American poet, teacher and activist Katharine Lee Bates was BOTD in 1859. Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she was one of the first students to attend the all-female Wellesley College, and later studied at Oxford University. She began lecturing in English literature at Wellesley in 1891, living with her colleague Katharine Coman in what is believed to have been a lesbian relationship. A prolific writer, she is best known for her poem America the Beautiful, which was set to music by Samuel Ward and became a popular alternative national anthem. Bates and Coman lived together until Coman’s death in 1915. In 1922, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance, a collection of love poems addressed to Coman, which emphasise their deep emotional connection, though biographers are still divided as to whether the women were lovers. A committed social reformer, Bates published articles and gave lecturers advocating for the rights of the poor, people of colour and immigrants, and worked as a war correspondent for The New York Times in 1898. She worked at Wellesley until her retirement in 1925, dying in 1929, aged 69.