secure our nation. So, on April 27, 1953, he signed Executive Order 10450, which barred all homosexuals from working in the government, new and old. Thus began the hyper surveillance of federal workers and consistent investigations to try and weed out all gay employees.  

JAMES KIRCHICK: “It didn't really require much evidence to be punished. It was often based on hearsay. It could often be based on a colleague in the office reporting you as being, you know, effeminate, or if you're a woman, they might report you as being manly or too masculine.” 

ABBY: A simple rumour could lead you to being fired and blacklisted from the government. In a city where the federal government is the largest employer, this impact was felt far and wide across the district, especially in bars and restaurants, a central gathering location for the gay community. James told me that the government would surveil popular gay bars in an attempt to find and accuse federal workers of being a homosexual. How did they find out about these popular Queer spots? Through coercion.  

JAMIE KIRCHICK: “They did have a wide network of informants, and sometimes this would be gay men who were perhaps arrested on an offense, a homosexual offense, and then they were made to testify, or they were made to, you know, inform on other gay men if they wanted to get their punishment reduced. So, you had gay men in this position who would give information about other gay men to the FBI, or they give it to the local D.C. police.” 

ABBY: One of the most surveilled spots in town was Chicken Hut, which opened in 1948.  

PAUL KUNTZLER: “Kameny told me people were being photographed. And it turned out it was the CIA.”

ABBY: Paul Kuntzler, at 84 years old, calls himself the second oldest gay rights activist in the United States. One of the first gay bars he attended in D.C. was the Chicken Hut. When asked about what the bar looked like on the inside, he quickly grabbed a pen and paper. 

PAUL KUNTZLER: “(paper rustling and pen clicking) Now there were two stairs here, it was something like this. You sat on the side, or in the middle, and Howard was here.” 

Upbeat piano music in the background

ABBY: Howard, known by some as Miss Hattie, was an pianist that played primarily at the Chicken Hut. 

PAUL KUNTZLER: “Howard was at the piano. I understand he died at the piano. (laughing)” 

ABBY: There is no police report to confirm Howard’s death, but in gay D.C. lore, Ladd Forrester, Paul, and others have said that his death is tied to the piano bench. 

Piano music ends

Chicken Hut was a go-to spot for many gay men, including the Deaf gay community, many of whom had come to D.C. to study at Gallaudet College, now Gallaudet University, the world’s only university for Deaf and hard of hearing students. 

Paul found the Chicken Hut just as formative; it was where he met some of the most influential people in his life. One of the many being Dr. Frank Kameny, who is known by some as the “founder of the gay movement,” as he created one of the first gay activist organizations in the nation.

PAUL KUNTZLER: “Bill Fly, he was the manager at the Chicken Hut. He knew I was interested in the movement. I apparently told him that. He brought me over and introduced me. And, anyways, he invited me to attend the next Mattachine society meeting.” 

ABBY: It was at that meeting that Paul became the 17th and youngest member of the Mattachine Society of Washington, one of the first gay rights activist organizations in the District. But, there was one more introduction at Chicken Hut that would change Paul’s life forever. 

PAUL KUNTZLER: “I believe he was sitting in the middle, and I was sitting over there, and I think he sent me a beer.” 

ABBY: Paul met his partner of 42 years at Chicken Hut. 

PAUL KUNTZLER: “Stephen Brent, I’ll show you a picture of him.”

Sounds of Paul ruffling through his wallet 

ABBY: He pulled out a thick wallet filled with cards, cash, and other mementos, and then a small, slightly tattered photo emerged.

PAUL KUNTZLER and Abby in italics: “This is in Amsterdam in the summer of 2000. (wow) I call him the movie director, (Yeah, with the haircut, the stoic look he’s got going, it’s very suave.) Correct.” 

ABBY: While the federal government was hunting down the Queer community in hopes of destroying their careers, families, and way of living, I like to think of Paul's story as a reminder that Queer joy existed and will always continue to exist even amongst a backdrop as frightening as the Lavender Scare. 

Acoustic music in the background

Paul found not just a gay community but a life partner. He found a love so profound that even 20 years after Stephen’s passing, he carries an original photo in his wallet with him every single day. 

Acoustic music fades out

JIM HARVEY: “I had a great time and met so many wonderful people.” 

ABBY: While the Chicken Hut served as a hot spot for the white gay community, Nob Hill was the place for many Black gay men, especially Jim Harvey, a Black Gay activist. 

The once called, “Granddaddy of Black gay clubs,” opened in 1953, first as a private gay Black social club, then as a public bar in 1957. Located right next to Howard on Kenyon Street Northwest, the bar was filled with Black gay intellectuals dressed in a suit and tie. The bar was a frequent stop for Howard students who were looking for older gay men. 

Nob Hill, known by some in the community as “snob hill,” became the oldest running Black gay bar in D.C., operating for fifty years by the time it closed in 2004. 

For Jim Harvey, Nob Hill wasn’t snobby to him at all. It was a classy place where gay men would come all dressed up and drink out of real glasses.  

champagne popping and glasses clinking and quiet conversations in the background 

JIM HARVEY: “I was turned on to a drink when I first started going. There was a mixture of champale, malt liquor, and grenadine, and they would serve it in a champagne glass, and you felt ever so elegant, standing there drinking champale and grenadine in a champagne glass at Nob Hill on a Friday or Saturday night. It was just so much fun.” 

ABBY: Another hot spot for the Queer community, especially the Black Trans and sex worker community was the Black Nugget.  

RAYCEEN: “They did shows there. Oh, my God, I forgot about the shows.” 

ABBY: Rayceen Pendarvis grew up in Ward 5 and started going to clubs at a young age. When I asked Rayceen about Black Nugget, it quickly brought back memories of some iconic performances.

Piano music plays in the background

RAYCEEN: “Back then, the girls sung live. The girls, who were performers, who might have been trans, or might have been [a] Drag Queen, they sung live. So they would sing numbers, you know, they do a Billie Holiday, a little Sarah Vaughn, a little Nancy Wilson, you know, the girls would sing back then.”

ABBY: Rayceen recalled a time where one of the girls performed with a live python and another with fire. I, of course, was astounded that the Black Nugget had the space for these fabulous events. But, Rayceen was quick to say that imagination and resourcefulness went a long way to making these performances happen. 

RAYCEEN: “The girls would create on whatever stage they have, you know, whether it was a box, you know, just standing on a box. I mean, the girls made it work. You know, back then it wasn't these big stages. The girls sometimes performed on the bar, and sometimes the girls would sit on the bar and sing live numbers on the bar with a piano or to a record. So, it was an evening of illusion.” 

Music swells and then fades

ABBY: The Black Nugget was a sanctuary for the trans community, featuring a dance floor that hosted these iconic performances and a long bar that was a popular spot for sex workers and cruising—a term used for Queer people seeking others for sexual encounters. However, there were reports of violence at the club. When asked about this, Rayceen pointed out that the rumors of violence speaks to the broader issue of safety within the trans community.

RAYCEEN: “Well, if we speak about violence that occurred at one particular club, we have to speak to violence that occurred to us as a community. So we have to speak beyond just the Black Nugget in, everywhere. Every club, at the particular time that we're talking about, through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, up until now, we have to always make sure we're safe. So, you know, if we speaking honesty and truth, that the girls would carry, always carry the purse. Wherever we went, we always carry the purse, whether that you were a butch queen, a femme queen, or anything in between, you always carried a large bag, and inside that bag you had lovely items, such as this: a switchblade, a lovely pistol, and most of the time, the girls carry what we called a saturday night special. Sometimes the girls would carry a hammer. And my lovely, beautiful, fabulous sister, Miss Karen, would even go one step further, she bejeweled her hammer. She had a bejeweled, rhinestone hammer. So when she came out swinging, she came out swinging.” 

ABBY: The trans community didn’t have the ability to rely on the police to protect them either because, oftentimes, it was the police they needed protection from. Rayceen said the police would arrest folks for wearing clothing opposite of their assigned gender at birth. This anti cross-dressing enforcement has been historically known as Masquerading laws. But, the girls always found ways around these rules. 

RAYCEEN: “You had to have on three articles of male clothing, and they could not lock you up. That's how the girls got around that. So if they had a dress on, they had on a brassiere, they could have male boxers on, a male garter belt on, or a male’s watch on, and they would not be arrested.” 

ABBY: But the police would still find ways to attack and harass the community. 

RAYCEEN: “It would be a standoff, you know, sometimes the police will come up, and you know if the police are roughing the girls up, or roughing the guys up, or roughing whoever up, and they decide they want to just rough up the community, a lot of times the girls would be like, ‘oh, oh wait a minute, wait a minute’ you know, and they would say, ‘this is what I got on.’ Because most of the time when they roughing you up, they doing anything to humiliate you.”

ABBY: Even amongst this violence, Rayceen and the girls would always stick together and protect each other no matter what. 

RAYCEEN: “We were a gay gang, so we traveled in groups. If you was going to fight one, you was going to fight us all.

Chanting, “Freedom, Freedom, Freedom,” from the 1963 March on Washington fades into background and then fades out

ABBY: While the Black Queer community gathered in their houses and local bars, many were also involved in the national conversation and fight for civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood as a powerful voice of hope. 

RFK ANNOUNCEMENT: “I have some very sad news for all of you, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.” people scream

ABBY: So, when word of his assassination spread on April 4, 1968, it struck not just as a personal loss but as a collective rupture. That evening, people began to flood out onto the streets. 

People shouting and glass shattering in the background

At 14th and U Street someone picked up a rock and threw it through the window pane of a grocery store. Another person hauled a trash can, and someone lit a tree on fire. The riots spread quickly from there. Crowds of people lobbed rocks and bricks at storefronts, they looted businesses, and they lit buildings on fire. 

Fire crackling in the background

With fires spreading and never ending reports coming from places all across the District, the fire department was quickly overwhelmed. Police deployed tear gas and violence amongst the rioters. Despite strict instructions not to shoot any rioters, they killed two people, including a fifteen year old. 

After four days of rioting, 13 people were killed and 7,600 people were arrested. During the riot, 13,000 soldiers from Fort Myer entered the city, the most troops to occupy an American city since the Civil War. There were more than 900 businesses damaged, about 275 of those businesses were just on 14th Street, the city's Black Broadway. Of those businesses burned, Black Queer bars, including Cozy Corner, Kenyon Bar and Grill, and Red Door were destroyed or forced to close quickly after the riots. 

The Black Queer community lost some of their only epicenters in the city. Fortunately, around this same time a Black gay social clique called The Metropolitan Capitalites, started making their way through the scene. 

JOHN EDDY: “There were very, very, very, exactly none places for Black LGBTQ people to go to. So we more or less decided, well, we’ll start our own little house parties and grow from there.” 

Groovy house music starts playing

ABBY: John Eddy, a member of the Metropolitan Capitalites, moved to Washington, D.C. in 1955 at ten years old and has lived here since. John and the Capitalities hosted intergenerational gay house parties. People from 14 years old to 40 years old would party all night together in a dark, bumping basement. But in the late 60s, they realized they needed a bigger space.  

JOHN EDDY: “We were outgrowing the house parties, where we were turning people away because there's no more room in the basement.” 

ABBY:  Thus began John’s search for a club space. 

Motorcycle starts to rev in the background

JOHN EDDY: “I had a motorcycle, and I used to drive around looking for a location.”

ABBY: Little did he know that his rides through town would be the starting point in his journey towards creating one of the most iconic and legendary clubs in D.C. history. 

Motorcycle driving off into the distance 

Jazzy piano music starts to play

Abby: Hey baby, we’re so glad you’re here, and thanks so much for listening until the end of the episode. 

Don’t you worry, we promise we won’t leave you hanging too long. Next week, we’ll have an After Hours episode. Where I’ll be asking Mother Rayceen Pendarvis for all the juicy goss and playing some fun games, so be sure to tune in. In two weeks time, our second historical episode will pick up where we left off today.

We want to thank the Rainbow History Project, the DC Public Library, and the countless other academics and historians, whether featured in these episodes or not, who helped inspire and guide us through this process. 

And shout out to the rest of the QTDP team, Ellie and Mads for making this podcast happen. I love you both. 

You can find a transcript for this, and every episode, on our website at queeringthedistrictpodcast.com and linked below in the episode notes. 

If you want to stay more up to date on all things Queering the District Podcast, follow our social media pages, at, you guessed it, queeringthedistrictpodcast. You won’t want to miss exclusive interview clips, juicy voicemails, and bi-weekly spotlights. 

Do you have a story to share? Do you think we missed something? Give us a call, and bare it all after the beep at 202-753-6570.

If you’re still with us, we have a treat for you. Every episode will end with a voicemail left by a Queer out and about in D.C. So, to finish us off this week, Cal has a wholesome moment to share. 

Cal: Hey, I’m Cal, and my partner and I of six years just exchanged promise rings today. And, I’m just so excited about it, and I just wanted to tell someone, and so I just told you. Okay! (blows a kiss) 

Music fades out

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