Queer Life Witnessed: Newspapers as Sources for LGBTQ+ Life in Late 19th-Century Washington, DC

The late nineteenth century in the Washington, DC area was a time of growing Queer culture and community, enabled by several factors: increased urbanization, industrialization, and the modern transportation modes of the era: interurban-suburban rail and electric streetcars. After the Civil War, migration from rural to urban and suburban areas increased, and living in metropolitan areas away from places where individuals were raised could allow people to perform gender non-conformity and participate in LGBTQ relationships. While the terms Queer and LGBTQ were not used in the nineteenth century as they are now, those ideas and behaviors existed. Three notable Queer events occurred in the 1880s in Washington DC: Oscar Wilde’s tour of the US; an extensively reported visit by We’Wha, a Zuni cultural ambassador who was a lhamana (two spirit) person; and William Doresay Swann’s regular cross-dressing performances as a “queen of drag.” Like other locations throughout the US then and now, the Washington DC area also experienced moral panics about gender and same sex attraction, with arrests for suspected cross-dressing and concerns about gender non-conformity documented in local newspapers. Primary sources give us a revelatory look and images of Queer life and individuals in the nation’s capital in the late nineteenth century.