Nancy Valverde Explained

Nancy Valverde (March 5, 1932 – March 25, 2024) was an American Chicana LGBT rights activist and pioneer in Los Angeles, California, who was considered a lesbian icon.

Early life

Born on March 5, 1932, in Deming, New Mexico, to Mexican-American parents, Nancy Valverde and her father moved to Lincoln Heights, then a predominantly Chicano neighborhood in Los Angeles when she was nine years old.[1]

Work

Valverde started working at the age of eleven picking apricots and cotton in Santa Paula and Tulare County, California. At thirteen, she assisted the women who worked in the kitchen at a local neighborhood restaurant, where she continued to work even when the restaurant switched owners and became a Mexican owned bakery. Even though she did not have a driver's license, she worked driving pastry deliveries around Los Angeles. At the age of seventeen, she worked as a manager for an apartment complex, after first working for the apartment complex doing painting jobs. She later became a barber. Since she had not completed her education beyond elementary school, she could not enter barber school, but upon passing an IQ test, she received her barbers license. Though she was paid less than her male colleagues, it was her work at a local barbershop in East Los Angeles that made her famous.[2]

Personal life

Valverde experienced discrimination as a Chicana and as a lesbian. As a masculine presenting woman, with short hair and masculine clothing, she was often harassed by the LAPD, who charged her with violating what were known as masquerading laws,[3] which prohibited men and women from wearing gender nonconforming clothes. Nancy, who identified as a woman, and chose to wear men's clothing for comfort, was often targeted because of her masculine presentation.[4] She was routinely harassed and detained multiple times at Lincoln Heights jail and in a section of the Sybil Brand Institute for women known as the Daddy Tank.[5] The Daddy Tank was a private wing of SBI where masculine presenting women and lesbians were held.[6] After doing research at the Los Angeles County Law Library in 1951, Nancy found legal proof that it was not in fact a crime for a woman to wear men's clothing. Her lawyer used this to end the ongoing arrests.[7] [8]

Despite being known and well liked by community members, she was nonetheless discriminated against for being a lesbian. Even after the police ceased the arrests, they would often knock on the window of her barber shop on Brooklyn Avenue with their nightsticks.

Valverde lived with the same woman for 25 years and raised four boys.On June 22 and 24, 2023, the intersection of 2nd Street and Main in Downtown Los Angeles was unveiled as Cooper Do-Nuts/Nancy Valverde Square.[9] The unveiling was attended by Nancy's sister and niece, Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin DeLeon, and Los Angeles Police Department Commander Ruby Flores, who apologized to Nancy and the LGBTQ Community on behalf of the LAPD.[10] [11] Community members and LGBTQ clergy attended the installation of the signs on June 22, 2023.

Valverde died at her home in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on March 25, 2024, at the age of 92.[12]

Books, plays, documentaries, features

Nancy Valverde has recently become the subject of historians of LGBT histories. She has been featured in a number of documentaries, book chapters, plays, and performances.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Nancy Valverde - Los Angeles LGBT Center - Senior Services . 2023-12-12 . gleh.vanguardnow.org.
  2. Web site: Nancy Valverde - Los Angeles LGBT Center - Senior Services. gleh.vanguardnow.org. 2018-11-28.
  3. Web site: How Dressing in Drag Was Labeled a Crime in the 20th Century . Hugh . Ryan . September 14, 2023 . . March 27, 2024.
  4. Book: Roots of Equality. Tom De Simone. Teresa Wang. Melissa Lopez. Diem Tran. Andy Sacher. Lavender Los Angeles. June 2011. Arcadia Publishing. 978-0-7385-7490-5. 47.
  5. Web site: 2011-02-01 . Situational Lesbians & the Daddy Tank: Women Prisoners Negotiating Queer Identity and Space, 1970-1980 . 2022-04-12 . Genders 1998-2013 . en.
  6. Book: Córdova, Jeanne . When we were outlaws: a memoir of love & revolution . 2011 . 978-1-935226-51-2 . Spinsters Ink . Midway, FL . 712116600.
  7. Web site: A Gender Variance Who's Who: Nancy Valverde (1932–) barber.. zagria.blogspot.com. 30 January 2013 . 2018-11-28.
  8. Web site: Nancy From Eastside Clover, Lincoln Heights (Queer History). Barrio Boychik. 30 June 2017 . 2018-11-28.
  9. Web site: Los Angeles Times . 2023-06-09 . Downtown L.A. corner designated a historic landmark for LGBTQ+ community . 2023-12-12 . Los Angeles Times . en-US.
  10. Web site: 2023-06-23 . LAPD issues apology to LGBTQ+ community during ceremony honoring activists . 2023-12-12 . ABC7 Los Angeles . en.
  11. Web site: 2023-10-18 . Lesbian activist Nancy Valverde looks back on her lifelong fight for equal rights . 2023-12-12 . ABC7 Los Angeles . en.
  12. News: Nancy Valverde, iconic LGBTQ+ activist in Los Angeles, dies at 92 . 26 March 2024 . ABC7 . 26 March 2024.

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