Beginning a century ago, Black LGBTQ entertainers & writers expressed their identities freely. We have them to thank for much of our present society.

She sold more than 2 million records in the first ten months after she was signed by Columbia Records and performed on Broadway – and then the Great Depression hit.

She was singing about how she could “talk to the gals just like any old man” over 40 years before Stonewall.

Ma Rainey, called the “Mother of the Blues,” was one of the earliest known American blues singers and recording artists. She is recognized as one of the great female blues vocalists.