Nancy Valverde, a daring Chicana lesbian and gender-nonconformist, died at her Los Angeles home on Monday. She was 92.
Valverde was our local groundbreaker for LGBTQ+ rights. Growing up, she was routinely arrested for violating L.A.’s cross-dressing ban, but later was credited with helping overturn that law.
Valverde was born in Deming, New Mexico, in 1932, but her life as an Angeleno began at 9 years old when she and her father relocated to Lincoln Heights.
Growing up, she didn’t know anything about being a lesbian, but Valverde knew one thing: She felt like an outsider when all the girls would talk about cute boys.
In her teens, Valverde worked hard to provide for herself. She worked in a restaurant kitchen and did bakery deliveries. But as a young Chicana, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being treated like a second-class citizen, according to the nonprofit Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing. She saw Mexican Americans get displaced when Dodger Stadium was built, where she used to do deliveries.
All of this contributed to a rebellious streak. As Valverde got older, she started looking more masculine under the standard of those days, like wearing pants and having short hair. It was common for people to judge and comment on her appearance.
By 1949, when she was 17, the LAPD began arresting her.
The L.A. Police Department arrested her at least a dozen times for “masquerading,” which violated Ordinance 5022, a charge that came with jail time and fines.
“Masquerading” essentially meant dressing like another gender, which law enforcement used to target drag queens, transgender people and — in Valverde’s case — butch lesbians.
She served time in the Lincoln Heights jail and was put in a section of the jail derisively called the “Daddy Tank,” an area reserved for women suspected of being lesbians, according to a city council motion.
But she enlisted the help of a clerk at the L.A. County Law Library to search for rulings that showed wearing men’s clothing was not a crime. Valverde’s lawyer was able to use these findings in her defense and she stopped getting arrested.
The documentary L.A.: A Queer History is currently available to stream for free on PBS, which you can access here.
Valverde also has her own short called Nancy From Eastside Clover.
Though it wasn’t immediate, her defense helped set the stage for L.A.’s “masquerading” law to get thrown out.
In her later years, Valverde became a barber. She ended up moving to the L.A. LGBT Center’s Triangle Square apartments, a spot primarily for LGBTQ+ elders.
Among her accolades, Valverde received a Purple Lily award in 2022 for safeguarding her identity despite discrimination.
Last year, the L.A. City Council designated the downtown intersection of 2nd and Main streets as “Cooper Do-nuts / Nancy Valverde Square.” At the ceremony, the LAPD publicly apologized to Valverde and LGBTQ+ communities for its harmful past.
The L.A. LGBT Center will be announcing a service in her honor soon.
