The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century

A history of gay Chicago told through the lives of the men who were there—queer men from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth—this book reveals the complex lives of men who were sometimes invisible to the mainstream, but at other times quite visible. Some of the men, such as reporter John Wing, were public figures. Most—like Henry Gerber, who created the first “homophile” organization in the United States—were ordinary men who were unknown during their lives.The stories are diverse and riveting. Strip-tease artists Quincy de Lang and George Quinn were arrested and put on trial by a leader of Chicago’s “social purity movement,” and African American ragtime pianist Tony Jackson’s most famous song, “Pretty Baby,” was written about one of his lovers. What emerges is a complex portrait and a virtually unknown history of one of the most vibrant cities of the United States.