In the early 20^th century, students sometimes performed elaborate same-sex wedding rituals in drag. A 1918 Skiff article describes a womanless wedding sponsored by the Domestic Science Department, which “proved to be one of the funniest and most ludicrous things that has ever happened in the University…there were a number of handsome men, and also some of the boys who were dressed as girls made exceptionally beautiful girls.” The bride, Miss Henerey Fussell, and groom, Judge Raley, had a full wedding party and exchanged vows. There are records of these festivities through the 1940s.

Click here to see photo archive and here to read the full article from 1918.

In two features on gay life at TCU, a former student shares his experience feeling like the only gay man on TCU’s campus for a year and a half, only to be followed by a story detailing a group of straight TCU women who regularly go to gay clubs in Dallas for fun, but dread the Friday night drag show. The article describes the drag queens as oddities and focuses on the straight student experience of escaping from TCU to the exoticized gay bars. Click here to read the full piece.

The TCU publication etCetera profiles a drag show at the Fort Worth gay bar The Other Place, starring Bette Sheba, the drag persona of Ricky Knerr. The article refers to Knerr as a “manwoman,” but Knerr is queerly defiant: “You can call me a queer in a dress, man in panty hose, whatever, I don’t care.” He explains the tricks of the trade and insists that he loves being a man who loves men but loves putting on a show that is “more flashy Las Vegas showgirl types.” That year, Ricky Knerr won entertainer of the year in Texas. The author remarks, “Coming to a gay bar, the straight person will find normal appearing people…there is nothing about their outward appearance that tells the viewer if the patron is heterosexual or homosexual.” Click here for more.

In the fall of ’83, a Daily Skiff showcases different parties happening throughout the week of Homecoming. One event, titled “Mr. Drag Queen Contests” is for “males only” and offers $150 in prizes for the best performers. Click here for more.

At an event organized by Betty Benison for her human sexuality class, Michael Smerick Jr., the president of Tarrant County Gay Alliance, discusses the history of gay liberation citing the 1969 Stonewall riots and the role that drag queens, not gay men, played in the rebellion against police violence. Street queens, like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, identified as drag queens but were not stage performers; instead, we now refer to them as trans women.

Click here to see more.

The 7^th Annual Drag Show, “A Night in Wonderland,” sponsored by the TCU Gay-Straight Alliance hosted more than 130 people at the BLUU and featured local performers Zimora Davenport and Eliott Puckett (known as Eliott with two Ts on the 13^th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race), raising money for Youth First Texas, an LGBTQ youth organization. Click here to read the full article.

Spectrum, QUOTA (then TCU’s graduate LGBTQIA+ group), and Triota (TCU’s Women and Gender Studies Honor Society) host the first rebranded Spectrum Drag Show. The event featured local drag queen Kiana Lee as MC and included performances by Sapphire Davenport, Chanel St. John, Andre Versace, Addison L. Foster, and Mulan Alexander. In addition to the drag performances, the event also included an hour of feminist karaoke.

Read more here!

TCU’s current LGBTQIA+ organization Spectrum put on “A Night of Drag” which was an event that set the bar high for future drag shows or events at TCU. With a crowd of 350, it successfully raised money for LGBTQ S.A.V.E.S., an organization that offers assistance to youth and families in Fort Worth. Read the full article here.

TCU Women and Gender Studies department held a three-day “Critical Drag Residency” with LaWhore Vagistan aka Dr. Kareem Khubchandani and Lola Von Miramar aka Dr. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes as well as other experts on drag. One event, “Crafting Your Drag” helped students conceptualize performances for the 2020 Spectrum Drag Show, which was eventually canceled due to Covid-19. Read more here.

Dr. Nino Testa taught the first academic course at TCU focused on the art of drag. Students developed their own drag personas and recorded their own drag performances to be screened during Spectrum’s annual “Night of Drag. Due to Covid-19, a small number of students attended a live show, with student performance screened between the professional performances, and the entire show was livestreamed to the community.

Watch the show here.