The Air Force expelled her in 1955 for being a lesbian
Now, at 90, she is fighting back
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Kyle Swenson.
On March 3, 1955, Airman Second Class Helen Grace James signed her name on a document that effectively ended her military career.
Days earlier, she’d been arrested, interrogated and subjected to hours of humiliation. Finally, after an interrogator threatened to go to her family, James relented. She said she would sign whatever they wanted.
The experience was not isolated but part of a larger and ugly chapter in American history. She was subjected to a military investigation because she was a lesbian. If she was a lesbian, the U.S. military did not want her in uniform. Long before “don’t ask, don’t tell,” in an era spiked with Cold War paranoia and McCarthyism, the government and military systematically rooted out service members like James.
Anti-gay sentiment
It was a time known as the “Lavender Scare.”
The anti-gay witch hunt of the 1950s ran parallel to fears of Communist infiltration.
Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy launched the “Red Scare” in 1950 when he publicly announced there were 205 Communists working at the State Department. Simultaneously, McCarthy also said there were 91 homosexuals within the same agency.
Within the U.S. military, anti-gay sentiment wrapped itself in the logic of “security risk.” Gay service members were susceptible to blackmail, the government believed. As such, they needed to be rooted out. Service members were ordered to report “overt acts of homosexuality” among their fellow soldiers. “Between 1950 and 1965, the armed forces separated between two thousand and five thousand persons as suspect homosexuals,” Eskridge writes.
“The rate of discharge was much higher for women than for men.”
A career cut short
The military ran deep within James’s family.
After earning a college degree and spending a few years teaching, James signed up for the Air Force in 1952 when she was 25. It was a good match. “I loved the marching, I loved the regimentation,” she said. Meeting people from different parts of the country made locations she’d grown up only talking about — like California — suddenly real and substantial. “It was exciting,” she said.
James was eventually stationed at the Roslyn Air Force base on Long Island. She was a radio operator; the position involved contacting each military base on the East Coast, every hour on the hour. The communication was part of the country’s defense against attack from outside. She was good at her job, earning a promotion to crew chief. In 1955, she decided to make the service her career by applying for a commission.
But by 1955, rumors had started working through the barracks. The Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations was supposedly combing the ranks for gay and lesbian service members. James and two other lesbians at the base began to suspect their rooms were being searched and they were being followed off base. Then all three were arrested and interrogated about their sexuality.
No benefits
Later, James went to Stanford University and became a professor at California State University at Fresno in the physical therapy program. Despite the professional highlights, her discharge continued to impact her life.
- She could not pay for her schooling with the G.I. Bill.
- Later, she was denied coverage from insurer USAA.
- In the 1960s, she successfully applied to upgrade her “undesirable” discharge to a “general under honorable conditions.”
- But without the “honorable” discharge distinction, she’s blocked from receiving the benefits.
That also means when she passes away, she cannot be buried with a color guard or be interred in a national cemetery.
Last year, as she approached age 90, James decided to officially apply for the “honorable” discharge upgrade with the Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records. However, the Air Force soon let her know her records were destroyed in a fire in the 1970s. As such, the military left her claim in limbo. In November, the board told James they had reached a decision but said they could not release the decision until it was signed by the board’s executive director. The decision still has not been announced. So James filed her lawsuit last week.
For James, the corrected discharge isn’t just a classification or a channel to more benefits. It is vindication. More than 60 years ago, the military told her she was not fit for the uniform because of who she was.
That discrimination was the engine behind her success. The upgrade is the last piece, she said.
“It has crippled her throughout her life,” James’s attorney, J. Cacilia Kim, told The Washington Post. “This is really so she’s not treated as a second-class citizen anymore.”
