I figured I'd finally introduce myself, & thank those of you who have
helped a couple of my students this past semester. I've been teaching a
seminar on US Cold War Politics & Culture, & the two Duke students who
posted asking about leftist summer camps & about anti-Cold War literature
are both in my class (& both doing insightful work).
I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the History Dept. at Duke, and am involved with
various campus & community activist projects. My dissertation research (&
hence my reason for this post) is on homosexuality in the peace movements
of the 1960s & early 1970s.
Given how peace activists were often marginalized for fighting the
Vietnam War, the arms race, etc., I'm interested in finding out how
heterosexual men & women in those movements treated the even more
marginalized lesbian/gay/bi members of those movements. Ultimately, I'm
hoping to see how internal movement relations are or are not related to
what a movement can accomplish.
So to get at these questions, I need to find out more about internal
movement cultures, particularly related to how sex (straight, gay, talked
about, secretive, whatever) influenced how people got along with each
other in the movements. A few people have written or talked about their
experiences -- Gregory Calvert discussing getting gay-baited at an SDS
National Convention (perhaps by someone who later turned out to be a govt
informer?), Carl Wittman finding himself gay-baited out of SDS by Tom
Hayden, the gay & lesbian veterans of the Venceremos Brigades discussing
their experiences in "Out of the Closets" -- but far more stories have
not been told. Also, some activists found far more welcoming places to do
peace work, whether in WRL, some (but not all) draft resistance groups,
or eventually in gay liberationist & lesbian-feminist peace groups.
As such, I invite recollections from anyone, not just lesbian/gay/bi list
members, with something to say on this topic. I'm looking for anything
relevant, from obvious moments of hostility or friendship across lines of
sexuality, to the cultural context built people working for peace (I've
long been fascinated by how in "Alice's Restaurant," when Arlo recommends
people go marching into the draft induction center singing a bar of the
song, one person was crazy, two people were "both faggots", & three were
an organization). I'm also to hear about anything else people can
recommend to this project, from published references to contacts &
suggestions of people I should interview. I hope that some discussion of
this is generated on the list, while I'd also be happy to hear from
people who want to chat with me directly.
Thanks!
Ian Lekus
p.s. -- happy birthday to fellow list member & my wonderful mother, Jane
Lekus!
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Ian K. Lekus Rainbow Triangle Oral History Project
Department of History Center for LGBT Life
Duke University Duke University
238 Carr Bldg; Box 90719 202 Flowers Bldg; Box 90958
Durham, NC 27708-0719 Durham, NC 27708-0958
lekus@duke.edu rainbowtri@duke.edu
(919) 682-7257 (h) (919) 684-6607
(919) 681-7670 (fax) (919) 681-7873 (fax)
http://www.duke.edu/~lekus
"The struggle of humanity against power is the struggle
of memory against forgetting." -- Milan Kundera
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