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Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals, by William Wright
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In 2002, a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled "Secret Court Files, 1920." The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives.
In May of 1920,Cyril Wilcox, a freshman suspended from Harvard, was found sprawled dead on his bed, his room filled with gas--a suicide. The note he left behind revealed his secret life as part of a circle of (cut "young") homosexual students.The resulting witch hunt and the lives it cost remains one of the most shameful episodes in the history of America's premiere university. Supported by legendary Harvard President Lawrence Lowell, Harvard conducted its investigation in secrecy. Several students committed suicide;others had their lives destroyed by an ongoing effort on the part of Harvard to destroy their reputations. Harvard's Secret Court is a deeply moving indictment of the human toll of intolerance and the horrors of injustice that can result when a powerful institution loses its balance.
- Sales Rank: #1391006 in Books
- Published on: 2005-10-01
- Released on: 2005-09-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.54" h x 1.07" w x 6.28" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 294 pages
From Publishers Weekly
In this repetitive and somewhat melodramatic narrative, prolific biographer Wright (Born That Way, etc.) tells the astonishing story of a group of Harvard students who were expelled in 1920 for homosexual conduct. After the suicide of Cyril Wilcox, a gay student, Harvard's president authorized a "Secret Court" of deans and scholars to investigate the sexual life of a group of students who often hosted sailors, drag queens and "boys from town" in covert dorm-room dance parties. Fueled by a desire to rid Harvard of homosexuality entirely, the committee's harsh treatment led to the suicide of another student and permanently ruined the careers of a few others. Wright has gotten this story from the proceedings of the court, which—along with personal letters and other documents—survived untouched in a massive classified file in the Harvard archives until 2002, when a reporter from the Harvard Crimson discovered it. Wright's painstaking attention to each student interrogation, family history and Secret Court administrator, along with his distracting authorial commentary, may leave some readers wishing that he had confined this story to a magazine article. Nevertheless, Wright succeeds in compiling a drama that will satisfy readers thirsty for pop-historical scandals from our nation's unregenerate past. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The Nathan Marsh Pusey Library houses the Harvard Archives, a collection of three centuries' worth of records on the university's employees, buildings, clubs, curricula, and students. Hidden in it for some 80 years were accounts of a "brutal and destructive" purge of homosexuals at Harvard and the secret court that conducted it. After Cyril Wilcox killed himself in 1920, his brother Lester's inquiries reverberated from Boston to Broadway. Armed with two incriminating letters and a list of 10 names that came from a gay cafe owner tracked via those letters, Lester confronted Dean Chester Grenough, who found in the documents proof of a homosexual network of undergraduates. Five men selected by president A. Lawrence Lowell were ordered to stamp out the apparent plague. They led a witch hunt that destroyed many lives, sometimes literally through suicide. Wright's rediscovery of this shocking incident constitutes a timely reminder to history buffs, sociologists, and general readers alike of the effects of organized intolerance. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"... Born That Way is a stimulating and highly readable introduction to the nature-nurture debate." --Derek Bickerton, The New York Times Book Review
"... a first-rate writer absolutely in command of his material." - David Halberstam
"It takes an independent writer and free spirit to tell the story straight, and thank God Wright has done it."--Edward O. Wilson, author of Consilience
"A revelation and a pleasure. . . It presents the mysteries of human genetics and behavior in a way that leaves the reader enlightened, conversant, and entertained. A most rewarding book. . ."--Robert Stone
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Harvard's Shameful Gay History
By Stacy Helton
I love it when a previously unknown historical event, seemingly small by most standards, is dug up and encapsulated in book form. A couple of years ago two plays were written and performed off-(off)-Broadway about Harvard's Secret Court, which was the 1920 purge of several homosexuals at the Cambridge University, which was the first time I was aware of this hidden event in gay history. After reading about this I found this book on Amazon, the only book (to my knowledge) that covers the event exclusively. What happened, briefly, was that a young sophomore from Fall River committed suicide; the day after a letter arrived for him from a classmate that went beyond taking a casual approach about the writer and senders homosexuality. The deceased man's brother opened the letter and went to Harvard, blaming them for the suicide by allowing the brother to fall in with a group of perverts. Harvard immediately but together a "secret court" and in three weeks that May and June interviewed over 50 people, most students, some instructors and some "local boys." The expulsion and additional suicide of some of the young men followed, with the admissions office still sending out "no confidence" letters to prospective schools and employers for up to 33 years later. Apparently the records were all filed in the library but were not discovered until 2002 when someone came across a box marked "secret court" and the unknown events then came to light. What Wright does is set the scene with the state of homosexuality in 1920 (not that good) and how homophobia was displayed up until this time. Wright then provides a narrative for several of the men, painting various pictures of homosexual life at the school in the first days of the 1920s. One review said that his writing was "melodramatic," but I didn't feel that all - there were, obviously, several blanks he had to fill in, but apparently the file was a plethora of information, letters and court reports of the shameful committee. For anyone interested in gay, pre-Stonewall history Wright has served up a shocking and sad tale from the non-so-distant past.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Vengeful Harvard College Eats Its Own
By A reader from Boston, MA
William Wright has revealed an astonishing and gruesomely fascinating episode in American history in this investigation of a roundup of students at Harvard College who were homosexual or indulging in homosexuality. Following the suicide of a student who had been left by his Boston cafe-owning lover, a secret court was established whose major governing influence was the college president, the beloved A. Lawrence Lowell, better known for his part in sending Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair, changing the acceptance procedure to ensure that the number of Jews admitted to the college was limited, and attempting to prevent black students from living in dormitories. This secret court "requested" the appearance of anybody from the Boston/Cambridge area who it felt had influenced its precious charges in such a loathsome and immoral way, and all such "requests" to appear were respected, even though the persons subpoenaed by this kangaroo court were in danger of having their reputations destroyed. But the book primarily investigates the students involved, the facts of the investigation and the future lives of the accused, one of whom committed suicide immediately after questioning and another after 10 years, his life having been, for all intents and purposes, ruined by the influence of his expulsion from Harvard. Some of the expelled recovered to one degree or another from the experience to eke out decent lives. One became a very influential and politically connected jurist. The story is heartbreaking and the cruelty and vindictiveness of the court staggering. Wright takes no prisoners in delineating the facts. Bizarrely, however, after observing that Lowell left his fortune to a Harvard-related philanthropic organization, Wright notes that it is his mistakes that are remembered, "perhaps unjustly". Such a generous judgment is hard to explain. This book is vividly illuminating of the overweening arrogance of WGU (World's Greatest University), the hysteria surrounding homosexuality in the U.S. post-WWI, the potential for a hateful cruelty among conservative Brahmin educators, and human resiliency and human tragedy in the face of a vengeful witch-hunting elite.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Important story. Overwrought and repetitive telling
By Librum
This book is based entirely on a series of articles that Harvard's own student newspaper brought out a few years back. The students who broke the story are to be commended for their first-rate journalism. Having read both the articles and this book, however, I can only report that the latter adds very little to the former. An obvious advantage of having a book length treatment in the public domain, brought out by a popular press, is that it's likely to reach a wider audience than the articles. If only for that reason, it's a good thing that such a book is available for interested readers. Still, it's too bad the book in question is the one under review. Publishers Weekly is quite right to call HSC melodramatic and repetitive. It is, indeed, a lot of both. It is also padded: with the author's unnecessary speculations (as to the motives of protagonists, etc.), with concocted dialogue, and with a non-sequitur and scattershot penultimate chapter on the history of homophobia. In short, HSC is completely superfluous to the very fine series of articles that were written about this tragic and shameful chapter in Harvard's history. I'm glad I read this book, for having learned about the circumstances it relates. But I wish that a more able historian -- not to mention a better writer -- than WW had written it.
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