Sarria, José Julio (1922–2013). Original photograph of José Sarria performing at the Black Cat Café, circa 1959–1960. 8 x 10 in. on heavy stock. Some technical annotations in pencil on verso by the photographer. About fine. The original frame from which the picture was removed is included.

A superb vintage photograph of Sarria performing in drag at the Black Cat Café, a bar once located at 710 Montgomery Street that formed the epicenter of San Francisco’s gay community from the 1940s to its closure in 1963. José Sarria, who would come be called the “Rosa Parks of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement,” was the star attraction.

Exterior view of the Black Cat Café, 1941. Sam Cherry / San Francisco Examiner.

Born in San Francisco, Sarria worked as a waiter in the Black Cat after his discharge from the army. When one of his colleagues was discovered by a talent scout, Sarria took over his role as the café’s singing waiter. In 1958, he inaugurated a Sunday Opera program with weekly solo performances of selected scenes from Madame Butterfly, Aida, and other standards from the repertoire, judiciously altered. To his musical performances, “the Nightingale of Montgomery Street" added improvised sermons on gay rights that blended stand-up comedy with trenchant political commentary. Sarria concluded his performances by leading the audience in a chorus of “God Save Us Nelly Queens,” soon canonized as a drag anthem.

The present photograph pictures a Sunday Opera performance of Gounod's Faust. An annotation on the back of the frame dates it to 1959 or 1960. Sarria later described the circumstances:

In the opera Faust there is a classic final act. Marguerite is to be burned at the stake because she had a baby out of wedlock. She was also the cause of her brother’s death. She is burned and the Lord comes down and takes her soul. I played the final scene on a tall ladder, climbing up and down as I sang until the final dramatic note. Then I stepped from the top of the ladder onto a section of the cat’s roof, as though I had finally entered Paradise.

We know of two images from this performance, both taken the same evening (as witnessed by an examination of the audience members). One, widely available, appears to be available only as a low-resolution photocopy from a printed source:

José Sarria papers, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco

This one is not only much clearer, but is also (in our opinion) a much better image, offering a clearer view of Sarria and the extraordinary papier-maché sculpture hanging from the ceiling. A cropped version was reprinted in one installment of a series of reminiscences Serria published in the San Francisco Sentinel:

Sentinel USA, 28 March 1985, p. 19

Shortly after the photograph was taken, Sarria launched his political career. His 1961 campaign for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was unsuccessful but it galvanized the gay community, preparing the way for Harvey Milk a decade and a half later. Over the next several years Sarria helped to found a series of gay rights organizations, including the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), the Tavern Guild of San Francisco, and International Imperial Court System (IICS), all of which would set the stage for the gay liberation movements of the Stonewall era.

This photograph, which came to us framed, is from the collection of Naomi Murdach (née Clinton E. Tutt, 1932–2019), who was highly active in gay theatricals and drag pageants in San Francisco from the 1960s to 1980s. The bulk of Murdach’s archives are housed at the Bancroft Library.

An iconic image from a key moment in LGBTQ+ history.

Selected References

Berubé, Allan. Remember the Black Cat / The first stonewall, 1983. Allen Berubé papers, Series II.A, Professional Papers: Writings, Talks and Slide Shows, 1968-2006, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society, Box 13, Folder 15. GALE|HSODWX359717103

Bullough, Vern L. Jose Sarria (1923–), in Before Stonewall. New York: Routledge, 2002

Carlsson, Chris. The Black Cat Café. https://www.foundsf.org/The_Black_Cat_Cafe

Castells, Manuel. The city and the grassroots: a cross-cultural theory of urban social movements. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983

California Museum. José Julio Sarria. https://californiamuseum.org/jose-julio-sarria/

Gorman, Michael R. The empress is a man: stories from the life of José Sarria. New York: Routledge, 2014

Hughes, Beth. "San Francisco's Own Stonewall," San Francisco Examiner, 4 June 1989, p. 3.

Reithmayr, Mori. The Invention of Gay Community in San Francisco, 1960–1970. The Historical Journal. Published online 2025:1-21. doi:10.1017/S0018246X24000621

Retzloff, Tim. Eliding trans Latino/a queer experience in U.S. LGBT history: José Sarria and Sylvia Rivera reexamined. Centro journal 19/1 (2007) 140-61

Sarria, José and Tom Murray, The nightingale of Montgomery Street: Conversations with the Widow Norton, part seven: the Black Cat, Sentinel USA, 28 March 1985

-----., The nightingale of Montgomery Street: Conversations with the Widow Norton [part eight]: Sunday Opera, Sentinel USA, 9 May 1985

Scott, Damon. The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023