William Dorsey Swann was known to his friends as “the Queen.” A former enslaved Black man, Swann reigned over a secret world of drag balls in Washington, D.C., in the 1880s and was the leader of possibly the world’s earliest-known LGBTQ liberation group, according to an article in The Nation. William Swann, 1st drag queen … Continue reading William Dorsey Swann the 1st drag queen, LGBTQ rights pioneer