*Gladys Bentley was a gay, gender-bending singer who joined New York’s Harlem Renaissance jazz scene at age 16.
She was known for “performing piano and vocals at the most popular gay bars, wearing men’s clothing, and openly flirting with women in the audience,” per PBS. The outlet writes, “In a time when homosexuality was widely considered sinful and deviant, Bentley wore men’s clothing — a tuxedo and top hat — and became famous for her lesbian-themed lyrics covering popular tunes of the day, and for openly flirting with women in the audience.”
Bentley faced scrutiny and pressure from homophobes and the Black church about her gender identity. So much so that started performing in women’s clothing.
She is quoted as saying in 1952, “Some of us wear the symbols and badges of our nonconformity. Others, seeking to avoid the censure of society, hide behind respectable fronts, haunted always by the fear of exposure and ostracism… All about us we hear the condemnation of our kind. We hear the scornful word labels used in referring to us. We wince at the many harsh suggestions of what should be done to rid the world of the abnormalcy to which we cling… To the great majority of us, at some time or other, has come the feeling that the world would be better off without us.”
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In a 1952 article written by Bentley titled “I’M A WOMAN AGAIN,” which was published in the August issue of Ebony magazine, she described the “miracle” that made her “a woman again.”
In the article, Bentley suggests her complicated queer identity was the result of the abuse she suffered in her childhood. She believed herself to be a sinner, writing “I cannot but vehemently condemn and denounce those who defend deviation.”
Per Momentum, “Some historians believe Bentley’s article to have been a strategic move rather than a legitimate confessional—that it was a public attempt to create a safe image for herself during the McCarthy era and subsequently doesn’t reflect how she actually felt about her gender or her sexuality.”
“The 1950s were even more conservative than the early part of the 20th century. We see a real change so that somebody who is identified as lesbian or gay is considered a national menace. It’s up there with being a communist,” said Jim Wilson, author of the book “Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance.” “So Gladys Bentley abandoned that and seems to want to restart her career as a more traditional black woman performer.”
Blues music in the 1920s was so far under the radar of mainstream America, female blues singers could get away with occasionally expressing their unconventional desires… As it turns out, the blues world was the perfect realm for people who were thought of as “sexual deviants” to inhabit, in part because people in the entertainment industry had far more leeway to flout sexual mores… In Jazz Age speakeasies, dive bars, and private parties, blue singers had the freedom to explore alternative sexuality, and, on a rare occasion, they even expressed it in song.(Source)
As reported by Get Pocket, in 1960, Bentley succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 52.
