Prove It on Me: Ma Rainey and the Queer Blues

"When you see two women walking hand in hand 

Just look 'em over and try to understand" 

             – George Hannah, "The Boy in the Boat"

In 1925, the Chicago police arrested blues singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey in her home for hosting a so-called “lesbian party.” While Rainey had been married to a man for 21 years, she was known to take female lovers. It was even rumored that she was romantically involved with another famous blueswoman, Bessie Smith, who bailed Rainey out of jail the following day.

Ma Rainey and the Wildcats Jazz Band, 1923. Bernice Johnson Reagon
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Getting her start on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1900s, Ma Rainey made her mark as a blues performer just as the genre’s popularity hit its stride in the 1920s. By 1925, she was two years into a lucrative recording contract with Paramount Records, had worked with Louis Armstrong, and was in the middle of what would become a four-year musical partnership with Thomas Dorsey’s Wild Cats Jazz Band. Ma Rainey had earned the title “Mother of the Blues,” and she had no intention of giving it up.

Three years later, she would respond to the gossip about her sexuality sparked by her arrest with her “Prove It on Me Blues:”

“Went out last night 

With a crowd of my friends 

They must have been women 

Cause I don’t like no men”

Some have called the lesbianism and bisexuality among black female blues musicians the “open secret” of the Harlem Renaissance. While some blues singers, like Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters, were careful to bury rumors that they, too, might be “in the life,” many more, like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Clara Smith, and Lucille Bogan did little to conceal their relationships with women. Lucille Bogan even released a song in 1935, entitled “The B.D. Woman’s Blues” in which “B.D.” stood for “bulldagger,” a slang term for a butch lesbian. Referring affectionately to these lesbian women, Bogan sings: “They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural man.”

Perhaps the greater secret was the blues club scene itself. The early 1900s saw a massive migration of black Americans from the South to cities in the North like Chicago and New York City. The Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York proved a particularly popular destination for many migrants, who helped contribute to a flourishing art, academic, and entertainment scene that would come to be known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” Amid this atmosphere of artistic and intellectual expression, gay and lesbian African-Americans found a spirit of social freedom and acceptance that allowed them to pursue same-sex relationships with greater openness than in many other parts of the country.

And it was in the underground blues clubs of the 1920s and 30s where this sexual expression could thrive most freely. In seedy Harlem blues clubs, blueswomen like Gladys Bentley, who became famous for her masculine performances complete with cropped hair, tuxedo, and top hat, found their audiences and stage personas. For black women, who made up the majority of the popular blues singers at this time, these clubs offered an outlet to explore their sexualities and sexual desires onstage in a way that would have been denied them in their day to day lives. Blues clubs spread far beyond just New York City, and while blueswomen like Rainey and Smith tend to be associated with the Harlem Renaissance, many of these women had stronger ties to the South, Midwest, and California. Artists like Bentley toured blues clubs around the country, including San Francisco’s famous Mona’s 440 Club, a bar which marketed itself toward lesbians as the place “where girls will be boys.”

Some have suggested that it is important to not overstate the prevalence of these declarations of same sex desire in the music and performances of female blues musicians. Lesbian-themed songs make up but a small fraction of these singers’ bodies of work, the majority of which focuses instead on romances with men. Yet it is still important to acknowledge the significance of the blues club as a space where black women in the early 20th century were able to express their sexual and romantic desires without fearing for their safety. Using masculine clothing, provocative performances, and homoerotic lyrics, these blueswomen found unique ways to represent their sexuality onstage. More than that, black women blues performers were able to control how their sexuality was represented in their lyrics and performances and decide, for themselves, who they wanted to be onstage and off.

Bessie Smith, undated. Sam DeVincent Collection, African-American Music series, 
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

At the end of “Prove It on Me Blues,” Ma Rainey sings:

“Talk to the gals just like any old man 

Cause they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me 

Sure got to prove it on me.”

In these lines, Rainey coyly seems to say, “My sexuality is mine alone, and I am free to live how I please.” And perhaps this is the most important thing to remember when we talk about the lives and romances of these blueswomen. For women like Ma Rainey, the blues was a world where you could take control of your own story, where you could explore your sexuality and talk about it on your terms, where you could decide who you wanted to be and then become that person onstage each night.

For more on Ma Rainey and the other blueswomen mentioned here, watch T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s on Kanopy.

Erin Walsh, Intern
National Museum of American History, Archives Center

Charlotte Cushman's Love With No Name

Language is slippery.

Take Charlotte Cushman, for example. Born in Boston in 1816, Cushman started a career in the opera to support her family after her father’s death. When her talent for singing and dramatic acting was recognized, she started touring with theater companies, performing Shakespeare around the United States and Europe. Her deep contralto voice allowed her to play both male and female parts onstage and she became best known for some of her male roles, including her performance as Romeo opposite her sister as Juliet. By mid-century, Cushman had become a household name, and she was easily one of the 19th century’s most famous actresses.

Miss Charlotte Cushman, undated. Warshaw Collection of Business Americana,
Theater series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Today, we might also look back on Charlotte Cushman’s life and call her the 19th century’s most famous lesbian actress. She sustained numerous monogamous relationships with women, including artist Rosalie Sully and actress Matilda Hays. She also garnered a large female following. Shortly before her death in 1876, she gave a farewell performance in New York City, which was followed by a massive parade and fireworks celebration attended by thousands of people, many of them female. These female fans, some of them also in same-sex relationships, wrote Cushman passionate fan mail, seemingly transfixed by her stage performances and public persona.

But in Cushman's day there was no such thing as a "lesbian," at least not in the way we think of the term or community today. Same-sex relationships were a behavior that one might engage in, with varying degrees of judgment projected onto that behavior, but they were not part of someone's identity.  

This was not because relationships between women were especially rare; they were actually surprisingly visible. Women in “Boston marriages” might live together, share a bed, caress one another, and speak of each other with affection in private and public like any other couple. Yet these relationships were seen as lacking the sexual and romantic desire of a heterosexual relationship, so they posed no threat to heterosexual society. “Romantic friendships” between women were therefore perfectly acceptable, even favorable in some cases. Presumably, these women would one day graduate from their Boston marriages to more serious unions with men.

But this idea that women did not have sexual desire did not apply to all women equally. Women in theater, which was still considered a lower tier art form, were branded as sexually promiscuous. With this in mind, the fact that Cushman exclusively pursued “romantic friendships” with women actually bolstered her career. Her disinterest in men and, to a certain extent, her masculine presentation on and offstage, established her reputation as a virtuous woman and lent a new kind of respectability to the role of women in theater.

Charlotte and Susan Cushman as Romeo and Juliet, undated. Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, 
Theater series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Even if the term "lesbian" had existed during Cushman's day, the concept would likely have been foreign to her. Then again, maybe not. Charlotte Cushman was notoriously careful about who saw her personal correspondence, asking many of her lovers to hide or burn her letters, sometimes even writing over her own diary entries to make them less legible to a stranger. Perhaps this was because Cushman and her partners had devised their own lexicon to describe their desire, even in the absence of the language we have today. We'll never know for certain how she might – or might not – have named her desire, such is the nature of the historical record. But that doesn't mean we should pretend it never existed.

Cushman as Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew, undated. Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, 
Theater series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Charlotte Cushman lived and died decades before the term “lesbian” would come into popular use, and still decades more before gay women would claim that word for themselves and wear it proudly as a sign of personal identity and community. The language we use, the communities we keep, the ways we understand our identities all may have changed dramatically from Cushman’s world. But in her day, Charlotte Cushman’s public defiance of gender and sexual norms represented something electric and inspiring to other women, especially women in same-sex relationships. Today, to a more defined community of lesbian women, she represents a woman who refused to give in to the pressures of a heterosexual society that did not even acknowledge the love she felt. We have no way of knowing how these concepts of gender presentation and sexual identity will change in the future – the only thing that seems certain is that they will continue to change.

And so, even almost 150 years after her death, I cannot say what Cushman's legacy will be. It's always changing. But for now, I can look to these archival images to illuminate Charlotte Cushman's legacy as I see it: a woman who loved women living as boldly as she could in a time before her love had a name. 

For more on Charlotte Cushman’s life, career, and relationships with women, check out Lisa Merrill’s When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators (University of Michigan: 1999).

For more on the Smithsonian’s collection of items related to Charlotte Cushman and LGBT history, watch Beyond Stonewall from The Smithsonian Time Capsule!

Erin Walsh, Intern
National Museum of American History, Archives Center