“Mother of Us All”

Even now, decades after her death, Sweet Evening Breeze is still well remembered. Find anyone who lived in Lexington before 1980, and they will have a Sweet Evening Breeze story to share. Perhaps they’ll tell you about the time Sweets, dressed in “feminine frills,” descended in a basket from the rafters of Woodland Auditorium to dance “the passion dance of the bongo bangoes.” Older Lexington residents may recall her strolls through downtown, parasol in hand, or how she would sit near the entrance of The Living Room keeping a watchful eye on timid first-time visitors to the gay bar.

*Sweets with Tiffany Ross at The Living Room. 1970s. Collection of the Faulkner Morgan Archive.*

Some of the stories that circulate, however, are not true. Possibly the most common misconception about Sweets is that she was intersexed, having both male and female genitalia. While unture, Sweets may have encouraged people to believe she was intersexed—a biological reasoning that explained her effeminacy and sexual tastes—to help survive in a hostile community.

Sweets was also certainly living in a hostile community. During her life, she was arrested for “disorderly conduct,” her house at 186 Prall Street was vandalized, and, once, she was so badly beaten by several young white men that she had to be hospitalized.

Yet, Sweets was irrepressible, and she gained a tacit acceptance in Lexington. As one gay man recalled, “Sweets was the official town queer,” and she held that title for decades. Starting in the 1920s, Sweets hosted public drag performances, and by the 1930s she appeared in Lexington’s newspapers, photographed in a bridal gown and promoting her “womanless weddings,” entertainments she hosted in local black churches.

Before the 1970s, Sweets would have been the first, perhaps the only, openly queer person many Kentuckians, both queer and straight, knew. Late in her life, Sweets recalled a time when there were no gay people in Lexington except herself and “a few other black boys.” Sweets went on to say, “Lawd, child, there are so many of them gays now I can’t keep up with them. It’s like you can’t find a man around here anymore—they’re all sissies now. They’re hatching out like chickens out of eggs.”

Sweets’ robust sex life was a poorly kept secret. Although her sexual partners included men from various walks of life, her most famous “callers” were the athletes at the whites-only, racially segregated University of Kentucky. According to her close friend who attended some of Sweets’ parties, coaches preferred their players visiting Sweets, considering the encounters harmless fun that kept the young men from getting into “trouble” with their co-eds.

The most surprising part of Sweet’s story is that she did achieve a certain amount of acceptance and freedom not enjoyed by most queers and blacks in Lexington. But any acceptance Sweets experienced was something she achieved; it was not willingly given to her. According to her friend Leigh Angelique, Sweets was rarely harassed because she had the ability to reveal the sexual proclivities of important white men, and she used this threat to make sure she and her friends remained safe. When Lexington Police raided a drag performance at The Living Room and arrested four drag queens, including Leigh Angelique, the performers went to Sweets for help. Sweets called the judge in their case, demanding he dismiss the charges of impersonation. The judge complied.

Sweet Evening Breeze deserves whatever fame she has received. Born in the late 1800s, a child of former slaves, Sweets lived in a racially segregated city where homosexual acts were illegal throughout her entire lifetime. Yet she refused to be anything but herself, daring to live openly and honestly. Perhaps Sweets was not more famous than Adolf Rupp, but she was certainly accomplishing something much more important. Sweet Evening Breeze was building a Lexington that looked more like her than her contemporaries could have ever imagined, forging a path followed by every LGBTQ person who has since strolled through Kentucky.

VISIT THE “MOTHER OF US ALL” MURAL IN DOWNTOWN LEXINGTON

Painted by GAIA. Located at 161 N Limestone, Lexington, KY, 40507

Sweet Evening Breeze

VISIT THE “MOTHER OF US ALL” MURAL IN DOWNTOWN LEXINGTON

Leigh Angelique

Robert Morgan