"A Story to Share..."

The Story of Paul Phillips

Paul Phillips was a young black gay man growing up in the Midwest during the early 20th century. He was the son of a fairly prosperous middle class lawyer within a family exemplifying the aspirations of the talented tenth. Somehow, rumors of Paul's extracurricular activities revolving around his "sexual behavior and preference" reached his father. Quite calmly and plainly, his father explained to Paul that he was living his life within an "unnatural" condition since he did not evince a desire for the opposite sex within their small segregated community. To help his son overcome this "condition," a trip was planned to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

For a total of seven days, Paul was interviewed and examined. At the end, the doctors reported to Mr. Phillips and his wife that nothing could be done to change Paul; he would be a "homosexual" to the end of his days. And, that under Minnesota law at the time, they were required to report suspected gay men to the Rochester police, gay being a criminal offense. For whatever reason, the doctors, to the great relief of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, declined to report Paul to the law enforcement authorities.

After returning home from an exacerbating trip that required them to camp out because they were not allowed to stay in white only hotels, Mr. Phillips came to a rather judicious conclusion about the sexual nature of his son. If his son suffered from an "illness" for which there was no cure, he would allow his son to lead his life as before, but lead it with DIGNITY and caution. Mr. Phillips said to Paul:

Find yourself a friend you can trust and bring him ...What you do in your own room is your own business.

Mr. Phillips feared for Paul's welfare. He understood the dangers of clandestine meeting spots where those like his son found one another and sometimes the law waiting for them.

It took Paul sometime to find a congenial lover, but at college in Topeka, Kansas after becoming a lawyer in the mid 1920s, he met another black man, a musician who played the organ for churches near school and together they began a relationship of mutual affection providing a respite against an often hostile and prejudiced world.

From: The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives & Gay Identities-A Twentieth-Century History by John Loughery

H/T: Wandering Caravan

"Fear Eats the Soul"