American singer, pianist and cabaret star Gladys Bentley was BOTD in 1907. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to an American father and a Trinidadian mother, she grew up in poverty and began identifying as male from an early age. Her gender non-conformance concerned her family, who sent her to doctors in an attempt to cure her. At 16, she ran away from home, settling in Harlem in New York City. She began performing as a singer and pianist at Harry Hansberry’s Clam House, adopting the name Bobbie Minton. Dressed in a white tuxedo and top hat, she would flirt with women in the crowd. Her songs were peppered with references to her lesbianism and reflected her determination to live outside the influence of men. In a 1928 recording of her hit song Worried Blues, she sang “What made you men folk treat us women like you do? / I don’t want no man that I got to give my money to.” By the early 1930s, she was one of the most well-known and best paid Black entertainers in the United States, befriending key figures from the Harlem Renaissance including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Harold Jackman and Carl Van Vechten (who based a character on her in his 1930 novel Parties). In 1933, she attempted to take her act to Broadway, but was sued by Hansberry, who claimed they had agreed a five-year exclusive contract. Bentley attempted to perform in Manhattan, but her risqué lyrics and performance style led to police closing down her act. She returned to Harlem in 1934, performing at the Ubangi Club until its closure in 1937. Openly lesbian, she had a series of relationships with women during the 1930s, reportedly entering into a commitment ceremony with an unknown female partner. After the repeal of Prohibition in the late 1930s, she moved to San Francisco, California, continuing her act with limited success, often having to wear dresses onstage to appease club owners. She found a more welcoming audience at Mona’s 440 Club, the first lesbian bar in San Francisco, which became her home base. In 1952, she married a chef named Charles Roberts, and claimed to have received hormone treatment to help her become heterosexual, an experience described in an article for Ebony magazine titled I Am A Woman Again. She also appears to have had a religious conversion, and trained to become a minister. She died in obscurity in 1960, aged 52. Interest in her life and work was revived following a posthumous obituary published by the New York Times in 2019, as part of its Overlooked No More series.