History Repeats, Resistance Persists: Lessons from the Lavender Scare

Ella Patterson is a political science and history major, class of 2027. Ella is one of our 2025 Human Rights Summer Research Grant winners and a featured guest blogger. She is spending her summer visiting libraries and archives in Durham, Washington D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles to uncover how the Lavender Scare influenced the formation of early LGBTQ organizations, shaped a shared sense of identity, and inspired diverse forms of resistance. 

Last week, Charles H. Keating, the national lawyer for the Citizens Committee for Decent Literature, remarked that the publishing of books on “perversions” such as homosexuality was itself a perversion of the freedoms of speech and of the press. He claimed that a group of attorneys was hard at work drafting legislation to stop this “perversion of freedom.” 

Hold on—did I say last week? I meant in November 1960. But this statement would not have been out of place last week, as news outlets covered the recent Supreme Court decision allowing parents to opt their children out of school lessons involving books with LGBTQ+ characters. As the American “culture wars” around sexual and gender identity seem to be repeating themselves, there is no better time to analyze the outcomes and strategies used for queer resistance in another repressive era: Cold War America. 

Cold War history lessons often focus on the harrowing tale of McCarthy and the Red Scare, but the lesser known “Lavender Scare” is frequently reduced to a passing mention or even overlooked entirely. The Lavender Scare was a moral panic that caused the US government to target its queer employees in the 1950s and 1960s. LGBTQ+ people were deemed security risks, officially because the government considered queer people highly susceptible to blackmail. This pattern of thinking, along with the suspicion that queer people were communist sympathizers, trickled down through both policy and the attitudes of the general public. In towns and cities across America, this paranoia fueled everyday acts of discrimination. School boards purged teachers suspected of being gay, landlords refused to rent to queer tenants, and newspapers ran sensationalized stories that conflated homosexuality with communism or treason. Conventional narratives often suggest that queer people of this era simply bowed to the pressure, silently enduring discrimination, retreating from public life, or assimilating where possible. But the Lavender Scare’s enhancement of bigotry and its normalization of the persecution of queer individuals should not be overlooked as a period devoid of defiance; rather, it should stand as a critical chapter in the story of queer resistance and American history at large. 

My first introduction to the Lavender Scare occurred when I took a seminar called “Cold War America” with Professor Nancy MacLean this past spring. In class, my fellow students and I often discussed the striking similarities between the events we were researching in class and those we were reading about in the news. This parallel between the past and present drew me to the subject, as a student of both history and political science. While I considered focusing on this topic in my final project for the seminar, I realized that to give it the depth it deserved, I would need more time to research and more primary resources to explore. Luckily, Professor MacLean directed my attention to the Duke Human Rights Center’s summer research grant, which I knew presented the perfect opportunity for beginning my research. 

By focusing on a topic as important and timely as this, I hope that I can help to rewrite the narrative that queer people bowed to the attacks of the Lavender Scare and instead highlight the many forms of resistance that arose to offer inspiration for today. An interesting parallel that I plan to focus on in this project is how outright protesting and picketing has not always been a safe or feasible option for queer people both then and now. In the 1950s and 1960s, laws criminalizing “homosexual activity” threatened queer advocates, and now, the threat of militarized police discourages protesting. But resistance has never relied on marches alone. In both eras, queer people have found alternate avenues for defiance. This is why I hope to focus my research specifically on subtler methods of resistance including music, art, fashion, nightlife, literature, and perhaps most important of all, existence. 

The image at the top of this article includes a poem found in the July 1961 edition of “The Ladder,” a publication of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian political rights organization in the US. Beyond just being a sneak peak into the beginning of my research, I felt that this poem embodies the purpose behind it. 

“Don’t cry, child; don’t hide from love… 

You are not meant to be alone; 

Love someone life demands you do.” 

To love openly, refuse shame, and find joy even in a world that seeks to erase you—these are the radical acts that my research aims to uncover as I investigate primary sources from the Lavender Scare. 

I look forward to sharing my research in my next blog post and appreciate anyone who took the time to read this post!

Human Rights Summer Research Grant winners will be sharing an inside look into their experiences on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall as part of our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. Follow Duke Human Rights Center on social media and sign up for our newsletter to keep up with this series. Look out for part 2 of Ella's research experience later this summer!

Image citation: Daughters of Bilitis. The Ladder, vol. 5, no. 10 (July 1961). San Francisco: Daughters of Bilitis.