Lavender Haze

have brought us to where we are today. I wanted to take a second to sincerely thank the entire crew here at iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild for the means and an opportunity to share these stories, but particularly my producers Miranda Hawkins and Jesse Funk, who have put up with my raw tape and shaped it into something beautiful, special things, as well to Grimm and Mild's head of writing research formerly Karl Nellis and now Robin Menetter, who

wrangled the stories into existence to begin with, and Michelle Mudo, Alie Stead, and Taylor Haggerdorn who have been on the project since day one, along with relative newcomers Cassandra to Albo, Alex Robinson, and Jamie Vargas. Y'all have made my job easy and I am so excited to hear whatever you work on next. And of course, thanks to Aaron Menke for building such a strange sandbox for projects like this.

And thanks to you for listening and saying hi to me when I introduced myself every episode, or tweeting me about cemeteries, or just following along with us. It's been an honor to work with these people and to give voice to these stories. I hope that we'll get to do more of it in the future, but for now, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Thank you for being here, for being you, for being curious, and now on with the show you're listening to. American Shadows, a production of iHeart Rate and

Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankie. The President had never married, and he never would. James Buchanan, a president of the United States from eighteen fifty seven to eighteen sixty one, is the only president in our country's history to have never taken a wife. During his time in office, rumors about his private life spread through the halls of the Capitol, and those rumors are still swirling today. Buchanan was not

always single in his early twenties. He had actually been engaged to a woman named Anne Coleman, but she broke it off before they could make it to the altar. She had expressed to her friends that Buchanan didn't treat her with the affection she would expect from her future husband. After the end of their relationship, Anne was believed to have ended her own life. Many people attributed her apparent suicide to her fail engagement. For the rest of his life,

James Buchanan seemed wholly disinterested in wooing other women. Some believed that he still held a candle for Anne. However, most speculated that he stayed single for an entirely different reason. The prevailing rumor in the federal government was that James Buchanan was actually queer. Note here that, of course, language evolves as time goes on, and the word queer as it's used today was not used in the same way

in the eighteen fifties. However, though it may sound a little a historical, we will be using the reclaimed umbrella term queer throughout this episode to describe lesbian, gay by trans, queer, intersex, asexual, et cetera. People people whose orientations may not have fit into these societal norms of the time. James Buchanan certainly was speculated to have lived a private lifestyle that went against the norms of the day well before he was president,

and his sexuality was regularly questioned. His political adversaries would criticize him for his shrill voice and his smooth, beardless cheeks. Most of the rumors about him, however, revolved around his very close friendship with one William Rufus King, a senator from Alabama. A King and Buchanan met in eighteen twenty one, after Buchanan was first elected to Congress. For over a decade, they lived in a board house together four Congress's single members.

As the years passed, more and more congressmen moved out, until only King and Buchanan remained. The only time they altered this limming arrangement was when they each accepted different diplomatic positions abroad. The nature of King and Buchanan's relationship was the frequent topic of societal gossip. Politicians would hurl slurs like aunt nancy and aunt fancy at them, both of which were rude slang terms for gay men. Some in Washington even referred to them as mister Buchanan and

his wife. Aaron Brown, who was one of Buchanan's political rivals, wrote a letter railing against Buchanan and King's relationship, calling King Buchanan's better half. Many years later, President John Tyler's wife recalled Buchanan and King as being Siamese twins. They were very noticeably joined at the hip. What still exists of Kings and Buchanan's correspondence with one another was cautious and cryptic. However, not many of their letters actually remain.

Many were lost when the king estate burned during the Civil War. King also destroyed any letters from Buchanan that were marked private or confidential, a meaning that Buchanan's more personal letters can never be read for confirmation of the true nature of their relationship. There are, of course, historians who believed that King and Buchanan were not lovers, but

were instead very close friends. Regardless of whether or not James Buchanan was queer in the mid nineteenth century, it wasn't so thing that could have barred him from taking office legally speaking. However, as we'll see, that would not always be the case. Eventually identifying as anything but straight, or even just being accused of it could preclude someone from holding any job within the federal government. I'm Lorn Vogelbaum,

Welcome to American Shadows. The bar was alive with raucous laughter and music, and the man at the piano played a different tune for every guy who walked through the door. The Chicken Hut was an unassuming bar in downtown Washington, d C. Technically its name was Leon's Restaurant, but none of its clientele called it that. A regular restaurant by day, the Chicken Hut transformed into the city's most popular gay bar.

By night, the Hut served as the epicenter of social life, where DC's queer men throughout the nighte teen forties and fifties packed tight on weekend nights. It was a haven where they could openly be themselves without fear of repercussions. The Hut, popular as it was, was only a haven for white, middle class queer men. Black men were not welcome at the bar, even after d C officially desegregated

in nineteen fifty three. Women also did not frequent the Chicken Hut or any queer men's bars heard that matter, instead choosing to congregate at a single lesbian bar a few blocks away. D C's queer community had grown significantly leading up to the fifties. Between nineteen thirty and nineteen fifty, the city's population had doubled. The New Deal had created a significant number of new government jobs, and the influx of employees to the district included a number of queer people.

They built a rich social life for themselves, holding picnics at the Botanic Conservatory and roller skating parties in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Much of the city's gay social life, however, entered around Lafayette Park, which had been a famous spot for gay men to cruise since the eighteen hundreds. The Chicken Hut was located only steps from Lafayette Park, finding itself in the exact right location to provide a home to roost for the gay white men of the city.

The Hut's most well known member was its piano player, known as Miss Hattie by the bars regulars. Howard would play jaunty show tunes in popular songs of the day, often rewriting the lyrics to make them more body. Whenever Howard played a particularly scandalous line, the bar's patrons would shout out, did you hear that Miss Blick? A Miss Blick referred to Lieutenant Roy Blick, who served as the

head of the Metropolitan Police Department's Morality Division. The taunt entered into the local queer vernacular, but in reality, Roy Blick and his division weren't anything to laugh at. They were charged with cracking down on anything considered to be a sexual perversion, which at this time included homosexuality. Places like the Chicken Hut and Lafayette Park were under intense scrutiny as the police kept an eye out for anything

they might consider to be immoral. In nineteen forty seven, the US Park Police began a program called the Pervert Elimination Campaign. Blick and other officers would patrol cruising spots like Lafayette Park, arresting anyone they suspected of being queer. By nineteen fifty, two hundred men were arrested under this program,

while five hundred others were apprehended. They were questioned and fingerprinted, and then their names were added to what was called the pervert file, which was kept by Lieutenant Blick himself. One in four men detained at Lafayette Park was believed to be a government employee. If their names were published in the newspapers, and they often were, it would ruin their reputations and careers. DC's queer community wasn't just being smoked out of their chosen recreational spots. They were also

being systematically purged from the federal government's payroll. Beginning in nineteen forty seven, the government started their official campaign to weed its queer employees out. In June of that year, a Senate Appropriations Committee condemned quote the extensive employment in highly classified positions of admitted homosexuals, who are historically known

to be security risks. A Queer people were often conflated with communists, as both were believed to be immoral, psychologically disturbed, and godless of Following this report, the Secretary of State set up a personal security board for the State Department. Within the next three years, the State Department quietly fired ninety one employees who they determined were queer. In June of nineteen forty eight, things got even more difficult for

the queer residence of DC. President Harry Truman signed the National Miller Sexual Psychopath Law, which codified the act of Quote sodomyn. The smallest of sexual acts between people of the same sex could result in a twenty year imprisonment or one thousand dollars fine, which would be the equivalent of over twelve thousand dollars today. The first two men to be arrested under this law were in Washington, d C. The government cracked down on the queer community changed DC's

gay social scene entirely. A government employee started to avoid popular spots like the Chicken Hut and Lafayette Park Optic, instead to fly under the radar at less obvious venues. Gay men stopped telling people where they worked and fearing that their private life would get back to their superiors. And as bad as it had become for queer government employees at the tail end of the nineteen forties, the nineteen fifties would be even worse. The government's purge was

only getting started. At that time. Very few people knew who Senator Joseph McCarthy was. He was not yet the man who would embark on a manic quest to eliminate communism. He was simply an inocuous first term senator from Wisconsin. That all changed, however, on February ninth of nineteen fifty. On that day, McCarthy gave his now famous speech in which he claimed to have a list of two hundred

and five communists in the State Department. He never actually disclosed the names that were on this list, but that didn't matter. The fear he stoked with these allegations would snowball into what we know today as the Red Scare. On February twenty, McCarthy gave a six hour speech to the Senate to expand upon his claims. However, at this time he reduced his list of known communists to only

fifty seven. McCarthy wasn't always the most consistent. The number of communists who had allegedly infiltrated the State Department would change several more times. No matter how many there were, Carthy believed that every single one of them was, in his words, mentally twisted in some way. One of the manifestations of that mental aberration was he believed homosexuality. During McCarthy's speech, he said that one of the communists on his list was a flagrant homosexual who had a huge

network of queer communist connections. Quick to dismiss any suggestions that the State Department posed a security risk. A press release was sent out denying the fact that the agency employed any communists. However, they summarily fired two hundred people, and just one week after McCarthy's inflammatory speech, the Deputy under Secretary of State testified to the Senate that they had indeed fired ninety one queer employees in the previous

three years. The number ninety one became shorthand for the homosexual threat looming over the nation, and it was considered to be a threat today. When we think of the Red Scare, we mainly of communism. However, that wasn't everyone's primary concern. Of the twenty five thousand letters that McCarthy received from scared American citizens, only one in four were about communism. The rest condemned the perceived sexually deranged homosexuals

who were lurking in the government. Rumors even started spreading that the Soviets were finding blackmail targets in the United States government by using a secret list of homosexuals that had been compiled by Hitler, and so began the Red Scares lesser known sibling, the Lavender Scare. In March of nineteen fifty, the first Senate subcommittee was formed to investigate

homosexuality in the federal workforce. One of the people to testify to the subcommittee was none other than Lieutenant Roy Black, who claimed that there were five thousand gay men and women in DC and that three thousand, seven hundred of them worked for the government. The numbers had no basis in reality, but they were widely reported by the press regardless. Based on all of this, the Senate started an in depth investigation of the government's employment of quote, immoral perverts.

They beheld a number of hearings. Out of all of them, not a single one involved interviewing anyone from the queer community. Congressional members did not fully understand queerness and therefore didn't fully understand what they were investigating. After hearing that there were people who were neither entirely homosexual or heterosexual, one senator asked if there was a quick test like an X ray that discloses these things. Such ignorance would characterize

how they moved forward with their investigations. No evidence emerged during these hearings that queer employees were ever blackmailed into exposing state secrets, but in the end that didn't matter. Congress eventually determined that queer people were threat simply because their deviancy made them morally weak. Between April and November of nineteen fifty three, hundred and eighty two people were fired from their federal jobs. The vast majority of them

never even had access to sensitive government materials. However, many had prior charges related to homosexuality, which, in the eyes of the politicians of the day, meant that they were polluting the moral integrity of the government. As one might imagine, these mass layoffs had a grim effect on DC's queer population. People began moving to new jobs and new cities. Those who remained were unable to trust one another for fear

of their identities being exposed. The queer government employees stopped going to popular spots within their community. Some wouldn't even attend parties unless they knew every single person who would be there. Gay men and women started to pose as each other's partners when the need arose. The governments prejudiced

towards its queer employees would only continue to grow. On April twenty seventh of nineteen fifty three, when President Eisenhower signed an executive order banning anyone who exhibited a sexual perversion from working for the government, and homosexuality was definitely considered a sexual perversion at this time. Only the year before, the American Psychiatric Association had officially categorized homosexuality as a

sociopathic personality disturbance. The lavender Scare purge was eradicating almost every job opportunity that had previously been available to gay men and women. The prospects for the queer community were grim. It would take the dedication of a number of brave people who were willing to risk their livelihoods and reputations for justice to be served. In July of nineteen fifty seven, Frank Cammeny was just another bright eyed new hire for

the government. After finishing his doctorate at Harvard, Frank had been recruited as an astronomer for the U. S. Army Map Service. His future was promising. He had secured an enviable job and was doing meaningful work. He even harbored hopes of becoming an astronaut one day, as the possibility of space travel became more and more of a reality. However, everything came crashing down for Frank in October of that same year, when the government learned that he was queer.

Frank had known that he was gay since he was young. He had lied about his orientation to enlist in the army during World War II, and had continued to keep it under wraps as the world became more and more hostile to queer people. Still, Frank had managed to find a foothold in the DC queer community after moving there in nineteen fifty six, visiting bars like the Chicken Hut

and immersing himself in the local culture. His involvement in the DC gay scene isn't what brought the government's attention to his secutional orientation, though in August of nineteen fifty six, Frank had been arrested for quote lewde and indecent acts while in San Francisco. He paid the fines required of him, and after a six month probation period, the state of California changed his records to not guilty, case dismissed. Unfortunately, the bloodhounds of the lavender Scare were not so easily

dissuaded from their cause. Only a few months after he had been hired, the government got wind of the San Francisco incident and fired him. In January of nineteen fifty eight, Frank was told that he was barred from ever working in the federal government again. This made him extremely unattractive to private sector employers as well. With his doctorate in astronomy and with the space race looming on the horizon, Frank should have been an extremely desirable candidate for almost

any job he could have wanted. But not even his educational pedigree could combat the prejudice against queer people in the nineteen fifties. But in the span of a couple of months, Frank had become virtually unemployable. He was reduced to living off of mere pennies depending on the generosity of the Salvation Army. But Frank, however, disheartened and downtrodden,

would not go quietly. He approached the Washington d c. Chapter of the ACLU, and with their help, he became the very first person to challenge the government on their discrimination against hiring queer people. The courts dismissed his case in nineteen fifty nine and again in nineteen sixty. In January of nineteen sixty one, Frank filed his case with the Supreme Court. He had no attorney, but still felt compelled to march into battle for the sake of his

and his community's equal rights and for their livelihoods. Two months later, the Supreme Court declined to hear his case. Frank even wrote to President Kennedy, appealing to the president's famous line asked, not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Frank wrote that he simply wanted to serve his country, but that his country had made it impossible for him to do so. He never received a response. After seeingly exhausting all avenues,

Frank probably should have given up. Most people would if they were in his shoes, but thankfully Frank didn't know when to quit. Across the country, in California, people had taken notice of what was happening in d C many years before Frank began his fight. In response to the government's blatant discrimination, the Mattachine Society was founded in nineteen fifty. It was the first large scale queer society in the United States, and soon it would be leading the fight

against the lavender scare Back in DC. Frank Hammany knew he had almost run out of options, and so he approached the problem from a different angle. In nineteen sixty one, Frank established a DC chapter of the Mattachine Society. Within a few months, he became president of the organization. The Mattachine Society of Washington, or MSW, took a bold approach, loudly declaring that queer people were deserving of the same

basic rights as their straight counterparts. They didn't hide underground, but instead showed their faces and spoke for themselves instead of hiring straight representatives. In nineteen sixty three, Frank became the first openly gay man to testify before Congress. The MSW advised on a number of legal cases, including one filed by a man named Clifford Norton. Clifford had been caught in Lafayette Park and was subsequently fired from his

position at NASA after working there for fifteen years. After his dismissal, the MSW and the ACLU helped Clifford pursue legal action. On July first of nineteen sixty nine, a judge determined that the government had to prove a rational connection between an employee's private affairs and their dismissal, and that NASA had failed to do so. As a result of this ruling, Clifford received one hundred thousand dollars from

the government and a generous pension. Clifford Norton's case set a precedent that would be integral to shaping public policy and eventually ending the government's discrimination against their queer employees. In nineteen seventy three, a federal court in San Francisco cited the Norton case in a ruling that forced the government to change their approach to how they handled their

queer employees. Eighteen months later, the Civil Service Commission changed their regulations, erasing the words immoral conduct from their list of reasons that an employee could be fired. The queer men and women could once again work for the United States government without fear of losing their jobs for who they were, and the first person that the commissioner called about the new changes none other than Frank Cammeny. There's more to this story, and stick around after this brief

sponsored break to hear all about it. Queer people could no longer be dismissed from the government payroll for their sexual orientation. However, that same rule did not apply to the United States Armed Forces. The military continued to weed out queer service members, but sometimes their ignorance of gay culture worked against them. In October of nineteen eighty, a twenty one year old by the name of Mel Doll enlisted in the Navy as an electrician. He was stationed

at the Great Lakes Naval Station with no issues. He had revealed that he was gay during his enlistment interview, but it hadn't seemed to make a difference to his acceptance. That would change. In nineteen eighty one, Mel decided to enroll in cryptography school to further his skills for the Navy, which required an updated security clearance. During his interview. For the security clearance, Mel took all of the usual questions

about communist sympathies in stride. When he was asked about his sexual orientation, Mel admitted that he was gay, seeing no issue in the matter. Unfortunately, unlike when Mel had first enlisted, it was now a problem. In January of nineteen eighty one, the Department of Defense had instituted a new policy that required any service members who had ever participated in home sexual acts to be immediately dismissed. So after his interview, Mel was told that the Navy was

considering discharging him. In January of nineteen eighty two, Mel was given an honorable discharge because of his sexual orientation. No civil rights groups were willing to take on the Department of Defense, and so Mel was forced to take matters into his own hands. He walked three thousand miles across the United States to raise both money and awareness for his cause. The media quickly picked up on Mel's

walking crusade, interviewing him as he went. He told the press that he was far from the only gay service member at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Naturally, this sent the higher ups at that naval station into a frenzy to expose and dismiss them from the Navy. During their investigation, the Navy discovered that their queer enlistees referred to themselves and other gay men as friends of Dorothy. Gay men had been using the term friends of Dorothy for years.

Some say that it dates back to the nineteen forties as a reference to the character Dorothy in the movie The Wizard of Oz. Others say that the term originated from other women who ran in gay circles, Dorothy King or perhaps Dorothy Parker. No matter the origin, it had entered into the popular lexicon by the nineteen eighties, and queer men were using it regularly. The naval investigators, however, didn't understand the phrase friends of Dorothy was actually coded

language that just meant gay. They, in their ignorance, instead believed that a woman named Dorothy was the head of a huge, organized ring of queer military men. So naturally, the Navy tried to hunt down this mastermind named Dorothy. They frequented gay bars, asking if any of the men there knew Dorothy. They interrogated all of the gay men they discovered in the ranks of the Navy, doing their

best to uncover Dorothy's identity. Throughout the nineteen eighties, the military discharged one thousand, five hundred gay men a year. The elusive Dorothy never turned up. In nineteen ninety three, Bill Clinton signed Don't Ask, Don't Tell into effect, allowing closeted queer people to remain in the military. In twenty ten, Barack Obama changed that legislation to allow openly queer people to serve. Throughout all of these changes for queer service members,

Dorothy never ended up revealing herself. American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Alex Robinson and researched by cassandrad Alba. The fact checking by Jamie Vargas. It's produced by Jesse Funk and Trevor Young. The executive producers Aaron Menke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit griminmild dot com and four

more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.