# @gettyimages on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CBlk7TDAzbP
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/16446117-gettyimages-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/5a710efe03.jpg
- **Posted:** 2020-06-18T18:51:26.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Getty Images (@GettyImages) — https://gondola.cc/GettyImages

## Caption

In a series of images from 1962, guests at the National Variety Artists Exotic Carnival and Ball, held at the Manhattan Center, are escorted by police after being charged with masquerading and indecent exposure.⁠⠀
Seven years later, in the same New York borough, the Stonewall riots would ignite following a police raid on the LBGTQ+ bar, marking the beginning of the Pride movement.⁠⠀
The city's drag balls have a rich history dating back to the 19th century, staged in defiance of "masquerade laws" - designed to prevent costume being used to disguise criminal activity, the laws were misused in discrimination of gender variance.⁠⠀
With Harlem's Hamilton Lodge hosting the first reported event in 1869, by the 1920s, a thriving ballroom scene had been established in the Manhattan neighbourhood, running in tandem with the Black cultural movement of the Harlem Renaissance. The poet Langston Hughes was a participant, and recalled "the queerly assorted throng on the dance floor, males in flowing gowns and feathered headdresses and females in tuxedos and box-back suits.” ⁠⠀
Despite a period of relative acceptance during the countercultural surge of the Prohibition era, drag balls faced increased persecution from the 1930s onwards in the form of entrapment, arrests, and sensationalist coverage in the press.⁠⠀
The scene however, would continue to flourish and resist, with ballroom figures Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera playing central roles in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. ⁠⠀
Today, the influence and history of Harlem ballroom is celebrated in popular culture, widely referencing the underground model of the 1970s - 1990s. Explore the role of Black and Latino LGBTQ+ communities in its development gettyarchive, through the life of performer Willi Ninja.⁠⠀
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📷: Bettmann/Getty Images | 26 October 1962 | gettyarchive | #MovingTheWorldWithPride #GettyImagesPride ⁠#GettyImages25 #PreservingThePast #GettyArchive⁠⠀
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#harlemballroom #pride2020 #LGBTQhistory #parisisburning #LGBTQ #pridemonth #pridehistory #dragball #ballroomculture #queerhistory #queerculture #historyphoto #historyphotographed #archivephoto #photoarchive #vintagephoto #photolibrary #gettyimages

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## Tags

queerhistory, photoarchive, harlemballroom, gettyimages, archivephoto, movingtheworldwithpride, lgbtq, pridehistory, pride2020, queerculture, historyphotographed, vintagephoto, dragball, ballroomculture, historyphoto, gettyimagespride, gettyarchive, parisisburning, gettyimages25, photolibrary, pridemonth, preservingthepast, lgbtqhistory

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