Swann was born into slavery in Maryland at around 1860, just a few years before African American slaves were freed when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
[The historian Channing Joseph] describes it as "a time of excitement and danger" as the Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence, but black men were also being elected into office.
"There were lots of things that seemed possible that had not seemed possible during the slavery era. And I think that there was a level of excitement and possibility that drove Swann and his group to consider how they could express themselves and flout the norms of their society," he said.
Swann attended drag balls held by the formerly enslaved black community in D.C., who gathered in secret out of fear of police raids and imprisonment, despite there being no specific laws against cross-dressing at the time.
While no images of Swann have survived, Joseph says that records describe him as wearing long silk or satin dresses and opulent accessories, earning himself the nickname "The Queen." Continue reading from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Because there are no surviving images of Swann, many educational materials provide images of other similar individuals. The images in this Resource Guide's button and banner are Public Domain images of Charles Gregory and Jack Brown during a Cake-Walk in Paris, 1903.
