Sir Lady Java, pioneering transgender performer, 82

Los Angeles — Sir Lady Java, a pioneering transgender performer and activist who boldly challenged discriminatory laws and police harassment as a star of the Los Angeles nightclub scene in the 1960s, died Nov. 16 following a stroke, close friends confirmed last week. She was 82.

“It’s a big loss for the community,” said actor Hailie Sahar, who is preparing to play Java in a biopic and was one of her primary caregivers over the last two years. “She started an LGBTQ+ movement before there was really an LGBTQ+ community to rally behind her.”

Lady Java, as she was also known, worked as a drag queen, singer, dancer, comedian and “female impersonator” at a time when cross-dressing was forbidden without a permit, winning over crowds in predominantly straight clubs and running in circles with L.A. luminaries such as Lena Horne.

Java was a hatmaker and designer, skills she incorporated into her own ensembles. She got her start waiting tables at the Redd Foxx Club on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, but was noticed for her beauty and invited onstage, where she was a natural. Soon she was performing regularly, and alongside big names such as Richard Pryor, friends said.

“Her comedic beats were on point,” said Sahar, also a transgender woman of color known for her performance as Lulu Abundance in the award-winning FX series “Pose.”

In 1967, Java joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit challenging her arrest by Los Angeles police for performing in drag without a permit, a violation of what was then known as Rule No. 9, a local cross-dressing ordinance. She ultimately lost her case in the California Supreme Court, but the ordinance was repealed two years later.