October 9, 2023: Vice President Studying: Aaron Burr’s Trial

[50 years ago this week, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. That striking political moment was not only part of the deepening Watergate scandal, but one of the few times when an American Vice President has made major news. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Agnew and other noteworthy Veeps, leading up a weekend post on our current VP!]

On two dark sides to expansion that a Vice President’s trial helps us better remember.

In the summer of 1807, former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr was tried for treason and high misdemeanor in a Virginia federal court, one presided over by none other than Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. While Burr has become much better known over the last few years due to his central role in the life and (especially) death of Alexander Hamilton, and while he lived a long and influential American life that included prominent roles in the Revolution and Founding, this trial focused on by far the most striking and controversial part of Burr’s story, what came to be known as the Burr Conspiracy: his 1805-06 efforts (begun while he was still VP, natch) to raise an independent military force in the Western United States and either use it to establish a separate nation with himself as the leader or to invade Mexico (possibly to enact the same purpose of carving out a distinct territory that he could rule). The uncertainties revealed by even that brief summary, however, along with other factors like the lack of reliable witnesses (other than one shady co-conspirator, James Wilkinson), led to an acquittal on both charges (despite President Thomas Jefferson’s ardent and possibly unconstitutional attempts to influence the outcome).

The histories around Burr’s conspiracy and trial, like all those in his incredibly complicated and compelling life, deserve their own specific attention and analysis. But this unique moment nonetheless also reflects a couple broader and quite dark realities of expansion, both in that early 19^th century period and throughout our history. For one thing, we often frame expansion (at least in how it is presented in our educational texts and conversations) through the official mechanisms by which territory was added, whether treaties like the one that began this week’s posts or financial transactions like the 1803 Louisiana Purchase through which the Jefferson Administration (with Burr as VP) acquired these Western territories from France. Yet while such measures did formally add new lands to the expanding nation, the actual expansion of Americans (individually and collectively) into those territories was far, far more messy and bloody. I’ve long argued that the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889, in which US settlers invaded that future state while it was still all Indian Territory, was a striking and illegal historical moment—yet one could just as easily see it as emblematic of the chaotic and brutal way that US expansion always took place on the ground.

Moreover, the seeming dichotomy between (yet clear interconnections of) Founding Father and Vice President Burr and treasonous conspirator Burr is also emblematic of the unsavory (or at the very least far from idealized) roles performed by countless prominent Americans in the expansion process. Davy Crockett is a particularly good example, a folk hero who had his own Walt Disney TV show yet one who made his name in wars against Native Americans and then a pre-Civil War rebellion in defense of slavery (all of which were also in service of eventual US expansions, whether into the Southeast or Texas). But another example is none other than George Washington, whose first military service (which led directly to all his future military and political roles) was in the French and Indian War, a conflict precipitated by (if not at all limited to) the expansion of English settlements into new territories. Hell, many of the Civil War US Colored Troops (one of my favorite American communities) went on to serve with the post-war Buffalo Soldiers, regiments of all-Black cavalry that fought Native Americans throughout the late 19^th century “Indian Wars.” When it comes to expansion, to quote my favorite line from my favorite depiction of that USCT community, “ain’t nobody clean.”

Next VeepStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Vice Presidents you’d highlight?

October 7-8, 2023: LGBT Rights in 2023

[As we begin another LGBT History Month, this week’s series has highlighted some important moments across American history in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to this weekend post on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

On one definite sign of progress, one frustrating regression, and a key battleground.

1)      Cultural Representations: In this weekend post almost exactly five years ago, I highlighted a trio of groundbreaking late 1990s cultural representations of LGBT lives. They certainly reflected a changing zeitgeist, but unfortunately it was not changing that fast nor that much—in a recent rewatch of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (what can I say, I’m a sucker for Vincent D’Onofrio’s Bobby Goren, the 2^nd best TV detective of all time), I came upon a 2004 episode where the solution (semi-SPOILERS) hinged upon two characters being gay and hiding that fact from their employer (which would, one of the characters made clear, fire them if their sexuality were revealed). Which makes it quite striking that less than two decades later, I routinely see LGBT couples featured (without commentary, as it should be) in TV commercials and other everyday media, as just part of the fabric of culture and society. My teenage sons can’t really imagine a pop culture landscape where that wasn’t the case, and that’s a very good thing.

2)      Educational Repressions: No area of progress can ever be taken for granted, however, and if certain prominent forces have their way future generations of teenagers will not be nearly as collectively aware of the presence of LGBT lives in their society. I’m thinking, of course, of political movements and laws like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay,” a bill which requires educators to pretend that LGBT people quite simply do not exist (and which overtly bans books that feature gay lives in any form). As a public school student in Virginia in the 1980s and early 1990s, that was largely my experience—I can’t remember a single reading nor lesson that featured LGBT lives, identities, stories, histories, etc. in any way (certainly not overtly, and probably not even implicitly). Not at all coincidentally, there was not a single out LGBT student at my high school during my time there, nor was I aware of meeting someone with a sexual orientation other than straight until I attended college. That’s the repressive and abusive world to which these bigots want to return us, and unfortunately they’re making progress.

3)      Legal Protections: Pop culture and education are thus two significant spaces in which to fight for continued and expanded representation of LGBT Americans. But above and beyond them, and indeed directly informing those fights as well as many others, is the basic but crucial fact that LGBT rights are protected under the Constitution, key elements like the 14^th Amendment, and related laws like the Civil Rights Act. It’s those protections which advocates of so-called “religious liberty” seek to deny, which are at risk in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which are absolutely being targeted by the anti-LGBT forces in our current moment (most blatantly in anti-trans laws, but that’s without doubt just the tip of the iceberg). The ongoing fight for LGBT rights is of course a human rights battle, but it is also, and most importantly for this blog and its author, a foundationally American one.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

October 6, 2023: LGBT Histories: 1970s Advances

[As we begin another LGBT History Month, a series highlighting some important moments across American history in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to a weekend post on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

On three 1973 moments that helped advance the movement in distinct but interconnected ways.

1)      Lambda Legal’s lawsuit: In 1971, New York City lawyer William Thom attempted to incorporate a nonprofit known as Lambda Legal, an organization that would be dedicated to addressing the legal, political, and social needs of LGBTQ Americans and their allies. His application was denied on the grounds that the organization’s goals were “neither benevolent nor charitable,” but fortunately Thom and his allies did not back down. They appealed the decision, and in 1973 the New York Court of Appeals ruled in Lambda’s favor and the organization was officially incorporated as a nonprofit, beginning operations in October. Over the next four decades Lambda has provided vital legal and social services to LGBTQ Americans around the country, and has played a significant role in such landmark legal decisions as 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling (which invalidated all remaining anti-sodomy laws in the US). All of which stems from this crucial 1973 decision.

2)      PFLAG’s origins: On March 26^th, 1973, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) held its first official meeting, at Greenwich Village’s Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church. PFLAG’s founder, Jeanne Manford, had over the prior year become the most prominent such parent, as the beating of her gay activist son Morty had prompted her to join him in his efforts and participate in the city’s 1972 Gay Pride march (holding a sign that famously read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children”). From those personal and familial origin points sprang an organization that was initially similarly intimate—that March meeting had about 20 attendees, and for the next few years other such small groups began to emerge around the country—but that by 1982 had become substantive enough to be incorporated in California as a non-profit. PFLAG represented a significant advance in a number of ways, but I would especially emphasize the importance of an organization dedicated not to LGBTQ Americans themselves, but rather to their loved ones and social networks. This was another key step in recognizing the full social presence and participation of this American community.

3)      APA Small Steps: As this week’s posts have consistently highlighted, however, civil rights advances can’t and shouldn’t be separated from concurrent questions of discrimination, prejudice, and oppression. I wrote on Wednesday about the American Psychiatric Association’s discriminatory 1953 definition of homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance,” a prominent, frustratingly “scientific” example of such anti-gay prejudice. Two decades later, the APA finally removed that classification in 1973; in 1975 the American Psychological Association agreed, publicly announcing that “homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, reliability or general social and vocational capabilities, and mental health professionals should take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness long associated with homosexual orientation.” These were small steps along the path toward inclusion, but they were steps nonetheless, and ones that complement the advances illustrated and gained by groups like Lambda and PFLAG.

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

October 5, 2023: LGBT Histories: Stonewall

[As we begin another LGBT History Month, a series highlighting some important moments across American history in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to a weekend post on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

On the significance of violence for civil rights movements, and also of remembering beyond it.

I don’t want to oversimplify the many layers and threads to Ava DuVernay’s wonderful and important historical drama Selma (2014), but if I had to identify one turning point scene in the film, it would be the stunning and painful sequence when a young John Lewis and his fellow Civil Rights marchers are brutally attacked and beaten by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As the film presents this moment, it was the violence directed against the nonviolent marchers—and more exactly the national awareness of that violence, as it was covered extensively on television news as well as in many other media venues—that led to significant shifts in both public consciousness and President Lyndon Johnson’s own policies, among other effects. And moreover, the film presents those effects are entirely purposeful and intended, as illustrated by an earlier scene when Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow Civil Rights leaders argue that such violent responses to nonviolent resistance are precisely what they’re hoping to draw out of Selma’s Sheriff Jim Clark and his racist ilk. The violence, David Oyelowo’s King argues, is a painful but necessary and crucial step toward achieving the movement’s goals.

I don’t think there’s any way to argue that either the June 28, 1969 violent police raids on New York City’s Stonewall Inn or the subsequent nights of riots in protest of those raids were purposeful or intended by the gay rights movement or their allies. Although the LGBT community in New York had faced overt and official discrimination for years, and although there had been a similar police raid and riot at San Francisco’s Compton’s Cafeteria a few years earlier (in August 1966), the violent police crackdown on the Greenwich Village establishment Stonewall—the city’s most prominent gay bar and night club at the time—was nonetheless as unexpected as it was brutal. But from what I can tell, the raid and riots—both the night of the raid and for a new nights after, LGBT New Yorkers and their allies gathered at the scene to angrily protest the police brutality—achieved similar effects to the events on the Edmund Pettus Bridge: garnering significant national attention and sympathy for the gays right movement and its causes and goals, and in the process fundamentally shifting the conversations over this American civil rights issue and movement. In their different yet parallel ways, then, both Selma and Stonewall illustrate the tragic but important role that violence can play in helping civil rights movement advance their causes.

Yet as much of my writing in this space (and in my online spaces overall) argues, collective memories are always about emphasis, about what we particularly focus on and make central to our shared narratives and conversations. And so we can recognize and engage with the role of violence in a history like that of the Stonewall Uprising, but still focus our collective memories on different, under-remembered, and to my mind even more influential elements of that history. For example, the six months after Stonewall saw the founding of a number of new and significant gay rights organizations and initiatives in New York: the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), founded just days after Stonewall and the first civil rights organization to use “gay” in its name; three newspapers, Gay, Come Out!, and Gay Power; and the Gay Activists Alliance, which complemented but also diverged from the GLF and made clear that the gay rights movement in the city (and beyond) had multiple voices and communities. For another example, on the one-year anniversary of the raid, June 28, 1970, Gay Pride marches were held in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago; these are considered the first such marches in America, and would become one of Stonewall’s most prominent and enduring legacies. The more we can remember and emphasize these effects to Stonewall, the more we can focus on how the gay rights movement truly advanced its causes and perspectives, in response to but also far beyond the oppressive violence of the raid.

Last history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

October 4, 2023: LGBT Histories: 1950s Discriminations

[As we begin another LGBT History Month, a series highlighting some important moments across American history in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to a weekend post on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

On two horrific 1950s decisions, and whether we can find light in such dark moments.

The longstanding and widely-accepted narrative of the 1950s as a particularly conservative period in American society and culture has been challenged somewhat by historians and commentators in recent years, and for good reason: decades don’t tend to break down quite so cleanly into singular identities. While of course such narratives are generally based on particular starting points—such as American society’s return to a post-war status quo in the ‘50s, especially when contrasted with the radical cultural, social, and political changes that would come in the following decade—they also depend on eliding or minimizing all of the layers and contradictions that are present and significant in any moment. So while it would be easy to see the 1950s as entirely opposed to any acceptance (or even tolerance) of homosexuality in American society, the truth, as historians have long worked to remind us, is that many identities and communities flourished in the decade, despite various prominent forms of cultural conservatism or oppression.

Yet at the same time, we can’t swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, minimizing those oppressions and their striking and horrific effects. And the early 1950s saw too particularly ugly official decisions that not only oppressed but quite literally attacked gay Americans. In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association published the first edition of its seminal Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-I), and in it classified homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance”; that deeply offensive classification would be partly revised in 1973 but only fully removed in the 1980s, meaning that its painful and destructive effects for gay Americans lasted for nearly three decades. And in April 1953, shortly after taking office for his first term as president, Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which not only banned gay and lesbian federal employees but encouraged both private contractors and allied nations to fire their own such gay employees; this horrific federal action led directly to the so-called Lavender Scare, during which countless Americans were fired and persecuted due solely to their perceived sexuality. Taken together, these two official decisions reflect an early 1950s institutional culture extremely and aggressively hostile toward gay Americans.

Remembering these horrific decisions and oppressions is important, not because they embody the entirety of the decade but because they certainly illustrate a pervasive set of attitudes (in the supposedly scientific community just as much as the bureaucratic one) toward gay Americans and their fitness as members of society. Moreover, such darker memories shouldn’t and don’t make it impossible to focus as well on the kinds of individual and communal progress on which the historians to whom I hyperlined in the first paragraph above (among many other pioneering gay/queer studies scholars) have written. Indeed, recognizing some of the darkest sides to 1950s America for gay Americans makes the commitment and courage of those Americans that much more apparent and admirable still. In my book on History and Hope in American Literature, I focused one chapter on the 1980s AIDS epidemic, and images of both those dark histories and of hard-won hope for gay Americans (and all Americans) through them. But the same could certainly be said of these 1950s oppressions, and of the ways that gay Americans and their allies fought for their rights and identities in the face of such horrific decisions and hostilities.

Next history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

October 3, 2023: LGBT Histories: Harvey Milk

[As we begin another LGBT History Month, a series highlighting some important moments across American history in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to a weekend post on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

On a key detail that complicates the story of a gay rights leader’s tragic murder, and how the overarching history holds in any case.

In November 1977, Harvey Milk, running his third campaign for public office in San Francisco, was elected to a seat as City Supervisor, becoming the first openly gay elected official in California history (and one of the first in American history as well). Milk’s rise paralleled in many ways the emergence of a vibrant and vocal gay and bisexual community in San Francisco’s Castro Street district (an area that came to be known as The Castro), and so as so often this individual leader’s story also helps us understand collective and communal histories and experiences. Yet at the same time, we can’t and shouldn’t discount the impressive individual ambition and courage it took for Milk to run for elected office as an openly gay man in the 1970s. That compelling individual story, along with a charismatic personality and a strong voice, are what made Milk such an iconic figure, and why cultural texts such as Gus Van Sant’s 2008 film Milk (starring Sean Penn) continue to engage with this unique and important American figure and story.

That story ended tragically only 10 months after Milk’s inauguration (30 years ago today) to the Board of Supervisors, with his November 1978 murder by former city supervisor Dan White. Given Milk’s iconic and ground-breaking identity, it would be quite easy, if not inevitable, to imagine that Milk was assassinated due to his identity as a gay man—and indeed, that had always been my assumption about the murder and its motivations. But in looking into Milk for this post, I learned that (at least as far as I can tell, and as always corrections or additions in comments are very welcome!) the murder was something quite different: White had stepped aside from the Board in order to pursue opportunities in business, and when they failed and he attempted to return to the Board, he was denied the ability to do so (on procedural grounds) by Mayor George Moscone; White then snuck a gun into City Hall and killed first Moscone and then Milk, whom he apparently saw as having collaborated with Moscone to keep him off the Board (and maintain a slim progressive majority in the process). Which is to say, the Moscone and Milk assassinations seem to be best explained by a combination of a disgruntled former coworker and political conflicts, none of which lessen the tragedy or horror but both of which are distinct from Milk’s sexual identity and iconic status.

If that is indeed the case with Milk’s murder (and again, please offer any additional or alternative perspectives in comments, since I’m still learning about this topic as I always am here), then it’s important that we remember those details, so as not to misrepresent what took place in this particular historical moment (nor to shoehorn it falsely into a narrative about Milk’s groundbreaking work and life). But at the same time, it’s also important that we not use this tragic end to Milk’s life to read back into or circumscribe that life and career more broadly—that would be true even if he had been killed because of his sexuality, but it’s even more the case if the killing was unrelated to that part of his identity. That is, Milk’s charismatic and groundbreaking voice, his ambition and courage, and the true significance of his electoral victory and year of office-holding are the central elements of an iconic and important American life and story, and remain key focal points on which our collective memories of the man and his moment should focus. Remembering with accuracy and nuance are important goals, but remembering our inspirational and ground-breaking figures and histories are just as crucial, for the early gay rights movement as for every part of American history.

Next history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?

October 2, 2023: LGBT Histories: The Society for Human Rights

[As we begin another LGBT History Month, a series highlighting some important moments across American history in the fight for gay rights and equality. Leading up to a weekend post on the current state of that ongoing battle!]

Three contexts for the brief and frustrating yet important and inspiring history of America’s first gay rights organization.

1)      Germany: The Society’s founder, Henry Gerber, immigrated to Chicago from Germany in 1913 at the age of 21; he enlisted in the US army during WWI and ended up back in Germany, working as a printer for the Allied Army of Occupation between 1920 and 1923. While there he connected to the work of German physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and his Bund für Menschenrechte (Association for Human Rights), a pioneering organization (linked to Hirschfeld’s work with a group known as the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) dedicated to both supporting gay communities and advocating for sexuality as a shared aspect of human identity. When Gerber returned to the US and became a postal worker in Chicago, he decided to create his own such organization, filing an application for a charter for a non-profit Society for Human Rights in December 1924. While the first world war is often described as a moment of new international (even global) conflict, and of the ruptures that contributed to the rise of Modernism (among other effects), Gerber’s German influences (like his immigration story) illustrate the era’s and America’s concurrent possibilities for international connections and collaborations.

2)      Comstock: As you might expect, Gerber and the Society met with immediate and innumerable challenges. One of the most significant, and certainly the most ironic given Gerber’s day job as a postal service worker, was the Comstock Act (1873), which crimilinalized sending materials deemed “obscene” or “immoral” through the mail. Given that all gay-oriented publications (even those with no overt erotic elements) were deemed obscene until the Supreme Court’s decision in One, Inc. v. Olesen (1958), the Society was not able to communicate via mail at all without violating the law; for example, while Gerber founded and edited two issues of a newsletter, Friendship and Freedom, he likely did not mail it to any members, and no extant copies of it are known to have survived. Such social and legal challenges proved insurmountable, as in 1925 Gerber and other founding members were arrested; Gerber would be tried in court three times before the charges against him were dismissed, and in the process he lost all his personal papers, all remaining issues of Friendship and Freedom, and all of his personal savings as well. While the Society served as an influence and inspiration for later gay rights organizations, its own history was tragically short-lived and circumscribed.

3)      John T. Graves: That frustratingly quick end in no way minimizes the Society’s significance, of course, nor the many layers to its community and histories. One of the most compelling to this AmericanStudier is that of John T. Graves, an African American preacher in Chicago who signed the Society’s inauguration papers (along with his partner, a railroad worker named Ralph Ellsworth Booher) and served as the Society’s first and only President. That’s about all of the information that I’ve been able to learn about Graves as of this writing, but even those few tidbits present so many complicated and compelling layers: the intersection of race and religion with this early gay rights organization and movement. As I detailed in this post, Bayard Rustin is often seen as one of the first figures to bring those different American communities and histories together; but four decades earlier, John Graves apparently did so as well. Just one more reason to better remember and engage with the frustrating but fascinating history of the Society for Human Rights.

Next history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other histories or stories you’d highlight?