The Sons of Tennessee Williams

The Sons of Tennessee Williams tells the story of the gay men of New Orleans who created a vast and fantastic culture of state chartered public "drag balls" in the early 1960s, pioneering the first gay civil rights in the US. They staged a flamboyant, costumed revolution without politics and won freedoms during a time, as now, when laws and people fought against them. Widely believed to be the catalyst that brought gay people out of hiding, the Stonewall riots of June, 1969 were the result of an ill-timed raid on the Stonewall Tavern in New York’s Greenwich Village. That story is well-known.

In February 1959, a group of gay men in New Orleans decided to have a Mardi Gras ball of their own. Mardi Gras organizations in New Orleans, called krewes, are social clubs comprised of members who celebrate the season together. Each krewe has their own festivities, including parties and parades, usually ending with a formal ball and the coronation of a King and Queen. Everyone seems to have a krewe of some kind to belong
to. A full decade before Stonewall, a gay Carnival krewe was founded. They called it the Krewe of YUGA or “KY”. In 1962, “KY” rented a school cafeteria in the notoriously conservative suburb of Jefferson Parish.

Securing such a venue for an all male krewe to hold a Mardi Gras ball would not likely raise suspicion. Most krewes were, in fact, made up of an anonymous all male membership. Various personnel from the venue were present at functions like these, however. This would no longer be a private event. “It was a
kindergarten, is what it was.”

Familiar with police raids, the men knew that the 1962 ball would break a few laws. They made absolutely sure to be in full drag anyway. “It was a ball, after all, not bowling night.” The police roared in precisely at coronation time, alerted by private citizens of crossdressing men entering the building at night. Krewe members attempted to escape by running into the swamplands adjacent to the school, chased by officers with dogs and flashlights. Many were betrayed by their glittering costumes while hiding in the dark night
and tall grasses of Jefferson Parish. They were taken to jail, identified by name in the newspaper and eventually prosecuted with the charge of “disturbing the peace.”

The significance is this. The following year the ball was not raided nor was any subsequent ball in the history of these annual events. By 1969, there were four gay krewes legally chartered by the state of Louisiana as official Mardi Gras organizations, holding yearly extravaganzas at public venues across the city. “Society matrons begged for ball tickets from their hairdressers.” New Orleans was the first place in America where gay and straight people came together to publicly recognize gay culture.

These men are the embodiment of the archetypal “southern bachelor gentleman,” complete with the cast-iron fortitude. Their story will reveal the pathos of the early persecutions and arrests to the uncommon freedoms in the decades that followed, as their political power began to emerge because of this culture. We will hear of AIDS emptying krewe rosters in the 1980s and eventually, the experiences during and after Katrina. They have more than a few stories to tell.