The woman who penned “America the Beautiful” and a Harlem Renaissance cross-dressing performer share a birthday. “America the Beautiful” shines as today’s poem.
The date is August 12th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Katharine Lee Bates, American educator and poet.
Bates most notably penned the lyrics for “America the Beautiful.” The words were inspired by a hike to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Bates happened to be teaching a course at a Colorado school for the summer.
Bates’s first draft of “America the Beautiful” was jotted down in a notebook between teaching classes. It was first published in 1895 in a small weekly journal and gained notoriety in 1904 when a new version appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, an afternoon newspaper.
But Bates did more than just write “America the Beautiful.” She was a noted educator at Wellesley College, the author of multiple books, and a journalist. She is credited with making American Literature a legitimate course of study and is perhaps the first woman to write a textbook. Her textbook is credited with elevating the writing of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, who were considered fringe writers at the time.
An unmarried woman in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Bates most certainly endured sexism throughout her career. She made it a point to represent the working classes, particularly women. As a war correspondent during the Spanish American War she attempted to show both sides of the fight in order to combat the rampant demonization of the Spanish people.
Bates maintained an intimate friendship with her fellow Wellesley professor Katharine Coman. The two lived together in the Bates Home, but the full details of their relationship were lost when Bates burned the majority of their letters to each other. Historians are split on the exact nature of their relationship, but the LGBT has embraced Katharine Lee Bates as an icon.
In 1970, Bates was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame more than 40 years after her death in 1929. Two elementary schools – one in her hometown Falmouth, MA and one in Colorado Springs, Colorado – are named in Katharine Lee Bates honor. Her manuscripts and letters are preserved by Wellesley College, Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and the Falmouth Historical Society.
And today is the birthday of Gladys Bentley, performer, and artist.
As Gladys Bentley matured during the early 1910s, her sexual orientation became more obvious, much to the dismay of her conservative Trinidadian parents. Feeling wholly unaccepted by her family and community, at 16, Bentley ran away from home.
She landed in New York at the time of the Harlem Renaissance and ended up thriving. Bentley quickly entered show business, gaining a reputation as a talented entertainer and creator of material. Her act usually consisted of performing in drag to her own humorous and risqué compositions.
Despite being openly gay, Gladys Bentley was embraced by the Harlem community and fans alike. She was so beloved as a performer, the main speakeasy that hosted her would rename itself “Barbara’s Exclusive Club” – Barbara “Bobbie” Minton being her stage name.
Unfortunately, as time wore on, Bentley was not able to achieve ever increasing fame. When she took her act to Broadway, it was shut down for being too raunchy. Bentley then moved to Los Angeles, CA to try her act there, but she was never able to be as successful as her time in Harlem.
As Cultural mores shifted away from the loose, easygoing acceptance of the 1920s to the more conservative, afraid views of the 1940s and ‘50s, Bentley found herself under McCarthy Era scrutiny.
She retreated from performing, attempted and failed at a heterosexual marriage, and finally found some peace in working a ministership.
America the Beautiful [America. A Poem for July 4.]
Katharine Lee Bates
O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When once or twice, for man’s avail,
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
[This is the original 1893 version of poem, with the last stanza updated to the modern version.]