Photograph of Queens Liberation Front at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day March

New York: np, 1973. Silver gelatin print. 13 1⁄4 x 10 1⁄2 in. VG. Item #10457

Lee Brewster was one of the central figures in New York’s trans scene of the 1960s and ‘70s; fired from a job as a file clerk at the FBI for their sexuality, Brewster moved to New York in the early 1960s. Lee Brewster was the owner of Lee’s Mardi Gras, the most well-known and celebrated boutique for drag queens in the 1960s and ‘70s, and throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, was the publisher of Drag magazine. Brewster, along with Bunny Eisenhower, was also the founder in 1969 of the Queens Liberation Front, the trans and drag activist organization - documented here, with Lee at center. 

The day of this photograph, on June 24, 1973, during the Christopher Street Liberation Day festivities, a long-brewing clash between cis gay men and lesbian feminists, on the one hand, and transwomen and drag queens, on the other, boiled over, as Radicalesbian members continued their campaign to exclude the trans groups from Liberation Day events. Syliva Rivera took the stage to denounce the Radicalesbians, prompting Jean O’Leary to respond by denouncing drag as misogynistic, at which point Brewster had had enough. “I cannot sit and let my people be insulted,” Brewster announced, likely just hours after this photo was taken. “They’ve accused me of reminding you too many times that today you’re celebrating...the result of what the drag queens did at the Stonewall...Gay Liberation? Screw you!” With that, Brewster threw their crown into the crowd and stormed off. 

 An artifact of the understudied but influential trans activist organization at an early and extremely important liberation march in trans history; any documentation of Brewster and the Queens Liberation Front is remarkably scarce, particularly original photography.

Price: $750.00