20th-century American LGBT people

Nancy Hamilton (July 27, 1908 - February 18, 1985) was an American actress, playwright, lyricist, director and producer.

Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance.
Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tail coat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience.
On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones.

Alexander Cañedo (December 26, 1902 – February 1, 1978) was a Mexican-American artist who was part of the surrealism and magic realism art movements of the mid-20th century.

John Cabell "Bunny" Breckinridge (August 6, 1903 – November 5, 1996) was an American actor and drag queen, best known for his role as "The Ruler" in Ed Wood's film Plan 9 from Outer Space, his only film appearance.

John Robert Stillman (July 11, 1946 – April 7, 2009), billed professionally as Jack Wrangler, was an American gay pornographic film actor, theatrical producer, director, and writer. He performed in both gay and straight films. Open about his homosexuality and adult film work throughout his career, Wrangler was an icon of the gay-liberation movement. The 2008 feature-length documentary Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon examines his life and career.

Clarence Arthur Tripp Jr. (1919–2003) was an American psychologist, writer, and researcher for Alfred Kinsey.Born on October 4, 1919, in Denton, Texas, and attended Corsicana High School in May 1938. He studied at the New York Institute of Photography in New York City and in 1940, he became a member of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. He also studied photography at the Eastman School of Photography, Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute (now Rochester Institute of Technology). He graduated from Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute in 1941 where he majored in commercial photography. He served in the United States Navy. In February 1943, he took a job at 20th Century Fox in New York City.Tripp worked with Kinsey at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Bloomington, Indiana, from 1948 to 1956. He earned a PhD in Clinical psychology from New York University. Tripp drew attention with a book, published posthumously, wherein he made the case that Abraham Lincoln had several same-sex relationships.

John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey (30 April 1908 – 26 October 1953), usually cited as J. C. C. McKinsey, was an American mathematician known for his work on game theory and mathematical logic, particularly, modal logic.

Allan Henry Spear (June 24, 1937 – October 11, 2008) was an American politician and educator from Minnesota who served almost thirty years in the Minnesota Senate, including nearly a decade as President of the Senate.

Jean Garrigue (December 8, 1912 – December 27, 1972) was an American poet. In her lifetime, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a nomination for a National Book Award.

James L. White (March 26, 1936 – July 13, 1981) was an American poet, editor and teacher.