For many people, graduating high school and going away to college presents a first opportunity to come out in a nurturing environment, but there is a largely unknown history of being gay on college campuses that mirrors America’s mistreatment of LGBTQ people over the decades.
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A new research paper sheds light on a particularly bad time to be queer on campus — in the 1940s, when schools purged students and faculty they believed to be gay.
The paper, titled An Indelible Mark”: Gay Purges in Higher Education in the 1940s, details incidents at the University of Texas, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Missouri, where students and teachers’ personal lives were turned upside-down for suspected “homosexual activity.”
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At two of the schools — Wisconsin and Missouri — special committees were formed to track expelled people’s future endeavors to ensure they didn’t find success elsewhere.
Related: You’ve Heard Of Stonewall, But How About These Four Other LGBT National Landmarks?
“In LGBT history, very little attention is paid to anything before the Stonewall riots in 1969,” said Margaret Nash, an associate professor at UC Riverside’s Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the paper. “When people do take note they say, ‘Oh, that’s part of McCarthyism.’ But, in these cases, it wasn’t. These cases preceded McCarthyism. Who knew?”
Below are some details about the three cases the paper focuses on. (The authors used pseudonyms for some people named in the paper to protect their privacy and the privacy of their families.)
In 1944, the Texas Regents dismissed University of Texas President Homer Rainey. Rainey had previously been the subject of controversy for opposing to fire faculty for their political views and opposing to censor literature. To further bolster the case against him, the Regents contended he had not taken swift or severe enough action against gays on campus.
In 1948, four University of Wisconsin students pleaded guilty to engaging in homosexual activities and were given one year’s probation and a warning from the judge that they had caused an “indelible mark” to be placed against them. Two years later, one of those students, “Keith Pritchett,” who was about to graduate at the time he was given probation, asked the university to grant his degree. The World War II veteran expected to be called back to active duty because of the Korean conflict and wanted the degree so he could be promoted. Despite positive recommendations from military officials, the university denied his request.
Also in 1948, a tenured journalism professor who had worked at the University of Missouri for 24 years was dismissed for being the principal leader of a purported ring that was said to include homosexual students, faculty and community members. “Richard Jackson,” a student at the university, was one of the students administrators said was part of the homosexual ring. A group called the Committee on Discipline expelled Jackson in 1949 despite clearly saying they did not have any solid evidence that Jackson was homosexual or had engaged in homosexual acts. Instead, they said Jackson’s unacceptable actions were that “he associated frequently if not exclusively with homosexuals and persons believed to be homosexuals, and attended their ‘gay’ parties.”
Nash plans to take the research further by examining purges in more recent years, and how the universities’ antigay policies informed one another.
alphacentauri
This was back when being anything but heterosexual was illegal.
davidjohng
Wow. Unbelievable and scary. In the 1940s we were fighting fascism in Europe but the “Dark Ages” were right here in middle America. And it wasn’t THAT long ago.
loren_1955
Worth noting the gay hunts by Brigham Young University in the 60-80’s. Worse if a student was found to be gay they were blackmailed, either they would accept electro-shock therapy or their families would be informed of their homosexuality. Many young men capitulated, many committed suicide, many are sterile and still have burns on their bodies today. Was not uncommon for BYU security to drive to Salt Lake City and look for BYU parking tags on the cars at the gay bars. Any students would then be referred for school discipline, i.e. more electro-shock therapies.
rextrek
anyone notice that the guy on the far right in that pic – looks like that Anti-gay catholic loon……….Ryan ….blah blah……..you know whom Im talking about?
rextrek
..that Ryan Anderson guy….that’s whom he looks like in that pic…WTF is he… DORIAN GRAY and always been a closet case?
rextrek
http://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/Screen%20Shot%202013-07-15%20at%204.16.09%20PM.png?itok=xVawo1oA
Kangol
There’s a lot of ugliness woven into the histories of America’s major universities. A great book by MIT professor Craig Steven Wilder, titled Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities looks at how nearly all of America’s original colleges and universities had links to and were supported by human chattel slavery and slaveowners.
About two and a half decades before the events at Wisconsin and Missouri, Harvard University’s Boston Brahmin president, A. Lawrence Lowell, launched a vicious witchhunt against gay men to purge them from the university. Lowell also barred blacks from living on campus and instituted quotas to keep the number of Jewish students below a certain level. That’s a wicked stew of r@cist and hom0phobic discrimination in one (horrid) person.
William Wright wrote a so-so 2006 book about the Harvard anti-gay purge called Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals. Queerty even covered the story in 2010.
Interestingly enough, the writer Douglass Shand-Tucci wrote a more comprehensive book in 2004 about Harvard’s strong contribution to American LGBTIQ history and culture, entitled The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture. It’s better than Wright’s book, but Tucci’s writing style can be a little baroque at times.
John
I served in the USAF from 58-62 and you didn’t dare give ANY indication you leaned that way, and I can say there was more then one of my fellow airmen I would have LOVED to tell and touch and MORE. Actually in a way for most places where I have worked it was still that way and I retired in ’05 with about the same number of men I would have loved to gone down on.
Merv
The people who perpetrated these acts of persecution should have their names permanently ruined, just as they ruined other people’s lives. While the victims are still alive, they should record the names of these assholes and put them on the internet, where they’ll remain forever. Never forget.
martinbakman
Those are the good old days that people like Focus On the Family want to return to. So when some folks whine how we react to money donations going to these groups, they don’t really get it how hurtful it is to see Focus on the Family afforded respect for taking their position.
Brian
There was no such thing as gay in the 1940’s. There was homosexual desire, not gay. Gay is an invented item of identity politics that’s been around since after the 1940’s.
Homosexual desire is superior to gay because it does not weaken men. The gay identity has weakened the male gender as a whole because it has divided them.
ROTHERS
2015 minus 1958 almost 60 years of military B.S.
we were young and dumb. but had the fun of exploring life.
ever one keep quite about it. thank you for the internet
Maude
I had become use to hearing ‘Queer’ ‘homo’ but not until my arrival at UT as a freshman, did I hear ‘gay’ used to describe homosexuals….and I didn’t know that many straight people were aware of the term, until I heard it used in a derogatory manner by a girl who’s boyfriend dumped her, and she began to spread it around campus that he was gay.
I made it my business to meet him, and he was gay but he claimed to be ‘Bi’, and tho I tried, he wouldn’t let me go down on him.
He was the good looking young man that got away….and sorry to say, not the only one.
Merv
@Brian: If there was no such thing as gay in the 1940s, then why did the quote from a 1949 document above include the word gay?
Maleko
@loren_1955:
I know; I was a student there, graduated in the mid 70’s. It was like the ‘gestapo’ was under orders to hunt all faggots down and expel them. It’s true about the BYU Security hitting the parking lots of gay bars; today, the running rumor is that their are great place in the gym to hook up. Sigh, who knows. It would not go well for you in you are found to be gay, but I don’t know if that means expulsion. There were plenty of guys that fooled around with the gals; probably true for gay sex, too, hit I was sill figuring things out. Your real risk is somebody you know, roommate or dorm mate, turning you in. They don’t look for you; they can’t make a legal case that says you parked in the parking lot of a gay bar, therefore you are gay. I has a class with the Dean of Students one semester. They were in no hurry to throw you out of school; their reputation is way worse than their bite. There are more laws to protect yourself these day and they want a cordial atmosphere on Campus; From this class, I know what some guys and gals did that you’d think were toast if you read the honor code; now combine that with their strong desire to keep you in school and very few people were told to leave. If you flaunt it, you’re toast; play it cool, then you are OK.