Harvard's secret court : the savage 1920 purge of campus homosexuals / William Wright.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wright, William, 1930-2016.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Harvard University--Students--History--20th century.

Harvard University.

Gay college students--Massachusetts--Cambridge--History--20th century.

Gay college students.

Discrimination in higher education--Massachusetts--Cambridge--History--20th century.

Discrimination in higher education.

History.

Massachusetts--Cambridge.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

viii, 294 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, [2005]

Summary:

In 2002 a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled "Secret Court Files, 1920." What he uncovered was five hundred pages of clandestine documents describing in detail an eighty-year-old episode in which Harvard University maliciously persecuted and harassed young men who were believed to be engaging in homosexual activity. It was a major scandal and one of the biggest cover-ups in Harvard's three and a half centuries. Over the decades the purge was forgotten, and by the time the news broke in 2002 there was no one alive who had ever heard of it.

In May of 1920 the family of Cyril Wilcox, a student who had been suspended from Harvard, noticed the smell of gas coming from his bedroom. Rushing to the room, the Wilcox family found Cyril sprawled on his bed-a suicide. In the next days, two letters arrived for Cyril that revealed his secret life as part of a coterie of young homosexual students. The resulting witch hunt, which wrecked careers and destroyed lives, remains one of the most shameful episodes in the saga of America's premier college. Spearheaded by the legendary Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell, the university pursued its purge with vigor and in total secrecy. Students began to incriminate other students. The result was a tragedy.

Several students committed suicide; others had their lives ruined by an assiduous and inexplicably prolonged effort on the part of Harvard to discredit their reputations. In two cases, however, those who survived rose to major prominence, one as a greatly respected federal judge and the other as a successful Broadway producer.

Harvard's Secret Court is a deeply moving indictment of the intolerance that exacts a human toll when a powerful institution loses its balance.

Contents:

Prologue: A Dark Place 1

Part 1 The Students

1 A Death on High Street 9

2 Shaken Harvard 21

3 A Walk Along the Charles 35

4 A Rare Outbreak of Evil 45

5 Harvard and the Homosexual 61

6 America's Gay Dossier 79

7 A Party in Perkins 87

8 The Court in Session 95

9 The Cunning and the Damned 107

10 Farce to Tragedy 119

11 Enduring Wrath 137

Part 2 Surviving Harvard

12 Settling Dust 153

13 The Kenneth Day Story 163

14 The Joe Lumbard Story 175

15 The Keith Smerage Story 187

16 Survival Struggles 203

17 The Nathaniel Wollf Story 215

18 The Lester Wilcox Story 223

19 Homophobia's Long March 243

20 Loose Ends 263

Epilogue: Discovering Secrets 275.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references pages ([283]-284) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0312322712

OCLC:

58919494

Publisher Number:

9780312322717