Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals

by William Wright

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312322724
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/31/2006
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	300,581
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

William Wright graduated from Yale University in 1952. He is a New York Times bestselling author who has contributed to Vanity Fair, Town and Country, and the New York Times.

Table of Contents

	Author's Note	ix
	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
	Acknowledgments	281
	Select Bibliography	283
	Index	285

Editorial Reviews

An excellent book . . . a riveting account of a sordid episode in Harvard's history. For those who would like to see gay Americans pushed back out of public view, William Wright has provided a chilling glimpse of the horrors that lurk in the closet.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed

“Shocking . . . Only William Wright could have captured all the drama and irony of this long-buried story.” —Alison Lurie, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Foreign Affairs

“This is a tale of vindictiveness and hate perpetrated over the years—and it is a cautionary tale told with concision and convincing detail.” —Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story

“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, author of Outerbridge Reach

From the Publisher

In 1920, the suicide of a gay Harvard undergraduate sparked a secret purge of homosexuals on the Cambridge campus. Until the recent discovery of case documents by the staff of the Harvard Crimson, nothing was known about President Abbot Lawrence's closed-door panel and the expulsions and heartbreak that they caused. William Wright's Harvard's Secret Court rescues a suppressed chapter from Ivy League annals. Top-flight scholarship; engaging read.

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 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A vibrant homosexual subculture thrived on Harvard's campus in the 1920s until a suicide prompted a witch-hunt, kept under wraps for 80 years. In 1920, an undergraduate at Harvard University, Cyril Wilcox, took his life. In the days thereafter, his brother came into possession of letters that made it plain Wilcox was part of a vigorous homosexual community. Wilcox's brother took the letters to the Harvard administration, demanding action. Wright (Born That Way, 1998) exposes the venom unleashed by the college. It is the "why" that vexes Wright. Here was Harvard's president Lowell-brother of renowned lesbian poet Amy Lowell-a man who could bring a cultured hand to the situation: calm, humane, discreet, experienced. Why did he act like an ox? Surely the secret court was not so naive as to believe homosexuality was a rare isotope. Homosexuality was part of Harvard campus life: undergraduates, grad students, faculty and staff. Wright is agog at the court's overreaction. The court, but Lowell in particular, treated the circumstances as if they were some contagious evil. Why would these urbane, well-traveled, educated men believe this poppycock? Wright suggests some sensible conjectures: that homosexuality was still considered depraved, if not a sin, and if Harvard was a bastion of rectitude, if it couldn't be quashed there, then where? And the burgeoning polyglot student body, did this too represent the status quo under siege? The consequences were dire; more suicides followed the inquisition, and Harvard continued to smear the accused for years thereafter. While some of the author's comments fail to mesh ("freshmen," he writes, "were cowed by the majestic university that had deigned toaccept them," though earlier he notes that "until the 1960s it was as easy to enter [Harvard] as any other college"), they don't take away from the narrative. Harvard betrays itself and Wright's restrained telling staples a condemnation square on the school's forehead.

Kirkus Reviews