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According to findings by Dr. Genny Beemyn addressed in their book "Trans Bodies, Trans Selves", members of the underground LGBTQ+ community in large cities of the late nineteenth century began to organize masquerade balls known as "drags".

In his essay "Spectacles of Colors", Langston Hughes describes his experience at a drag ball in the 1920s. "'Strangest and gaudiest of all Harlem spectacles in the '20s, and still the strangest and gaudiest, is the annual Hamilton Club Lodge Ball at Rockland Palace Casino. I once attended as a guest of A'Lelia Walker. It is the ball where men dress as women and women dress as men. During the height go the New Negro era and the tourist invasion of Harlem, it was fashionable for the intelligentsia and social leaders of both Harlem and the downtown area to occupy boxes at this ball and look down from above at the queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor, males in flowing gowns and feathered headdresses and females in tuxedoes and box-back suits.' —Langston Hughes"In the subsequent decades, drag balls eventually developed the modern, mainstream format we know today.