Category: From the Archive

This memorandum was the Big Bang of a federal assault for decades to come.

He was the anonymous State Department bureaucrat who nailed “the weak, unstable and fickle people who fear detection”. LGBTQ Americans got the so-called “Lavender Scare”. He got a beautiful parkway named for him in Williamsburg, Virginia—the Humelsine Parkway.

A Florida Homosexual Investigation Scorecard.…the numbers of investigations and removals of practicing homosexual teachers and professors from Florida public schools, colleges, and universities in the sixties reported by the Florida Legislative Investigative Committee (the Johns Committee).  We discovered this document in federal files in Washington, DC.  Why in the National Archives?  “federal employees removed for homosexual practices (37).”

After getting this 1964 memorandum declassified by the National Archives, we were thrilled to have such a perfect example of enduring government animus and released it far and wide. Written by an influential government attorney John Steele, this document became the title of an award winning documentary about our work—Mike Isikoff’s “Uniquely Nasty”: The Government’s War on Gays.