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SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Sarah Schlead, and I'm a junior producer at Wonder Media Network. I'm so excited to be closing out Pride Month as your guest host of Womanica. We're celebrating Pride Month with icons, supreme queens of queer culture. Some are household names. Others are a little more behind the scenes. All of them have defied social norms and influenced generations of people to be unapologetically themselves. Today, we're talking about a woman who stood against a Los Angeles law that targeted trans women, drag performers, and anyone who dared to live openly outside the gender binary. Her fierce advocacy made her a trailblazer for the trans community. Please welcome Sir Lady Java. Sir Lady Java was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in the early 1940s. She grew up idolizing the glamorous and beautiful women she saw on the silver screen, Mae West, Lena Horne, Josephine Baker. With the support of her mother, Java began living as a girl from a young age. While the vocabulary surrounding transgender identity was very different when Java was a young woman than it is now, today, she would probably identify as a trans woman. Java developed a keen interest in style as a child and began working in hat-making and fashion design after graduating from high school. To supplement her income, she also worked in nightclubs in New Orleans. In the mid-1960s, Java moved to Los Angeles. She got a job waiting tables at the Red Fox Club, owned by stand-up comedian and actor Red Fox. Java was at another nightclub in town when the owner Gertrude Gibson took an interest in her. She invited Java up on stage and helped to begin a new chapter of Java's life in the City of Angels. She began performing in clubs across the city, becoming the first trans woman of color to launch a career as a nightclub performer in Los Angeles. Java's stage act showcased her many talents, from singing to impersonations to stand-up comedy. She was also known for her shake dancing, a style of jazz dance in which Java would shake her whole body from her shoulders down. She had a commanding presence and was known to silence a band just by walking into a room. Java also dazzled audiences with her glitz and glamor. Her background in fashion allowed her to create dazzling costumes, often featuring materials like feathers or fishing line. She got her stage name, Sir Lady Java, from a passerby on a city street. As she strolled by, a man on the sidewalk called out to her, saying that she looked like Java, deep, dark, and delicious. She thought the nickname was fitting and kept it. The Sir Lady reflected her gender identity, a drag performer who lived as a woman when she was off stage too. Java quickly became a staple of the city's nightlife and attracted many stars and starlets to her performances, like Richard Pryor, James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., and even her longtime idol, Lena Horne. But despite her popularity and magnetism as a performer, Java's club career faced an existential threat. During the late 1960s, drag performance was not nearly as mainstream as it is today. Performers like Java were usually referred to as female impersonators, and they were often the target of laws and police raids meant to tamp down on performances that blurred the rigid lines of gender identity. Java later recalled, "'They were kind of cruel to me.'" Java soon became a special target of the city's police. In one instance, roughly 50 officers showed up to arrest her under the three-piece rule. It was a law stating that a person must always be wearing at least three articles of clothing that corresponded to the sex they were assigned at birth. Java was able to argue to the police that the socks, wristwatch, and bow tie she was wearing were enough, and she narrowly avoided arrest. In 1967, the city passed a new ordinance that became known as Rule 9. It essentially outlawed shows in which a performer was impersonating the opposite sex. It targeted the kinds of clubs and venues that had become safe spaces for the queer community in Los Angeles. The only way for Java to keep performing was to get a special permit from the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners. Red Fox, the club owner who often hosted her acts, applied for one. His application was denied. The clubs where Java had become popular now had to ban her from performing or risk losing their licenses. But Java wasn't ready to give up. She connected with the local chapter of the ACLU to try and legally challenge Rule 9 as unconstitutional. It prevented her from being able to work, but they weren't actually able to sue. Only a club owner was technically allowed to challenge the law, and none of them were willing to join Java in the suit because they were too afraid of losing their businesses. But Java helped fight Rule 9 in other ways. She organized the LGBT community to attend rallies and protests against the Los Angeles Police Commission. The press coverage of these events helped boost their mission. Eventually, another lawsuit was filed against Rule 9 in 1969. That same year, it was struck down. Java returned to the stage and continued to dazzle audiences throughout the 1970s and 80s. ["The Daily Show Theme"] ["The Daily Show Theme"] In the decades since her fight against Rule 9, her story of defiance against the L.A. police has made her an inspiration to the trans community today. As Java once said, if you can't be yourself, who can you be? All month, we've been talking about icons. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Womanaka Podcast. As always, we're taking a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday when we return with a new theme.
SPEAKER_06: ["The Daily Show Theme"] ["The Daily Show Theme"]
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SPEAKER_00: ["The Daily Show Theme"] Do you hear it? The clock is ticking. It's time for the new season of 60 Minutes. The CBS News Sunday Night tradition is back for its 56th season with all new big name interviews, hard-hitting investigations, and epic adventures. No place, no one, no story is off limits, and you'll always learn something new. It's time for 60 Minutes. New episode airs Sunday, September 24th on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
