“When I got down to Tuskegee Army Airfield in Ala-damn-bama in 1943,” reflected Dr. C. Bruce Lee (1921-2015), a native of Buffalo, New York, “you had better realize that it was not the fact that you were gay, but first of all, you were Black, and the laws of the country were against you, and if you were also identified as a gay person, that was a double whammy, and you had better watch what you said and did.”[1]

For Bruce and other prospective air cadets from northern states, their “first real shock was on the train to Atlanta,” as Lee Archer remembered: “When we got to Washington, D.C., they got all of the colored military men and moved them to the first car behind the coal engine,” said Archer. “In Washington, the capital of my country that I was going to fight for, they gave our seats to white people.”[2] Other Tuskegee veterans described their similar journeys southward aboard the “Jim Crow train,” during which each was eventually moved to the “colored coach.” Windows that opened to admit air into this “sweat-box car” also let in a steady flow of cinders and ash from the coal-burning locomotive. Charles Dryden recounted being required to eat his government-authorized meal alone behind a heavy green curtain in the dining car, sequestered from white diners. As he moved through the train, Dryden said, “I was seeing the faces of southern hospitality: spontaneous friendliness on the Black face, instant hostility on the white.”[3]

After changing trains in Atlanta, cadets ultimately arrived at a rural railroad station that, “small as it was, nevertheless had its separate but ‘equal’ waiting rooms for Colored and white travelers,” noted Dryden.[4] In another southern train station, Bruce Lee would learn the consequences of entering a white waiting room: he was knocked unconscious by military police. He awoke in the Colored USO, where an attendant admonished him, "When are you Northern boys going to learn?" He had to conclude his journey standing, with a concussion, in a packed segregated car, despite the rest of the train being nearly empty.[5]

Brutal welcomes like these set the tone for the cadets’ arrival at the primary training base, Moton Field, where they were warned about venturing into the nearby town of Tuskegee. If “some just ordinary white person felt that you had offended him, your life was at risk,” observed Bruce Lee of the experience of going into Tuskegee, which—despite its majority Black population—was under the strict control of local white government officials. Bruce was advised that “‘you may think you’re American soldiers, but as far as we’re concerned, you’re a bunch of niggers, and if you go downtown and get in trouble, Miss [Eleanor] Roosevelt ain’t going to come down and help you.’”[6] Airman Harry Sheppard avoided going off base, where “you were looking for an encounter with the law enforcement people who were always baiting you, hoping you’d make a mistake.”[7] This external hostility only intensified pressures inside the base, where everyday military spaces demanded a visible performance of heroic, straight respectability.

For Bruce and other closeted queer cadets, the dual tensions of being Black and gay in 1943 Alabama came into further focus on their first day at the airfield. “We went to our orientation and then we were read the Articles of War,” he recounted.[8] Codified shortly after the end of World War I, the Articles of War governed U.S. military discipline during World War II. But Bruce noted that particular attention was paid that day to Article 93, which listed sodomy among other “crimes” subject to court-martial, and Article 95, which more loosely condemned “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”[9] After the reading of those two articles, the cadets were given “a long lecture from a Lieutenant Moore on the fact that they [homosexuals] were around, and we had to be aware of them.” As other cadets began to look around, so too did Bruce. “And then pretty soon I started to identify people who I thought were gay,” he recalled.[10] “And they were doing the same thing I was doing: they were busily hiding, deceiving, lying . . . because many of them had the same idea I had: the war will not be on forever, and we have lives to lead after the war is over.”[11]

The stakes were indeed initially high for a queer airman facing a court-martial: if convicted, he could receive a prison term with hard labor. But given the burdensome process of investigations and trials, the wartime U.S. military soon shifted toward treating homosexuality less as a criminal act than as a psychiatric disorder. “Blue discharges,” so named for the color of the paper they were printed on, began to be issued to service members identified as having “undesirable habits and traits of character.”[12]

This broadly defined classification would subsequently be used to disproportionately expel gay, lesbian, and Black personnel (regardless of their sexual orientation) from the military. The latter group received nearly 11,000 of the almost 50,000 blue discharges issued by the American military throughout World War II. At 22 percent, this represented the highest percentage of any group to receive “other than honorable” discharges, a statistic made all the more disproportionate by the fact that Black service members made up under 10 percent of total U.S. troops during the war. A further 18 percent of “blue tickets”—some 9,000—expelled queer men and women from their military positions during World War II.[13]

The stigma of receiving a blue discharge made finding employment difficult for affected veterans.[14] There were also significant benefits at stake: such discharges barred veterans from accessing a free college education through the G.I. Bill, as well as health services, disability compensation, home loans, and retirement benefits through the Veterans Administration. While blue discharges were considered “other than honorable” (as opposed to dishonorable) administrative discharges, an April 1945 VA directive stipulated that “an undesirable discharge or blue discharge issued because of homosexual acts generally will be considered as under dishonorable conditions and a bar to entitlement.”[15]

For Bruce Lee, who had already been accepted to the University of Michigan and was counting on the support of the G.I. Bill to fund his post-service education, the risk of exposure was paralyzing. “We had to juggle both at the same time: being Black and being gay. Black was obvious; gay was hidden. [So] don't allow that spotlight to fall upon you.”[16]

Bruce tried to absent himself during the rampant “pussy” talk that occurred in the barracks, although doing so made him just as suspect. But often, late into the night, fellow cadets played a popular game called “The Dozens,” in which two contestants would try to out insult each other by exchanging increasingly disparaging jokes about each other’s mothers or other female relatives. Bruce often feigned sleep to avoid being targeted, but recalled that sometimes, “The Dozens would get so hilarious that you couldn't keep from laughing, and they’d say, ‘If you grin, you in!’” He mostly evaded needing to join in, but was sometimes baited for his suspected queerness. “‘Sometimes Lee acts funny. Well, you know, he's kind of funny,’” he recalled of such banter directed toward him. “‘Look at them pretty legs that boy's got.’ And they’d start slipping you in. [W]hat did one man say? ‘The best part of him slipped down his mama's leg when his father made him,’” crudely implying that the vital semen needed to bestow Bruce with true masculinity had been wasted at his creation. “You hear that, and you’d get nervous.”[17]

Barracks inspection, Tuskegee Army Air Field, Alabama, early 1940s. Courtesy of HQ AETC/HO, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas.

A Tuskegee air cadet on his barracks cot, admiring his gallery of girlfriends, c. 1942. Courtesy of the National Archives, 208-NP-5QQ-9.

Despite the heterocentric culture on the Tuskegee base, Bruce soon became aware of a robust yet sub rosa gay subculture in the barracks, composed of men from New York, Chicago, and other large cities. Many were middle- to high-ranking officers, including a sergeant who, as Bruce recalled, “let me know immediately . . . that he knew who I was.” Although these men were “very nice” to Bruce, his fear of being publicly outed by associating too closely with them led to his declining their invitations to their gatherings. “I remember one time they blacked out one of the day rooms,” he said, “and I took a look in it while they were doing it. It looked like a Hollywood set. It was a gay party, and they got away with it, which was very rare.”[18]

Bruce’s aloofness was confirmed when several of these officers were rounded up and flown out on a Sunday afternoon, while the protective white officers for whom they worked as assistants were away from the base. But a particularly chilling incident proved a further deterrent, when allegations were made that a technical sergeant was romantically involved with his roommate, a staff sergeant. The staff sergeant, who was somehow deemed the “innocent” party in the affair, was allowed to move back into the barracks. The technical sergeant was stripped of his rank, isolated for the months it took to process his “blue ticket” and made to wear a blue uniform similar to those worn by British flyers who had also trained at Tuskegee. The coding of the blue uniform was obvious, and “the whole base saw it,” said Bruce. “They knew that this man . . . was a homosexual prisoner.” As six to eight guards marched this man to and from his daily meals in the mess hall, Bruce remembered him holding his head high as he passed by.[19]

One night in the barracks, Lee saw “a man down on another man” and quickly reminded them of the risk they were taking. Meanwhile, his straight classmates would often return from weekend furloughs bragging about their sexual conquests, “waving the drawers” of their female partners as proof. One seemingly straight fellow cadet, however, spoke openly about his wild weekends spent among queer friends in Montgomery, “and he would observe me as he talked.” Bruce continued, “I would try not to betray anything, but he would always aim at me. He knew who he was talking to.”[20]

In the dead of night, up to a dozen Southern white officers routinely rousted the cadets for “short-arm inspections.” Ordered to strip bare, the men were subjected to public examinations for sexually transmitted infections. In Bruce’s estimation, a single medic could have scheduled and privately handled such regular screenings, but these officers seemed lurid and voyeuristic, particularly given that many cadets were exhibiting nocturnal erections.[21] This intimate violation demonstrates how white officers could easily transform standard medical inspections into deliberate tools for sexualized humiliation and racial harassment. Such calculated degradation echoed a broader, systemic cruelty unfolding separately at the Tuskegee Institute, where researchers tracking untreated syphilis actively withheld diagnoses and treatments from 399 low-income African American sharecroppers for decades.[22]

Seeking refuge from the barracks, Bruce spent his free hours scouting the surrounding area for insects and mollusks. “And of course that caused quite a consternation: what’s this soldier doing collecting butterflies? Well,” he said, “it was better than listening to pussy talk all of the time in the barracks.”[23]

Sunday mornings provided another escape: by joining a group of churchgoing men, he found a safe way to get off the post once a week. While queer gatherings in the barracks offered intentional expressions of this subculture, excursions like these off-post provided more covert, incidental spaces where desire could unexpectedly surface within everyday military life. On one such morning, Bruce recalled, “Suddenly this outfit of men, young men, came running down the street in formation. They stopped in front of us, and this man was looking right at me.” The attraction was mutual: “I fell in love with him the minute I saw him,” he added, “and it was just the first feeling of love I had.”[24] The furtive, tentative couple quickly grew close, exchanging confidences and books, and meeting for lunch. “You played the game of circling,” said Bruce. “It was all you could do in those days.”[25]

Notes

[1] [C] Bruce Lee, interview by Arthur Dong, June 17, 1993, unpublished audio recording, transcript by author, Series 8, World War II Project Papers, 1892-1996, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco.

[2] Lee Archer, interview by Veterans' History Project, quoted in John B. Holway, Red Tails: An Oral History of the Tuskegee Airmen (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2012), 109.

[3] Charles W. Dryden, A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 32-33.

[4] Dryden, A-Train, 35.

[5] Lee, interview by Dong, June 17, 1993.

[6] [C] Bruce Lee, interview by Arthur Dong, March 12, 1993, unpublished audio recording, transcript by author, Series 8, World War II Project Papers, 1892-1996, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco.

[7] Holway, Red Tails, 106.

[8] [C.] Bruce Lee, interview by Allan Bérubé, May 28, 1980, transcript, Box 5, Folder 11, World War II Project Papers, 1892-1996, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco.

[9] United States War Department, The Articles of War (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920), ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/AW/index.

[10] [C] Bruce Lee, interview likely by Gillian Goslinga or Alice Hom, February 19, 1993, unpublished audio recording, transcribed by author, Series 8, World War II Project Papers, 1892-1996, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco.

[11] Lee, interview by Dong, June 17, 1993.

[12] "Blue and 'Other Than Honorable' Discharges," National Park Service, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, last modified February 19, 2025, nps.gov/articles/000/blue-and-other-than-honorable-discharges.htm; Leila Rupp and John D'Emilio, hosts, "The Other War," with Susan K. Freeman, Queer America (podcast), Teaching Tolerance, December 13, 2018, transcript, splcenter.org/resources/stories/the-other-war/.

[13] Jennifer Dominique Jones, Ambivalent Affinities: A Political History of Blackness and Homosexuality After World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023), 22; Edward F. Witsell to Jesse O. Dedmon, January 8, 1946, Folder General Correspondence January-March 1946, Part II, Box G10, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[14] Morgan Godvin, “From Handcuffs to Rainbows: Queer in the Military,” JSTOR Daily, June 26, 2023, daily.jstor.org/from-handcuffs-to-rainbows-queer-in-the-military.

[15] Bérubé, Coming Out Under Fire, 230; U.S. Veterans Administration, Solicitor's Office, "Technical Bulletin TB 11-23" (Washington, D.C.: Veterans Administration, April 13, 1945).

[16] Lee, interview by Dong, June 17, 1993.

[17] Lee, interview by Dong, March 12, 1993.

[18] Lee, interview by Dong, March 12, 1993.

[19] Lee, interview by Dong, March 12, 1993.

[20] Lee, interview by Dong, March 12, 1993.

[21] Lee, interview, February 19, 1993.

[22] “The U.S. Public Health Service Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 4, 2024, cdc.gov/tuskegee/about/index.html.

[23] Lee, interview, February 19, 1993.

[24] Lee, interview by Dong, March 12, 1993.

[25] Lee, interview by Bérubé, May 28, 1980.