A book warns of the threat posed by gays, Jews, and Communists
Herzenberg remembers one manifestation of homophobia on UNC’s campus, a book called <cite>Blood on the Old Well</cite>, warning of the threat posed by gays, Jews, and Communists. The author alleges that some gay students who committed suicide were in fact murdered by a gay cabal. Herzenberg remembers this hysterical book with amusement.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Joseph A. Herzenberg, November 1, 2000. Interview K-0196. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:
-
Now, Dan Leonard will tell you that when he came here as an
undergraduate, now he is about my age, or maybe even a year older, that
he was warned by some uncle that behind every bush on campus there would
be hiding either a Communist or Homosexual. And I don't know
about the Communist, but I think that the Homosexual part was true.
[Laughter]
There is, in fact, a book, which I don't
recommend, except you are writing about this, so you might look at it,
called, Blood on the Old Well. Have you heard of this book?
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
-
No
- JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:
-
It is an awful book, I don't mean by awful, I
don't mean that it is wrong, or anything like that, although
it is wrong. It was written by a woman—her name may come to
me. It was published around 1966 something like that, a woman whose
husband was denied tenure in the Philosophy Department. And she argued
that the University in Chapel Hill was run by this secret cabal of Jews,
Communists, and homosexuals. You would have to read the whole book, it
is not very long, maybe a couple hundred pages, to figure out that is
what she is getting at, because she is not a very good writer.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
-
I wonder if that would be in the North Carolina Collection?
- JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:
-
Oh, I am sure they will have it. Even used bookstores still have copies
of it. And they gay part in this book is based on what I suspect were a
couple of cases of gay students who killed themselves. And she says that
what happened to these guys was that they were killed because they
weren't participating—they weren't
cooperating with this secret group who was running things. You know,
they were blabbing or something and so they were rubbed out.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
-
[Laughter]
The gay mafia got them.
- JOSEPH A. HERZENBERG:
-
Yes, or the Gay Communist, Jewish Mafia. But, I mean, she
doesn't say as much about homosexuals as she does about
Communists and Jews, because when she wrote the book it
wasn't so fashionable to be writing about gay people, but we
are there. And I think we even—to the extent that this book
has any plot, we help provide some plot because one of her really big
bad guys was the chief of campus police, who was the amiable Brooklynite
name Arthur Beaumont, he was just a very kind hearted Yankee, who how he
got to be head of the University Police, I don't know, but
she sort of accuses him of covering up these murders. Which, if they
were—I don't even know if anybody died, but if
they did die, I suspect that they were suicides and not murders.