Among our nation's most famous pieces of poetry is that which underlies the song, "America the Beautiful". On several occasions, it has been proposed to replace "The Star Spangled Banner" as our national anthem. Its author was a young Wellesley College English professor named Katharine Lee Bates.
Almost everybody in this nation knows the words. Few know that she was a lesbian. This is her story.
Bates was born to a poor family in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and later moved to Grantville, near Wellesley. Wellesley was soon to be the home to a new women's college, and attending the school became Katharine's goal in life. She took advanced courses and started teaching at the high school to build up credentials, ultimately becoming accepted into their second graduating class. She excelled in the school, but in no field more than poetry. Her favorite activity was to retire to the Browning room and study the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Three years after graduating as class president, she was accepted to teach English at Wellesley.
In 1893, at age 33 and now English department chair, Bates took a train ride from Wellesley, Massachusetts to Colorado Springs, Colorado to teach a summer school session at Colorado College. She marvelled at the countryside as she travelled.
One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.
At this time, Bates was already a prolific poet (much of her poetry published under a male pseudonym -- "James Lincoln" -- to increase its audience). The beauty of the view from atop Pike's Peak inspired her most famous work, "America the Beautiful". She left Colorado springs with the notes for all four stanzas, but the poem itself was not published until in 1895 in The Congregationalist.
The poem was very well received. A series of revisions would later see it published in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1904, leading to growing national fame. In 1920, a contest was established to set the poem to music, and the rest, as we say, is history.
You will find all of this in your average biography of Bates. The only thing that they often leave out, however, is the single most important thing to her in her life: her partner, Katharine Coman. Until recently, in most histories of "America The Beautiful" and its author, Coman was written out of nearly every scene in Bates' life.
after reading this i could not stop laughing at all the flag wavers, all"the real Americans", all those who want to take the country back all the bigots that rail so proudly about the greatest country in the world and then i got another jolt of laughter when i thought about all the above and their kids in school singing the song and them singing it when they were in school so proud and never knowing that the pride they felt was a gift from one who they have belittled and dismissed and beat and killed and denied the American dream. to those i wish their grand and great grands will also sing the song with pride and acknowledgment of it's author and what their descendants did to those like her.
amazing how people here can love cherish lift up something as long as they don't know it's origin, wish there would be a count of how many after knowing this will now disavow the song they were taught and their kids and their kids were taught as an expression of love for the country they now want to drill baby drill and run pipelines all over threatening pollution of water and grounds and eventually air, where have all the flowers gone???
