American journalist and activist Anita Cornwell was BOTD in 1923. Born in Greenwood in racially-segregated South Carolina, she and her mother moved to Philadelphia when she was a teenager. She studied journalism and and social sciences at Temple University, coming out as a lesbian while a student. Many years later, she wrote “we of the Fifties (and the Forties and on back to when) not only had to operate from the closet but, worse yet, most of us seemed to exist in a vacuum.” She became a member of the Daughters of Bilitis and a founding member of the Philadelphia chapter of Radicalesbians. Her early writings, published in The Ladder and The Negro Digest, are among the earliest published journalism by a self-identified Black lesbian. She is best known for her 1983 book Black Lesbian in White America, the first collection of essays published by an African-American lesbian, and featuring an interview with her friend and colleague Audre Lorde. A lifelong activist, Cornwell wrote extensively about racism within the gay and lesbian communities, argued that lesbians must address their internalised misogyny and homophobia. In 2000, she was honoured at the Annual Lambda Literary Festival. She died in 2023, aged 99.