Flynn's Concert Hall: A Venue for Queer Black Performance

According to queer historian Hugh Ryan (2019), Flynn's Concert Hall was a venue for varying performance acts, and hosted Black performers that were sometimes unable to gain access to other venues. The Creole Show, a troupe of Black performers that toured throughout the U.S., played at Flynn's for the first time in 1894 (Ryan, 2019). Florence Hines, a "male impersonator" led the troupe as the Master of Ceremonies and provided viewers with a representation of Blackness that resisted the typecast roles of "mammy" that Black performers were often forced into in venues dominated by White audiences/managers (McAllister, 2011).

Flynn's Concert Hall was one among many venues for queer performance and public interaction. While other parts of Brooklyn catered to high income audiences, Coney Island provided the working class with various forms of entertainment, from musical and theatrical performances to public beaches and bathhouses. This became particularly true after May 1st, 1920, when the price of a subway fare to Coney Island dropped from 10 cents to 5 cents, the equivalent of fares to other parts of New York City (Peiss, 1986). Residents from all over the city flocked to Coney Island all days of the week to consume and participate in entertainment that you could not find anywhere else. From "freak shows" that hosted "bearded ladies" to vaudeville performances with drag king hosts, Coney Island carved out space for more expansive expressions of gender identity (Ryan, 2019).

McAllister, Marvin. Whiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance. University of North Carolina Press, November 15, 2011.

Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Temple University Press, April 6, 1986.

Ryan, Hugh. When Brooklyn Was Queer. St. Martin's Publishing. 2019