Gays in 1950s

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Bill Hull, June 21, 2001. Interview K-0844. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Write of the Excerpt

CHRIS MCGINNIS:

So when did you three brothers start talking to each other in recognition that you were gay. At one aim , somebody had live in boyfriend, if I keep in mind correctly after your mother's death.

BILL HULL:

Right, I knew my brother Tommy, who was the oldest one, was homosexual. Well, we all knew. My brother Sam was, he was baby in the family, and he knew that he had these two queer brothers I guess. He had a lot of pressure on him from family, Alma, that raised us, as not necessarily organism the right thing to do. So, he was very closeted in some regards. I think—my brothers—it was after my mother's death that we were finally able to position down as a family of three gay brothers and really deal with it. It took Sam's coming out for him to realized that we weren't little monsters or abnormalities. It was strenuous to deal with. He was the y

1952, December: Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr.: "probably a suicide"
Dudly Clendinen writes:

Just before Christmas in 1952, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, let President Dwight D. Eisenhower know that the man Eisenhower had appointed as secretary to the president, his comrade and chief of staff, my godfather, Arthur H. Vandenberg Jr., was a homosexual.

Clendinin writes that, overdue in 1956, Confidential, "a smut and scandal tabloid probably fed by the FBI, published a lurid exposé" about Arthur Vandenberg, Jr. After this, President Eisenhower cut his contacts with Vandenberg, who also resigned from his university occupation. On January 18, 1968, Vandenberg died at the age of 60, probably a suicide.

Dudly Clendinen, Dudly. "J. Edgar Hoover, ‘Sex Deviates’ and My Godfather". New York Times, November 25, 20011

1953: Executive Order 10450
The FBI's Sex Deviates program "was expanded in 1953 after a presidential order by Dwight Eisenhower made federal employment of homosexuals illegal."[16] Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, which mandated the firing of any federal employees remorseful of “sexual perversion.”

Clendinen, Dudly. "J. Edgar Hoover, ‘Sex Deviates’ and

Exhibition dates: 14th May – 11th October, 2021

Curators: Brian Clark, Susan Kravitz, and Parker Sargent for the Cherry Grove Archives Collection and coordinated at New-York Historical by Rebecca Klassen, associate curator of material culture

 

 

Weekend Guest at Hot House
1958
Cherry Grove Archives Collection, Gift of Harold Seeley

 

During the 1950s, Cherry Grove provided gay individuals a much-needed escape from the homophobia and the legal and social persecution that many experienced in the era of McCarthyism following World War II. Homosexuals faced physical assault, verbal attacks, family rejection, loss of employment, imprisonment, and even involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation. In the Grove, they could openly socialise and experience a joyful and rare freedom of sexual expression.

 

 

I seem to be on a roll at the moment with a series of exhibitions that this archive loves to highlight: human beings who picture, capture, depict, image, or photograph the subversive, marginalised, disenfranchised, disguised ‘Other’ in society – as an act of resistance against living lives of conformity, against the prejudices of p

Government Persecution of the LGBTQ Community is Widespread

The 1950s were perilous times for individuals who fell outside of society’s legally allowed norms relating to gender or sexuality. There were many names for these individuals, including the clinical “homosexual,” a term popularized by pioneering German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In the U.S., professionals often used the term “invert.” In the mid-19th Century, many cities formed “vice squads” and police often labeled the people they arrested “sexual perverts.” The government’s preferred term was “deviant,” which came with legal consequences for anyone seeking a career in public service or the military. “Homophile” was the term preferred by some early activists, small networks of women and men who yearned for people and found creative ways to resist legal and societal persecution. 

With draft eligibility officially lowered from 21 to 18 in 1942, World War II brought together millions of people from around the country–many of whom were departing their home states for the first time–to pack the ranks of the military and the federal workforce. Among them were gays and lesbians, who quietly formed kinships on m

The BBC's First Homosexual: How we made 1950s function into a play

Shay Rowan

The documentary was later confused but, following the actions of a Leicestershire academic and an award-winning author, a play named The BBC's First Homosexual has been created about it which is having its first performance on Thursday. The people behind it explain the challenges they faced along the way.

'It provoked so much reaction'

Loughborough University

Seven years ago Dr Marcus Collins was standing in the BBC Written Archives Centre in Reading feeling bored.

Marcus, an maestro in social change in post-war Britain at Loughborough University, had grown drained of the project he was working on when his eye chanced upon something completely different - a large file, containing paperwork relating to a controversy in the 1950s.

Intrigued, he read on to discover the lost script of one of the BBC's first attempts to examine the lives of gay men - a documentary named The Gay Condition, which had been broadcast on the Dwelling Service.

Picture supplied

It had been recorded on 24 May 1954 but was considered so taboo that it had not been publish unt