Crystal LaBeija


Crystal LaBeija was a Manhattan trans woman and drag queen who founded the House of LaBeija in 1977. The House is often credited as starting the house system in ball culture for homeless LGBTQ youth, she tried to act as a mother to them.

Career

LaBeija originally worked and competed on the Manhattan drag circuit under the name of Crystal LaAsia, before changing her name to LaBeija as Latin queens kept calling her La Belleza. In the 1960s and 1970s, drag queens of color were expected to whiten their appearance to help their chances at winning competitions and they often faced racist environments. LaBeija was one of only a few African American drag queens to be awarded a "Queen of the Ball" title at a drag ball organized by whites during this era. In 1967, she was crowned Miss Manhattan.
LaBeija subsequently competed in the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant held in New York City Town Hall, a competition documented in The Queen. In a scene towards the end of documentary, LaBeija, upset with the perceived racism of the white-run balls, accused the pageant organizer Flawless Sabrina of rigging the judging in the favor of a white queen, Rachel Harlow. Refusing to participate further in a discriminatory system, LaBeija worked with another Black drag queen, Lottie LaBeija, to host a ball just for Black queens. This event, the first to be hosted by a House, was titled "Crystal & Lottie LaBeija presents the first annual House of Labeija Ball at Up the Downstairs Case on West 115th Street & 5th Avenue in Harlem, NY" and took place in 1972.
LaBeija continued to work as a drag performer and activist throughout the 1970s and 1980s. RuPaul's first experience of a drag performance was seeing LaBeija perform a lipsync routine at a nightclub in Atlanta in 1979.
LaBeija died of liver failure in 1982.

Legacy

LaBeija's iconic speech about racial discrimination in queer culture in The Queen continues to reverberate in queer culture. Aja drew on it in her performance as LaBeija as part of the Snatch Game in RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars in 2018, while musician Frank Ocean sampled it in a 2016 track.
, the eponymous House founded by LaBeija still exists. She was succeeded as House mother by Pepper LaBeija; the current mother of the House of LaBeija is Kia LaBeija.
In June 2019, LaBeija was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Stonewall Inn. The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history, and the wall’s unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.