Arts
Harvard's Secret Court
 |
Harvard's
Secret Court A Book Review |
by Robert William Wolff
| Harvard’s
Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals William Wright New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2005 |
Wright looks at the events and the people who caused them from many vantage points. This helps the reader grasp the era, the society, the institution, and the motivations and concerns of the men trapped in the web spun by Lowell and his colleagues. Thankfully there has been significant progress since 1920.
I'll leave the nuanced telling of this intriguing tale to Wright. But to encourage readers to pick up the book, I will sketch out the beginning of the tale. Cyril Wilcox, a sophomore in the class of 1922, has a lover, Harry Dreyfus. Dreyfus is a townie who operates a tavern in Boston. Like most gay men of the era, Cyril is not out to his family. The Wilcox family wakes one morning to find that Cyril has used gas to kill himself. After his death, two letters arriving from friends of Cyril out him to his family. The letters are written in such a way that it is immediately clear that Cyril understands gay life and would enjoy receiving letters from the obviously homosexual men who wrote them.
The Wilcox family was in shock and was grieving deeply. Lester Wilcox, who had tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate his younger brother, becomes convinced that Harvard and Harry Dreyfus are responsible for placing Cyril in a situation for which suicide was his only solution. With a trusted member of the Harvard faculty of his previous acquaintance, Lester Wilcox goes to President Lowell's office, finds him away, engaged in high level diplomatic endeavors with President Coolidge. Lester meets with Acting Dean of Harvard College Chester Greenough, who later becomes a key member of the secret court. Wilcox, having confronted at the funeral the student who hosted gay parties at the college, gets this young man to identify his brother’s lover.
After accusing Harvard of his brother's calamity, Lester goes to Harry Dreyfus' home. He accuses Dreyfus and beats him up. He insists that Dreyfus make a list of homosexuals at Harvard. After the list is made, he snatches it and takes these names to Dean Greenough. This action kicks off a court that made secret, quick, decisive and unconditional decisions about the guilt or innocence of each man, and then brought down a sentence on each designed to make it impossible for each to become educated or to be employed anywhere. Inspector Javert of Les Misérables had nothing on this group of Harvard administrators.
There is much more to the story of Harvard's Secret Court. I'll leave that to the reader's experience with Wright's book. Opportunities presented themselves for the members of the court to offer clemency, for forgiveness, for understanding extenuating circumstances. It is clear from the actions of these powerful men that they had no ability to forgive what these young men, in their formative years, had done. Although it certainly should not have mattered, the men who married and lived apparently heterosexual lives were treated the same as the men who continued to demonstrate primary focus on other men.
Instead, these college administrators vindictively set out procedures in the offices of Harvard to ensure that the presumed guilt of the parties brought before their court would haunt and inhibit the men throughout their lives. For example, any educational institutions requesting information about a man found guilty by this court was to be told that the man would never be readmitted to Harvard and that Harvard recommended against them being admitted to any other institution. And, the deans gave instructions to the appropriate offices so that the rules stuck for decades.
Several of the men accused by the court did, however, go on to achieve major prominence; among them two who became a federal judge and a Broadway producer, respectively. But most achieved much less during their lives than was anticipated when they were admitted to Harvard, and several, like Wilcox, committed suicide. For those who want to know our history and those who enjoy the telling of a fascinating story, this book is for you.
Robert William Wolff is a scenery and lighting designer who lives in Randolph. He serves on the R.U.1.2? board and volunteers for OITM.