Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies by James F. Wilson

A study of neglected plays and performances that challenged early twentieth-century hierarchies of race, gender, class and sexual orientation. On Broadway, in Harlem nightclubs and dance halls, and at private rent parties, African American performers of the 1920s and early 1930s tested the limits of white middle-class morality: blues-singing lesbians, known as 'bulldaggers,' performed bawdy songs, cross-dressing men competed at lavish drag balls, and Black and white women flaunted their sexuality in scandalous melodramas and revues. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, newspapers, songs and scripts, and on queer theory and critical race theory, Wilson argues that these stereotyped forms of Black, lesbian and gay show business did not prevent new voices from emerging. Figures include Gladys Bentley, Ethel Waters, Florence Mills, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston and W. E. B. Du Bois.