Missouri

Award-Winning Country Music Star

b. October 25, 1970

“I hear the word "tolerance"… I am gay, and I am not seeking to be ‘tolerated.’ One tolerates a toothache, rush-hour traffic, an annoying neighbor with a cluttered yard. I am not a negative to be tolerated.”

Chely Wright is an award-winning country singer-songwriter and LGBT activist. She is widely regarded as the first major American country music artist to come out publicly.

Raised in a musical family in Wellsville, Kansas, Wright started piano lessons at age 4. She knew she was a lesbian by age 9. Growing up Christian in a small farming town, she believed her feelings were “sinful” and kept her sexuality secret long into adulthood. 

Wright always dreamed of becoming a country star. She started to sing professionally when she was 11. In her senior year of high school, she began performing in the Ozark Jubilee, a music show in Branson, Missouri. After graduation, Wright sang as part of a production in Opryland USA, a theme park outside of Nashville. 

Wright’s career took off in her mid 20s. In 1995 she earned the Academy of Country Music Award for Top New Female Vocalist on the merits of her debut album, “Woman in the Moon.” Some of her most famous hits include “Shut Up and Drive” (1997), “I Already Do” (1998) and “Single White Female” (1999), which reached No. 1 on the country music charts. The song earned her several award nominations, most notably for top female artist and best music video. 

Wright’s 2001 album, “Never Love You Enough,” reached the Top 5. Her 2005 ballad “The Bumper of My SUV” was nominated for Best Patriotic Song by the Country Weekly Awards. She performed it while entertaining U.S. troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Germany. 

By 2006 Wright had grown severely depressed and suicidal. No longer able to hide her sexuality, she poured her soul into a memoir, “Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer.” When the book was published in May 2010, Wright came out on NBC’s “The Today Show” and in People.com. Her widely publicized coming out was chronicled in the award-winning documentary, “Wish Me Away.”

Wright founded the LIKEME® Organization to promote LGBT equality and prevent bullying in classrooms. The organization expanded to offer college scholarships to young LGBT advocates, and in 2012 opened the LIKEME Lighthouse, a community center for LGBT youth in Kansas City, Missouri.

Wright has released eight studio albums and more than 19 singles. She continues to perform and advocate for LGBT rights. Among other honors, she has received a Lambda Literary Award for her autobiography; the Family Equality Council’s award for Outstanding Work as an LGBT Activist; and the Black Tie Media Award.

Wright married  Lauren Blitzer in 2011. They are the parents of identical twins.

Pioneering Military Activist

b. August 20, 1948
d. March 17, 1996 

"For 16 years the Army said being homosexual wasn't detrimental to my job. Then, after the fact, they said it was. Logic is a lost art in the Army."

Perry J. Watkins was an African-American soldier who won a landmark lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of his military discharge due to his homosexuality.

Born in Joplin, Missouri, Watkins was raised by a single mother who always encouraged his honestly. He was open about his homosexuality in high school, at a time when both gay and black Americans were stigmatized.

At age 19, Watkins was drafted during the Vietnam War. He did not hide his sexuality on his pre-induction paperwork and served openly, even though U.S. policy barred homosexuals from the military. 

In the 1970s, while serving in Korea, Watkins volunteered to entertain the troops. He performed in drag, using the stage name Simone. Off duty, he took his show to Army clubs in Europe.

The Army accepted Watkins’s reenlistment three times following honorable discharges. Each time he responded candidly to inquiries about his “homosexual tendencies.” Several times the military conducted investigations into Watkins’s sexual conduct. All of them ended due to insufficient evidence.

In 1975 the military sought to discharge Watkins for being gay, despite his excellent record. His commanding officer testified that Watkins did "a fantastic job" and insisted his homosexuality had no impact on his performance. Watkins retained his enlistment and in 1977 was granted a security clearance. It was revoked two years later, due again to his sexual orientation. Represented by the ACLU, Watkins filed a lawsuit to challenge the revocation. In response, the army filed discharge proceedings. 

After a protracted legal battle, the Army dismissed Watkins permanently in 1984, at the end of his enlistment period. Thereafter, Watkins worked for the Social Security Administration while he fought the discharge.

In 1988 a federal court of appeals ruled in Watkins’s favor. It was the first time an appellate court ruled against the military ban on homosexual servicemembers. The Bush Administration appealed the decision.

In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision and ordered Watkins’s reinstatement. He settled for a retroactive promotion, an honorable discharge, back pay and full retirement benefits.  

In 1993 Watkins served as grand marshal of the New York City Pride Parade. The documentary “SIS: The Perry Watkins Story” was released in 1994. The University of Michigan Law School awards an annual fellowship in his memory.
 
At age 47 Watkins died of AIDS-related complications. The New York Times published his obituary.

Activist and Government Official

b. October 14, 1961

“Coming out isn’t easy, but it is getting easier with each passing day.”

Brian Bond was an executive director of the Victory Fund and, in the Obama administration, became the first openly gay deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

A Missouri native, Bond got his start in politics as the executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party, where he helped to elect Democrats in local and state elections.

Bond told The Washington Blade that growing up in rural Missouri, he was always looking for openly gay role models and often came up short. “Coming out for me was extremely hard and honestly terrifying, as I know it has been for so many of us,” he said.

Bond searched the local library for what it meant to be gay and came out when he was 16. “When I finally had the courage to utter the words out loud,” Bond said in an interview, “it was to my priest during a face-to-face confession.” 

From 1997 to 2003, Bond served as the second executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a nonpartisan political action committee (PAC) dedicated to electing openly LGBT candidates for public office. During his tenure, the Victory Fund was instrumental in helping Tammy Baldwin win a Congressional seat. She was the first out lesbian elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Bond went on to serve as executive director of the Democratic National Committee’s Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council and then as National Constituency Director for the Obama for America Campaign in Chicago, before joining the White House staff.

In his 30s, Bond discovered he was HIV positive. “For some of us,” he said, “we don’t come out once, but twice.” He became an advocate for AIDS education, declaring that a mobilized community can reduce the number of people who become infected. Bond has written about his experiences as a gay man, a Democrat and an AIDS survivor in many nationally known publications. 

In 2016 Bond served as deputy CEO for public engagement for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Singer and Actor

b. June 3, 1906
d. April 12, 1975

“People … can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice.”

Josephine Baker was an American-born entertainer who found fame as a dancer, singer and actress in Paris. Sometimes called the “Jazz Cleopatra,” Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in a poor neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. After facing abuse and racial discrimination in America, she moved to France in the 1920s where she became a celebrated performer and the first black woman to star in a major motion picture. Her exotic beauty inspired Ernest Hemingway to describe her as “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” 

Baker’s landmark cabaret show, “La Revue Nègre,” became the toast of Paris thanks to her on-stage antics. She exuded sexuality, wearing next to nothing and performing tribal-inspired dances with comic touches and cultural commentary. 

When she returned to the United States as a major star a decade later, the reception was quite different. American audiences rejected her, and The New York Times called her a “negro wench.” She went back to Europe brokenhearted.

During World War II, Baker earned recognition performing for troops and smuggling secret messages on music sheets for the French Resistance. She also served as a sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary Army. She was honored with the Croix de Guerre and named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government. 

In the 1950s and ’60s, Baker again faced racial discrimination in America, where the most popular clubs prohibited her from performing. She publicly criticized the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation and refused to perform in segregated clubs. In 1951 Baker was honored for her activism by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which declared May 20th Josephine Baker Day. 

Baker talked publicly about racial equality in France and segregation at home. She spoke at the March on Washington in 1963 alongside Dr. Martin Luther King. 

Baker married and divorced four times and adopted 12 children of varying ethnic backgrounds, which she called “The Rainbow Tribe.” One son later described his mother as a bisexual, noting a relationship she had with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. 

Baker also has been linked romantically to the novelist Colette, fellow expatriate performer Bricktop and other women.  

Baker became a citizen of France, where she remains an icon. In 1991 HBO released “The Josephine Baker Story,” which earned five Emmys and a Golden Globe. 

Author/Activist

b. September 1, 1949

"Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught."

Leslie Feinberg is a leading transgender activist, speaker and writer. Feinberg is a national leader in the Workers World Party and a managing editor of Workers World newspaper.

Feinberg was born in Kansas City, Missouri, into a working-class family. In the 1960’s, she came of age in the gay bars of Buffalo, New York.

Now a surgically female-to-male transgender, Feinberg is an outspoken opponent of traditional Western concepts about how a “real man” or “real woman” should look and act. Feinberg supports the use of gender-neutral pronouns such as “ze” instead of he or she, and “hir” instead of him or her.

Feinberg is well-known for forging a strong bond between the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, and other oppressed minorities. “Everyone who is under the gun of reaction and economic violence is a potential ally,” Feinberg says.

“Stone Butch Blues” (1993), Feinberg’s widely acclaimed first book, is a semi-autobiographical novel about a lesbian questioning her gender identity. It received an American Literary Association Award for Gay and Lesbian Literature and the Lambda Small Press Literary Award.

“Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Ru Paul” (1996), Feinberg’s first nonfiction work, examines the structures of societies that welcome or are threatened by gender variance. The book was selected as one of The Publishing Triangle’s “100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books.”

“Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue” (1998), another nonfiction work, documents Feinberg’s near-death experience after being denied medical treatment for a heart problem. The doctor, after discovering his patient was transgender, turned hir away.

“Drag King Dreams” (2006), Feinberg’s second novel, picks up where “Stone Butch Blues” left off, chronicling the issues of transgender life today.

In 2008, after Feinberg became disabled from a degenerative disease, the author began telling hir stories through photography. Feinberg was named one of the “15 Most Influential” in the battle for gay and lesbian rights by Curve Magazine. The celebrated author has delivered speeches at colleges, universities, conferences and Pride festivals across the country.

Feinberg is married to poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. 

Scientist

b. July 12, 1864
d. January 5, 1943

“Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”

George Washington Carver was a groundbreaking agricultural scientist, known for discovering innovative uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes and clay. A black man born during the Civil War, Carver overcame racism to establish himself as a preeminent scientist and renowned academic.

Carver was born a slave in southwest Missouri. As an infant, he was kidnapped by slave raiders, and then abandoned when they discovered he suffered from whooping cough. His mother’s former owners, Moses and Susan Carver, adopted and raised him.

At the age of 13, Carver left home to attend a school for African-Americans. In 1890, he matriculated to Simpson College in Iowa, where he was the only black student. In 1891, he transferred to Iowa State College to focus on his passion for agriculture. After graduating, he served as the only black member of the Iowa State faculty. Carver was invited to head the agriculture department at the Tuskegee Institute, a university for black students founded by Booker T. Washington.

As a professor, Carver encouraged students to think creatively and independently. He emphasized self-sufficiency and resilience, and he pursued broad interests, including painting and religion. Throughout his life, he maintained a positive approach. Even in the face of overt racism, Carver said, “I can’t do my work if my heart is bitter.”

Carver is best known for his advances in the agricultural field. He devised and taught impoverished farmers uses for nutritious, commonly grown crops. He was the first scientist to discover multiple uses for peanuts, developing products as diverse as flour, ink and face cream. He experimented with developing rubber from the sweet potato. Carver’s discoveries are seen as the basis for many products, including biofuels and fruit-based cleaning products.

In 1916, Carver was offered membership in the Royal Society of London. In 1923, he was given a Spingarn Medal by the NAACP. Simpson College awarded him an honorary degree in 1932.

Playwright

b. March 26, 1911

d. February 25, 1983

"To me, it was providential to be an artist, a great act of providence that I was able to turn my borderline psychosis into creativity."

Tennessee Williams was one of the most influential American playwrights. He transformed the darkest aspects of human existence into poetic theater.

Born Thomas Lanier Williams, he was raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1938. He later changed his name to Tennessee, after his father’s birth state.

While a scriptwriter at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Williams wrote an original screenplay the company rejected. It was reworked into a play. "The Glass Menagerie" (1945) earned the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and launched Williams’s playwriting career.

Often set in the South and featuring characters seeking salvation and meaningful human connections, his plays were infused with aspects of Williams’s personal struggles. He sparked controversy by including gay characters.

His award-winning plays include "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947), "The Rose Tattoo" (1951), "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955) and "The Night of the Iguana" (1961). "A Streetcar Named Desire," "The Rose Tattoo" and "The Night of the Iguana" were adapted into Oscar-winning movies. Actors starring in his works included Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Jessica Tandy and Vivien Leigh.

Williams and his partner, Frank Marlo, were together for more than 10 years. Their relationship ended when Marlo died of cancer in 1963.

Williams received two Pulitzer Prizes, four Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, and a Tony Award for Best Play.

Poet

b. February 1, 1902

d. May 22, 1967
“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it fester like a sore—and then run?”

A celebrated poet and novelist, Langston Hughes is one of the most significant voices to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance. A major contributor to American literature, his legacy includes 25 published works.

Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. After his parents divorced, he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where his grandmother raised him until her death. By the time he was 14, he had lived in nine cities with various families.   

Hughes showed impressive literary aptitude. In eighth grade, he began writing poetry, short stories and plays and was elected “class poet.” His breakthrough poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” was published shortly after he graduated from high school. 

In 1921, at the urging of his father, Hughes enrolled at Colombia University to study engineering. He left after two semesters due to racial discrimination.

Over the next few years, Hughes worked odd jobs while pursuing a writing career. He traveled to Africa and Europe on the crew of a shipping vessel before moving to Washington, D.C. While employed as a busboy, Hughes met poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped promote his work.

In 1926, Hughes’s first book of poetry, “The Weary Blues,” was published.  Well received by literary critics, it earned him a reputation as the country’s leading black poet. A year later, his second book of poetry, “Fine Clothes to the Jews,” was published. Heavily influenced by blues and jazz, his work portrayed life in black America and addressed racism and oppression.

In 1929, Hughes graduated from Lincoln University. He traveled to Haiti and to the Soviet Union, where he studied communist theory. In 1934, Hughes became head of the League for Negro Rights, the main African-American branch of the Communist Party. A victim of McCarthyism, he was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations in 1953.

Like most artists of his time, Hughes was not open about his sexuality. Literary scholars point to “Montage of a Dream Deferred,” “Desire,” “Young Sailor” and “Tell Me” as gay-themed works.

Hughes died at age 65 from prostate cancer. His ashes are memorialized in Harlem at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Commentator

b. August 28, 1965

“I'm not on a show with a pink triangle or rainbow flag—which means that being gay is just a part of who I am.”

Keith Boykin is a political commentator, a New York Times best-selling author and a veteran of two presidential campaigns. He is the former editor of The Daily Voice and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC and BET.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Boykin became politically focused working on local campaigns while in high school. At Dartmouth he was the editor of the daily newspaper and graduated with a B.A. in government.

After college, Boykin worked on the Dukakis presidential campaign. Thereafter, he attended Harvard Law School and continued working on campaigns, including the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. Boykin worked as special assistant to the president and served as President Clinton’s liaison to the LGBT community.

In 1994, Boykin became the executive director of the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum and completed his first book, “One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America.” In 1997, he served with Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson on the U.S. presidential trade delegation to Zimbabwe.

Boykin wrote two other books, “Respecting the Soul” (1999) and “Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America” (2005). His work shed light on AIDS, internalized homophobia and black men on the “down low.”

Boykin is a commentator on major political talk shows. In 2004, he starred on Showtime’s “American Candidate” and hosted BET’s “My Two Cents.”

Keith Boykin complete his fourth book, “For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Still Not Enough.” (2012) He lives in New York City.

Gay History Month Founder

b. January 1965

“The greatest act of advocacy for civil rights for LGBT Americans is the act of coming out.”

Rodney Wilson is a high school teacher credited with creating Gay History Month. October was selected because schools are in session, and it is the month in which the first national march for lesbian and gay rights occurred and National Coming Out Day is celebrated.

Born in Missouri, Wilson grew up watching “Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour” on television. Until his 20s, he was a fundamentalist Christian. When he developed an interest in history, he found his calling as a teacher. He wrestled with his sexuality and read everything he could find about gay history. He said, “LGBT history gave me self-confidence as a gay person and strengthened my resolve to live, as best I could, an honest, open and integrated life.”

In 1994, as a teacher at Mehlville High School in suburban St. Louis, Wilson came out to his history class during a lesson about the Holocaust. If he had lived in Germany during World War II, he explained, he likely would have been imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis for being gay.

When he came out, Wilson was a graduate student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He became the first openly gay K-12 teacher in the state. What began as a lesson evolved into a much broader mission to teach young people about gay history. Inspired by Women’s History Month and Black History Month, he worked with national organizations to develop a gay-friendly curriculum for educators.

In 1994 Wilson wrote the first article about gay history published by the Missouri Historical Society. University of Missouri-St. Louis became the first college in the country to hold a Gay History Month function, and Wilson helped organize a gay film festival on campus to launch the festivities. In 1995 Gay History Month received its first mainstream media coverage in Newsweek.

As Wilson and partners sought endorsements from educational groups, they faced backlash from conservatives who feared that teaching gay history would endanger youth. Gay History Month continued into the late ’90s, but lost momentum when no organization would take responsibility for its observance and financial resources grew scarce. In 2006 Equality Forum created LGBTHistoryMonth.com.

Wilson holds master’s degrees from University of Missouri-St. Louis and Harvard University’s extension school. He founded GLSEN-St. Louis (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), the first GLSEN chapter outside of Massachusetts. He teaches history, government and comparative religion.