This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

So today's topic was part of the Harlem Renaissance as a musician. She played piano and she sang in ways that drew huge crowds starting in the 1920s. She was unique in that she was completely out as a lesbian, unusual for the time. But her story takes some really surprising turns.

She is, when she has talked about, it's often like gay icon, Gladys Bentley.

But then there are some weird parts of her story that do get mentioned by people, but they don't get picked apart as much as I would like in terms of, like, really looking closely at them.

So, we're going to do that.

And this one gets a couple of heads-ups.

So first, there are some really sad aspects of Gladys' story regarding her sexual identity

and attempts at its erasure by her parents and even by Gladys herself.

If that sounds painful to you, just be prepared or maybe skip.

Because that was part of an article that she wrote about herself in the 1950s.

That article has been questioned when it comes to whether she was purposely trying to redact

her queerness as a self-protective ruse.

Like I said, we're going to pick that apart when we get to it.

There is also a very brief mention of police brutality,

and there are very brief discussions of song lyrics about domestic abuse,

one also about a sex act.

Those are all very quick, though, so just know those are in the episode. If those are things you might be sensitive to you, or if you have a

younger history buff that listens, you might want to pre-screen. From the very beginning,

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