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Her way of portraying love was never tied to a clear “him” or “her,” but to intensity, risk, and loss.

In an era when homosexuality was taboo, Billie Holiday embodied an uncomfortable kind of authenticity. As noted by the Equality Forum, Hughes was not openly gay, but his work still reflected his identity; many literary scholars point to "Montage Of A Dream Deferred," "Desire," "Young Sailor," and "Tell Me" as having gay subjects and themes.

2.

In that context, Smith's song about why her man is no good becomes (like Rainey's above) also a song about looking for other options.

Billie Holiday

Holiday was famous for songs of heterosexual heartbreak.

"They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me/Sure got to prove it on me; Went out last night with a crowd of my friends/They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men," she declares. His self-identity was not bisexual, however his sexual orientation and behavior were." (It is worth noting, though, that many of his experiences with men took place during his time as a sex worker.)

5.

Certainly, as the video above makes clear, Strayhorn was perfectly comfortable performing (here on one of his most famous tunes, "Take the A Train"). The emotional context she provided to the words she sang made them transcendent hits that still even make their way into modern music.

One example of Billie's singing being given a new life in modern music was through Kanye West's 2021 album, "Yeezus," where he sampled the song "Strange Fruit" as the vocal backing for his song "Blood on the Leaves," a potent reference thanks to the original song's intended meaning, referring to the sadly common lynchings of Black men in the U.S.

at the time.

Billie's last major recording, "Lady in Satin," recorded in 1958, features the backing of a 40-piece orchestra and perfectly exemplified everything the tough yet battle-worn singer had endured through life, and remains her last full-length and arguably one of her most heralded works.

When people think about the early blues today, they tend to imagine rugged, working-class men with guitars sitting at the crossroads making deals with the devil.

Lyrically she rarely flirted with homoerotic material as did Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and her only references to lesbianism in her autobiography are derogatory. Traditionally interpreted as a farewell between lovers separated by war, in Billie’s voice it becomes a final goodbye to all those who left her – husbands, friends, lovers, and perhaps even women.

Billie Holiday and Tallulah Bankhead

Among Billie Holiday’s lesser-known love stories, her relationship with actress Tallulah Bankhead is the most intriguing.

Alice Walker


Alice Walker is an activist, poet, and writer who has, as GLAAD notes, "confronted society's inequities" in both her writing and activism, "working to bring about racial equality, human rights, international peace, and fair treatment of the trans community." She is openly bisexual and was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her critically acclaimed novel, "The Color Purple."

4.

She never publicly declared her orientation. In 1997, she came out as a lesbian during an interview with Out Magazine and, since then, continued to tackle oppression faced by the black community, women, and the LGBT community.

6. In doing so, she left an indelible mark on music history and on the hearts of those still seeking truth in melody.

Cover image © samkling – Flickr

Read also: “5 LGBTQ+ Icons in International Music: Then and Now“


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Today is February 1st, the first day of Black History Month!

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday was a jazz singer who is best known for "Strange Fruit," which NPR perfectly describes as a "haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism." Throughout her career, Holiday was openly bisexual and many of her female relationships were with stage and film actresses.

3. However, like Rainey and Smith, she was bisexual, and had a number of relationships with women.

Pain, abandonment, misguided love—her life was etched into every note.

Billie Holiday: Toxic Loves and Forbidden Desires

While her career was taking off, her private life was a whirlwind of destructive relationships, especially with violent men. "B.D. In "I'm Gonna Dance Wit De Guy Wot Brung Me" he sings both the male and female parts, in a high camp tour de force.

Jaxon's cross-dressing wasn't a novelty—or, perhaps more accurately, it was an established and much enjoyed novelty in Harlem Renaissance culture.

As Interstate Tattler, the black weekly, wrote of the costume balls at Rockland Palace: "Of course, a costume ball can be a very tame thing, but when all the exquisitely gowned women on the floor are men and a number of the smartest men are women, ah then, we have something over which to thrill and grow round-eyed."

Bessie Smith

"There's two things I can't understand/that's a mannish actin' woman, and a skipping, twistin' woman-acting man," Bessie Smith declares.

There are plenty of others around who remember how you carried on so you almost got me fired out of the place.

was billie holiday gay

Bankhead was white, aristocratic, eccentric, and openly bisexual at a time when that meant defying every social norm. While society imposed rigid roles and limitations, she embraced ambiguity, favoring emotional interpretation over emphasizing the gender of the beloved. Yet paradoxically, her fame only grew. Her voice told stories.