Gallery Theme: Society
American society has always passed judgment on people whose sexual or gender behavior did not fit the perceived norm. Over time, same-sex behavior has been categorized as immoral, damnable, criminal, inverted, perverted, and sick. Being open about one’s sexuality in America has always carried risks: alienation from family, loss of jobs, confinement in a prison or a mental hospital, less-than-honorable military discharge, verbal and physical abuse, denial of the right to marry, separation from children, and even deportation and execution. Today, the risks to one’s safety and livelihood are fewer but have not been eliminated.
Despite being perceived as outsiders, LGBT people have participated in—and contributed to—every facet of society. Doing so often meant keeping private lives hidden from public view, and perhaps even from one’s self. However, every occupation, town, or family includes LGBT people.
Story Element: Our American Stories
Being Me in America is told through individual personalities. These profiles take us into all aspects of American life: the workplace, the military, the arts, the political arena, and beyond. Set against a historical backdrop, each profile featured in Being Me in America reflects the prevailing medical, legal, and religious attitudes of the period and the contemporary social contexts of gender, geography, and class. The stories underscore the cyclical swings in acceptance and intolerance. Profiles of major American figures are thematically grouped to highlight LGBT contributions to American history and culture that include some of our greatest treasures, finest moments, and defining art forms.
American Profile: Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, 1700s
In 1662, this Puritan clergyman published The Day of Doom, a fire-and-brimstone poem about the Last Judgment. Excerpts from the poem are still used to illustrate the severity of New England Puritanism. In his diary (not fully decoded until the 1960s), Wigglesworth recorded his battle with his “filthy lust” for men. Religious teachings and moral attitudes of Wigglesworth’s time focused on the “sin” of sodomy. In some colonies, sodomy was a capital offense.
American Profile: Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, 1800s
In a letter to his friend John Laurens, Alexander Hamilton explained that his marriage would not change his love for Laurens: “I wish…by action, rather than words, to convince you that I love you.” Same-sex affection was expressed more openly during Hamilton’s era than in later centuries, and the boundaries between friendship and sexual attraction were not always clear. However, Hamilton’s role as an architect of American democracy is undisputed. In 1787-88, he worked with John Jay and James Madison to write a series of essays in support of the Constitution. Known as The Federalist Papers, these writings proved critical in achieving ratification of the Constitution.
American Profile: Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle, late 1800s
Walt Whitman described Peter Doyle, a Washington, D.C., streetcar conductor, as his “dearest comrade.” Their relationship exemplified the virtues of the close male-to-male friendships that Whitman waxed lyrical about in his poems. In public, Whitman equivocated about the sexual aspects of these friendships, reflecting the amorphous notions about sexuality of the period. Doyle said about Whitman: “His disposition was different. Woman in that sense never came into his head.”
American Profile: Civil War soldiers, 1860s
It is estimated that more than 400 women who passed as men fought as soldiers in the Civil War. For centuries, women have passed as men in order to live the lives they wanted to—doing “men’s work” or living with other women. For others passing allowed them to live with other women. Many went undetected until illness or death “blew” their cover.
American Profile: Susan B. Anthony, mid 1880s-early 1900s
Industrialization and urbanization changed the American landscape, and with this change the first wave of feminism broke on shore. Anthony, the most famous of these pioneering feminists, dedicated her life to achieving social and political equality for American women. Like many of these trailblazing women, Anthony never married and formed her closest emotional and affectionate bonds with other women. Whether their relationships were sexual is largely unknown.
American Profile: Alain Locke, 1920s
Locke was among the leading intellectual figures of the Harlem Renaissance, many of whom were “in the life.” Despite the relative tolerance toward homosexuality and bisexuality during the 1920s, the black gay literati remained circumspect about their sexual orientation, emphasizing their blackness instead.
American Profile: Billy Strayhorn, 1930s-60s
Composer, pianist, and arranger, Strayhorn was one of the forces behind the sound of Duke Ellington’s band, creating some of the Duke’s best-known pieces, for instance, “Lush Life” and “Take the A Train.” Despite his incredible talent, Strayhorn remained in Ellington’s shadow as an under-estimated composer. Strayhorn lived openly as a gay black man during an intensely homophobic era. He also was active in the nascent civil rights movement.
American Profile: World War II veterans, 1940s
The military’s tolerance of homosexuality among its troops ended with the close of World War II. Some soldiers and marines were dishonorably discharged, others received a court-martial, and yet others received a less-than-honorable “blue” discharge. Service men and women who were identified as homosexuals were put on “queer ships,” and discharged to the nearest U.S. port city such as New York or San Francisco, giving birth to some of today’s largest homosexual communities.
American Profile: Harry Hay, 1950s
In the 1950s, when it was illegal in California for more than two homosexuals to congregate, Harry Hay co-founded the Mattachine Society, the first enduring organization for gay men and women. (However, it consisted primarily of men.) Known as the father of the modern gay movement, Hay is credited with being the first to apply the term “minority” to gay men and women, affirming his belief that LGBT people share a culture, as do members of various religious and ethnic groups. The Mattachine Society eventually grew into a national network with chapters in dozens of cities, creating a national model for gay activism.
American Profile: Aaron Copland, 1950s
The story of Copland, whose sinewy music is rooted in American folkways and icons, epitomizes a paradox of the early Cold War years, the first decade following World War II. Like Tennessee Williams, Samuel Barber, James Baldwin, and other gay artists of the period, Copland played a major role in America’s post-World War II rise as a cultural power. This role, however, did not protect him from the homophobic Lavender Scare that swept America at the time. In 1953, the State Department barred his work from nearly 200 American libraries around the world.
American Profile: Frank Kameny, 1960s
Fired in 1957 as an astronomer with the U.S. Army Map Service for being a homosexual, Frank Kameny became the first federal civil service employee to be dismissed on the basis of sexual orientation. Refusing to accept this infringement on his civil rights, Kameny fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court, but the court denied him a hearing. Determined to secure equality in employment for gays and lesbians, he took his case to the streets, organizing pickets in front of the White House and other government buildings. Kameny was a pioneering social activist in the civil rights movement for the LGBT community.
American Profile: Bayard Rustin, 1960s
A civil rights activist, Rustin was a longtime adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., who introduced to King the tactic of non-violent protest. Rustin, however, had been arrested on a “morals” charge in 1953. Because his homosexuality was considered a liability to the civil rights movement, Rustin always remained in the background. With A. Philip Randolph as the front man, Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington, which culminated with King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Within a year of the march, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Although Rustin did not conceal his orientation, it remained relatively unknown until the 1980s when he testified before the New York City Council in support of a proposed gay rights bill.
American Profile: Harvey Milk, 1970s
The first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk implored gay men and lesbians to come out to their parents and friends. Only then, Milk argued, could the community broaden its political base and fight the conservative backlash that threatened the gains made by the fledging gay rights movement. Chief among Milk’s targets was the well-funded “Save Our Children” campaign headed by singer Anita Bryant. The campaign aimed to overturn recently enacted local ordinances that had made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in a number of cities.
American Profile: Dr. John Fryer, 1972
Fryer was the gay psychiatrist who agreed to participate in the panel discussion, “Psychiatry, Friend or Foe to the Homosexuals” at the 1972 American Psychiatric Association (APA) convention. Fryer agreed to speak only if he could wear a mask and wig and disguise his voice. The following year, APA delisted homosexuality as a mental illness. At the time, homosexuality was considered an illness that could be “cured” by treatments that ranged from psychoanalysis to institutionalization to shock therapy. Despite the “de-listing,” these “treatments” were not universally, nor immediately, rejected by mental health practitioners. Dr. Fryer did not reveal his identity until 1994.
American Profile: Kate Bornstein, 2000s
Writer, performer, and activist Kate Bornstein has been on the vanguard of the American transgender movement since the 1980s. Her writings, which include My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely, have helped to empower a generation of transgender people and raise public awareness of the transgender experience.
Being Me in America conveys several important messages:
- LGBT history is a microcosm of American history.
- Personal identity is shaped by societal values and attitudes.
- America’s identity has always depended on LGBT people.
- Being LGBT in America has been, and continues to be, a struggle for the freedom to be who you are.
- LGBT history, though distinctive, overlaps with the history of other marginalized and oppressed groups.
- LGBT Americans do not enjoy the full rights of their citizenship.
Exhibit Elements
Places and Spaces: A 360-degree multi-media experience takes visitors across the country, through time, and up and down the economic ladder, putting them into the places and spaces where LGBT people have found community.
Me In America! America In Me! An uplifting film celebrates extraordinary and ordinary LGBT American people, taking visitors into all areas of American life: a factory floor, an art gallery, a school bus, a combat mission in Iraq, a local fire department, a football field, a TV newsroom, a Bible study group, and the halls of Congress where LGBT people are shaping America and America is shaping LGBT people. Despite attacks upon their physical, emotional, and spiritual lives, LGBT individuals have persevered in their quest to discover, define, and defend their true identities as people and as Americans.
