The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South

THREE. Drag in the Daylight

THREE Drag in the Daylight I f the war enjoyed an interesting union with drag, the war’s end made drag a most peculiar widow. The atmosphere following the war dictated a return to a normalcy that truly never was. The new look-a-like American suburb was evidence of an increasingly homogenized national culture. New television icons such as Donna Reed, donning her string of pearls and kitchen apron, showed American audiences the value of an orthodox American family. Helped along by such things as growing public fascination with the emerging field of sexology, drag was seen less as a valuable, if not lucrative, form of rural entertainment and fundraising and more as a subversive potential challenge to the new model of the American family. With this, the popularity of productions such as womanless weddings began to subside. Even the administration at tiny Hendrix College openly discouraged freshman males from participating in them.1 This trend was helped along by a most unusual and high-profile case involving the state’s notorious penal system. Although many considered Arkansas’s penal system the most corrupt and inhumane in the nation, most Arkansans turned a deaf ear to the tales of sadism and brutality that filtered out of the prison farms. After all, the prison system caused few public problems and at times even turned a profit for the state. Arkansas prisons achieved this through their largely self-sufficient system, producing useful materials such as cotton and lumber at cut-rate cost for all-too-eager state buyers. The two principal institutions were Cummins Prison Farm, built on land acquired by the state in 1902, and Tucker Prison Farm, constructed in 1916. After the end of the Second World War, the institutions sprawled over a combined 21,000 acres of southeast Arkansas farmland, not too far from the Japanese American internment camps at Rohwer and Jerome. Both prison camps were facilities built with self-sufficiency and profit in mind. 43 Both locations had road gangs, chicken farms, and forestry camps, not to mention thousands of acres of cultivated crops tended by prison hoe gangs.2 Like stories of abuse and brutality that seemed to filter out to the Arkansas populace, so did stories of sex and gender “confusion.” Homosexuality, or perhaps more so the act of homosex, has been closely associated with prison life for some time.3 It was common at both Tucker andCumminsforolderandoftenphysicallylarger,maleprisonerstoadopt a “punk,” or younger male sexual partner, usually in an arrangement tantamount to brutal and systematic same-sex rape inside a power system already based on exploitation and abuse. It was estimated by some Arkansas prison officials that perhaps 80 percent of prisoners had raped, been raped, or had same-sex sexual experiences with other inmates.4 And since virtually all prison guards were themselves prisoners, called trusties, pay-offs, bribes, and demands for sexual favors from other inmates were high. Homosexuality and homosex were a viable issue at both prisons, at times considerably slowing down production. To combat this, prison officialsroutinelymade “known-homosexuals” trusties, givingthemgunsand making them tower guards, positions that insured that they would be alone all day. Still, brutal and sadistic homosex persisted. But not all sex was nonconsensual, as men in a prison, much like its army counterpart, found comfort in the arms of others. Also, beyond these occurrences, tales of male prisoners in drag, often taking on female names and personas, made their way to the free-world parlors of Arkansas. One such inmate, Hazel, had achieved notoriety at Tucker and throughout the entire penal system. Hazel, whose actual name is unknown, wore a red wig and bib overalls and stood over six feet tall. Prison officials remember Hazel as a good worker and a valuable asset to the farm teams, though the only real problem they had with him was that Hazel had to be constantly moved from prison job to prison job due to her “seductive nature.” Jimmy Carlin, a trusty long-line rider in charge of the tractor squad at Tucker, complained to his supervisors that “he . . . she, whatever it is, is always out in the ditch laying one of my tractor boys. Every time I see a tractor with nobody on it I find Hazel down in the ditch blowing someone. Hazel is getting all the action, and I’m not getting any plowing done.”5 Administrators were truly torn. Hazel was providing a service of sorts by offering a sexual outlet to men in a...