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15. The Cold War
- University of Wisconsin Press
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169 15 The Cold War The local ramifications of a national tragedy, the McCarthy witch hunts of “reds and pinks” caused FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to pursue Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson for his alleged homosexuality. Did a Chicago lesbian kill the “Black Dahlia”? Why was homophobic Senator Everett M. Dirksen visiting a gay bar? The “outing” of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Cold War hysteria, and Bruce Scott versus the Civil Service Commission all happened in Chicago. Wisconsin Republican senator Joseph McCarthy is often credited with instigating the 1950s witch hunt of homosexuals working in federal government , but he was only exploiting a purge that dated back to an incident a decade earlier. In September 1940, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, a lifelong friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, became embroiled in a sex scandal; while traveling on the presidential train Welles attempted to proposition several black Pullman porters. When FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called for the firing of Welles, Roosevelt refused, claiming his friend was drunk at the time. The incident proved a potent weapon in the arsenal of Republicans in 1940, and the scandal simmered until Ralph O. Brewster (R-Maine), a close ally of McCarthy, threatened to launch a Senate probe into the incident. Welles resigned, divorced his wife, and spent his twilight years in a disastrous relationship with Gustave, his bisexual butler. He died in 1961, at age sixty-eight, in Bernardsville, New Jersey. The Cold War 170 Republicans discovered that “outing” homosexuals equaled power. Before World War II sexual improprieties in government circles were largely ignored, but the upheaval of war brought homosexuality out of the shadows and into the spotlight of partisan politics and Cold War paranoia. The late 1940s also saw a rash of horrendous sex crimes. FBI director Hoover stirred the pot with a magazine article called “How Safe Is Your Daughter?” He wrote: “The most rapidly increasing type of crime is that perpetrated by degenerate sex offenders. . . . [S]hould wild beasts break out of circus cages, a whole city would be mobilized instantly. But depraved human beings, more savage than beasts, are permitted to rove America almost at will.” Three Chicago doctors disagreed with Hoover. In November 1949, Doctor Clarence A. Neymann, professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University, told the Chicago Tribune: “Sex criminals were as numerous proportionally in the Elizabethan era as they are today.” Doctor Edward J. Kelleher, chief of the municipal court psychiatric institute, agreed and disputed Hoover’s assertion that sex offenses were up 50 percent. “The total number arrested in this field has been virtually the same in the last few years,” said Kelleher. “According to the police commissioner’s office the total arrested in 1948 was 2,001 and in 1949 was 1,970.” The witch hunt for reds and pinks under the bed reached absurd proportions , with homosexuals blamed for all the nation’s ills. The Chicago Tribune on March 5, 1947, reported on a new twist in the murder case of Elizabeth Short, “The Black Dahlia,” found hacked to death on January 15 in a Los Angeles suburb. A Mrs. Marie Grieme, a former resident of Chicago , told LA police that a Chicago woman called Billy—a former WAC and judo expert—confided that she killed Short “in a fit of jealousy during a lover’s quarrel.” Chicago police picked up thirty-eight-year-old Mildred “Billy” Kolian for questioning, but she had an alibi, had never been a WAC, and knew nothing about judo. The article ends: “Police also were questioning four other women, some of them members of a homosexual ring, in connection with the case.” In the 1950s homosexuals were depicted as sexually rapacious, loose-lipped, and untrustworthy, making them easy blackmail targets for Russia to recruit as spies. Gay men and lesbians as a whole were viewed as a sinister Soviet “Trojan Horse,” fifth columnists infiltrating the U.S. government. In his book Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (2004), David K. Johnson [44.222.146.114] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:25 GMT) The Cold War 171 documents the rise of McCarthyism. Johnson writes that although McCarthy railed against Communists and queers, he excused himself from hearings of homosexuals, leaving the purging of gay men and lesbians to Senators Styles Bridges, Kenneth Wherry, and Clyde Hoey. McCarthy’s witch hunt began on February 9, 1950, with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, when he waved a piece of...