The chain from Thomas to Sherman to Johnson represents the specific institutional pathway that produced the award. When the 1917 board struck Walker’s name from the rolls, it was overriding a decision made by that chain of authority — a chain that included the theater commander, the theater’s most prominent general, and the President. The board’s authority to make that determination was the authority Congress had given it to review past awards; but it was operating at a level of authority below that of the actors who had originally made the award.
## The Specific Crime of Wearing Men’s Clothing
The arrests Walker experienced for wearing men’s clothing — most prominently in New Orleans in 1870, but reportedly in multiple other instances across the decades of her post-war life — were enforced under municipal or state ordinances that existed in various jurisdictions to prohibit cross-dressing.
The legal theory behind these ordinances varied. Some were justified as public order measures — the idea being that cross-dressing could be used to facilitate deception or crime. Others were justified as moral regulations — reflecting religious and social norms about gender and appropriate presentation. Some legal scholars of the period argued that the ordinances were a valid exercise of police power; others argued that they had no legitimate legal basis and were merely the enforcement of social convention.
Walker’s consistent position was that the ordinances were illegitimate. She did not claim an exemption or argue that her case was different from other cases; she argued that the prohibition itself was wrong. The clothes she wore were hers. The designation “men’s clothing” for the kind of suit she wore was a social label, not a legal category with principled content.