Queering Tuskegee: Segregated Homosexuality and Racialized Homophobia from World War II to the Lavender Scare

Scholars of queer military history have identified World War II as a period in which modern gay and lesbian subjectivity was produced in the “stigmatizing machine” of the US military. While the canonical narratives ascribed to this origin story of midcentury American gay and lesbian identity have centered upon the experiences of white men and women, African Americans serving in segregated units saw their enlistments increase during this same period. If modern forms of gay and lesbian subjectivity were produced by the machinations of World War II, we cannot underestimate the fact that the American military fought as a segregated fighting force until the late forties and early fifties. Viewing the conditional inclusion of African Americans alongside the sexual exclusion of gays and lesbians during and after World War II, this paper revisits the canon of midcentury queer soldiering by considering ways in which the US military produced both a segregated homosexuality as well as a racialized homophobia in its efforts to secure black labor. By considering the oral history of a gay Tuskegee Airman who later spent thirty-four years of his life in government service, I trace how his racial and sexual difference as a closeted Black gay man resisted the stigmatizing bureaucracies of both the US military and the federal government.