Blank pages from Lab history: The Lavender Scare

Between 1950 and 1954, the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, often associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy, launched thousands of “loyalty investigations” targeting individuals across government agencies, academia, and the Hollywood film industry (famous targets included Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball). Any behavior outside of societal norms was viewed as a potential sign of closet communism. Careers—and lives—were ruined as a result.

This political climate was especially damaging for members of what is known today as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning plus (LGBTQ+) community who served in the federal workforce—including those who worked at Los Alamos—during and after World War II.

“Unfounded fears that LGBTQ+ individuals posed a threat to national security...”

While the Red Scare and McCarthyism are widely studied chapters in U.S. history, much less is known or recognized about a simultaneous wave of anti-Communist persecution based on sexual orientation. In what has since become known as the Lavender Scare, thousands of government employees were forced out of their jobs based on unfounded fears that LGBTQ+ individuals posed a threat to national security because of weak moral character and susceptibility to blackmail.

The Lavender Scare was enshrined into official code in 1953 through President Dwight Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, which formally defined “sexual perversion” as a national security risk. The order effectively banned anyone suspected of being LGBTQ+ from working for any agency of the federal government. Fellow employees were incentivized to report each other for any behavior deemed evidence of “homosexual tendencies.”

One such instance is recounted by Robert Korber in his 2011 book Cold War Femme. A woman who worked as an economist in the Department of Commerce was discharged for missing two buttons from the front of her dress. The missing buttons allegedly suggested an unfeminine carelessness about her appearance, which was seen as an indication of masculine, and therefore lesbian, behavior.

In his 2004 book The Lavender Scare, widely regarded as the first full historical treatment of the U.S. government’s anti-gay policies during the Cold War, author David K. Johnson estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 government employees lost their jobs because of this persecution. Some voluntarily resigned after being interrogated. Some took their own lives.

It took over 50 years to fully dismantle Executive Order 10450 and comprehensively address LGBTQ+ discrimination against government employees. While resistance to the order and activism on behalf of those it targeted began in the 1950s and 1960s with figures like Frank Kameny, the U.S. Civil Service Commission did not officially end the ban on gays and lesbians in civil service until 1975.

President Bill Clinton issued his own order in 1998 banning anti-gay discrimination against federal civilian employees, and in 2017, President Barack Obama explicitly repealed Executive Order 10450 in its entirety. Most recently, a 2021 executive order by President Joe Biden requires that government agencies proactively redraft their policies, as needed, to reflect that gender identity and sexual orientation are protected by extension under any laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.

Although we do not know exactly how many members of the Lab community were affected by Executive Order 10450, acknowledging their untold stories and the discrimination they faced is critical to a full understanding of this period in Lab and U.S. history. We do know that Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (as the Lab was known from 1947–1981) was one of the government organizations required by the order to investigate the conduct and terminate the employment of all alleged “subversives,” including individuals demonstrating “criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, habitual use of intoxicants to excess, drug addiction, [and] sexual perversion.” Records and archival materials related to carrying out this requirement, however, are scarce.

The Society of American Archivists defines “archival silence” as the unintentional or purposeful omission or distortion of documentation of enduring value, resulting in gaps and the inability to represent the past accurately. In the case of the Lavender Scare, according to National Security Research Center librarian Laura McGuiness, “Our lack of archival documentation here at the Lab is likely a result of the secrecy of the investigations and of fear of discrimination and persecution.”

For NSRC Collections Manager Patty Templeton, “An incomplete history is an inaccurate history. Archival silences represent opportunity cost: This is about brilliant people, the research they didn’t get to do, and the advancements that weren’t made due to the Lavender Scare. Acknowledging archival omissions and biases of the past will help us avoid them in the future.”

Filling in the missing pieces

Recent histories have begun to unearth some of the untold stories of the Lab and the Lavender Scare. In his 2019 book Men without Maps, John Ibson writes about Claude Schwob, a master sergeant and radiochemist who worked under Enrico Fermi’s division in the Experimental Nuclear Physics group at Los Alamos during the war. Schwob was among the witnesses to the July 16, 1945, Trinity test, which confirmed the viability of the Los Alamos–developed atomic bomb. He was commended by Oppenheimer for his significant contributions to the success of that test. After the war, Schwob worked at the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in San Francisco, where he spent the remainder of his professional life as a radiation expert focusing on safe ways to detect, prevent, and respond to radiation exposure.

While Schwob was able to maintain his identity as a gay man and work as a government scientist at the highest levels, others who served on the Manhattan Project found themselves under investigation and surveillance.

Jordan Biro Walters’s 2023 book Wide-Open Desert draws upon recently declassified FBI records and Atomic Energy Commission memos to recount what little is known of the “Manhattan Eight”: a group of women identified in the documents only by letters. Three of the women began their careers at the Hanford, Washington, site—home to the nuclear reactors that produced the plutonium used in the Trinity test and in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of the war—and five of the women were at Los Alamos. All had security clearances, and all were tracked by the FBI for over a decade due to concerns about their sexual orientation. The available records show that half lost their clearances or voluntarily resigned from their positions in 1953, soon after Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450. The fate of the others is not known.

While currently unverifiable, there were almost certainly more people who served at the Lab during World War II and the Cold War who felt the impact of the Lavender Scare and resulting anti-gay government policies.

NSRC historian Madeline Whitacre adds: “We know so little about the impact of the Lavender Scare at the Lab that it’s difficult to identify experts on this particular history. This gap in the Lab archives is an invitation to researchers to explore alternate methods, like oral histories, to document LGBTQ+ history here, from our beginnings to the present day.”

Today

Members of Prism, the Lab’s LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group, are committed to fostering a supportive work environment at Los Alamos National Laboratory where all individuals are able to thrive and contribute to the Lab’s mission at their maximum potential. Part of Prism’s mission involves acknowledging history, including past mistakes of discrimination and persecution like the Lavender Scare, and recognizing the contributions of the unrecorded individuals who suffered because of those mistakes.

“Fully understanding what happened then only goes to show us how far we have come in the process of welcoming LGBTQ+ people into the Lab and the greater scientific community,” adds Prism co-chair Sara Mason, “and the importance of continuing to create a safe space here for LGBTQ+ employees.”