Bibliography

Primary Sources

“1950 United States Federal Census.” 1950. National Archives at Washington, DC.

“5 Year Pose as Man Ends in Suicide.” The Herald-Palladium (Benton Harbor, MI), January 29, 1951.

Belt, Elmer. “Elmer Belt to Harold Benjamin, February 22, 1960.” February 22, 1960. Correspondence, Box 3, Series II. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University.

Belt, Elmer. “Elmer Belt to Harold Benjamin, July 7, 1958.” July 7, 1958. Correspondence, Box 3, Series II. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University.

Benjamin, Harold. “Harold Benjamin to Elmer Belt, March 7, 1960.” March 7, 1960. Correspondence, Box 3, Series II. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University.

Benjamin, Harold. “Harold Benjamin to Elmer Belt, October 5, 1971.” October 5, 1971. Correspondence, Box 3, Series II. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Indiana University.

Bentley, Gladys. “I Am a Woman Again.” Ebony Magazine, 1952.

Cole v. Young, 351 U.S. 536 (1956).“County Woman Kills Herself.” Manistee News Advocate, January 29, 1951.

“Diagram of Bus.” Cambridge, 1940. F84, b4. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

“Few Mass Shooters Have Been Transgender.” FactCheck.org, September 16, 2025. https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/few-mass-shooters-have-been-transgender/.

“Flames Kill Woman Masquerading as Man.” Courrier-Post (Camden, NJ), January 29, 1951.

Garber, Eric. “Gladys Bentley: The Bulldagger Who Sang the Blues.” Outlook, 1988.

Garfinkel, Harold. “Color Trouble.” In The Best Short Stories of 1941, edited by E.J. O’Brien. Houghton Mifflin, 1941.

GLAAD. “ADL and GLAAD Report: More Than 350 Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate and Extremism Incidents Recorded as Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric Soared.” June 22, 2023. https://glaad.org/releases/adl-and-glaad-report-more-than-350-anti-lgbtq-hate-and-extremism-incidents-recorded-as-anti-lgbtq-rhetoric-soared/.

Graham, Ruth. “Southern Baptists Endorse Effort to Overturn Same-Sex Marriage.” New York Times (New York, NY), June 10, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/southern-baptist-obergefell-same-sex-marriage.html.

Hannah-Jones, Nikole, guest. “How Trump Upended 60 Years of Civil Rights.” The Daily, performed by Michael Barbaro. New York Times, October 21, 2025. Podcast. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/podcasts/trump-civil-rights-dei.html?searchResultPosition=2.

Herek, Gregory M., and John P. Capitanio. “‘Some of My Best Friends’; Intergroup Contact, Concealable Stigma, and Heterosexuals’ Attitudes Toward Gay Men and Lesbians.” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 22, no. 4 (1996): 412–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167296224007.

Human Rights Campaign. “Right-Wing Labs: How State Legislatures Are Driving Anti-LGBTQ Attacks at Federal Leve.” Accessed September 18, 2025. https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/right-wing-labs-how-state-legislatures-are-driving-anti-lgbtq-attacks-at-federal-level/.

Klein, Ezra. “Trump Is Building the Blue Scare.” New York Times (New York, NY), September 24, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-corey-robin.html.

“Woman, 29, Burns Self to Death.” Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI), January 29, 1951.

“Woman Commits Suicide by Setting Car on Fire.” Lansing State Journal (Lansing, MI), January 29, 1951.

“Woman’s Suicide Ends Masquerade.” Battle Creek Enquirer (Battle Creek, MI), January 29, 1951.

Money, John, John G. Hampson, and John L. Hampson. “Hermaphroditism: Recommendations Concerning Assignment of Sex, Change of Sex, and Psychologic Management.” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 97, no. 4 (1955): 284–300.

Money, John, Gregory K. Lehne, and F. Pierre-Jerome. “Micropenis: Gender, Erotosexual Coping Strategy, and Behavioral Health in Nine Pediatric Cases Followed to Adulthood.” Comprehensive Psychiatry 26, no. 1 (1985): 29–42.

Murray, Pauli. Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage. Harper & Row, 1987.

Niven, Steven. “Blues Singer Gladys Bentley Broke Ground With Marriage to a Woman in 1931.” The Root, February 11, 2015. https://www.theroot.com/blues-singer-gladys-bentley-broke-ground-with-marriage-1790858771.

“Petersburg Bus Incident--March 1940 - May 16, 1940.” 1940. 85-88., Box 4; Box 5. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute.

Pew Research Center. “Americans Have Grown More Supportive of Restrictions for Trans People in Recent Years.” February 26, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/americans-have-grown-more-supportive-of-restrictions-for-trans-people-in-recent-years/.

“Takes Life in Flaming Auto.” The Herald-Press (Saint-Joseph, MI), January 29, 1951.

The Oversight Project. “Urge the FBI to Designate Transgender Terrorism.” Accessed October 8, 2025. https://oversight-project.revv.co/urge-the-fbi-to-designate-transgender-terrorism.

The White House. “President Trump Isn’t Backing Down from Crushing Radical Left Violence.” September 21, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/president-trump-isnt-backing-down-from-crushing-radical-left-violence/.

“WWII Draft Registration Cards For Michigan, 10/16/1940-03/31/1947.” September 14, 1943. Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box 747. National Archives at St. Louis, Missouri.

 

Secondary Sources

Bello, Ada. “Reed Erickson, Pioneering Transgender Activist and Philanthropist, 1917–1992.” OutHistory, 2016. https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/erickson.

Cooper, Brittney. Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women. University of Illinois Press, 2017.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Vintage. Translated by Robert Hurley. Pantheon, 1978.

Gieseke, Lillian. “Gladys Bentley’s Confessions.” Center on Religion and Culture, Fordham University, August 4, 2022. https://crc.blog.fordham.edu/arts-culture/gladys-bentleys-confessions/.

Gill-Peterson, Jules. Histories of the Transgender Child. University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950. Norton, 2008.

Gossett, Reina, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, eds. Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. Massachusettes Institute of Technology Press, 2017.

Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (2008): 1–14.

Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Rosenberg, Rosalind. Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Ryan, Hugh. The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. Bold Type, 2022.

Schuller, Kyla. The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century. Duke University Press, 2018.

Skidmore, Emily. True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. New York University Press, 2017.

Stein, Marc. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972. University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Woolner, Cookie. The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women and Queer Desire before Stonewall. University of North Carolina Press, 2023.