McCarthyism's impact on gay culture in Chapel Hill
Hull attributes the openly accepting experience in Chapel Hill to anti-McCarthyism.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Bill Hull, June 21, 2001. Interview K-0844. 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
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
-
Let me see here, so you know, you mentioned. Something that was really
hard for people to understand now, people who were just coming out, that
you had in terms of the gay centers, there was Washington D.C., there
was Atlanta, maybe Miami and Chapel Hill.
- BILL HULL:
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Yes.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Can you elaborate on that a little?
- BILL HULL:
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Chapel Hill was like an oasis of liberalism, and oasis for gay people, I
mean, I walked into Chapel Hill and I was in—Well, let me put
it this way, it was neat, not that this had anything to do with what you
are asking, but just the feeling that I had. The weekend that I was
supposed to go to Chapel Hill and become a student, get a dormitory and
get it all there, at that age had reached 18 years old and so I could go
in the Jack Tar Hotel. I walked in, someone who still is a lifelong
friend, who knew my brother Tommy. They knew me, but not in the bar
sense, they said that there was a party the next night and to please
stop by this certain address, to be introduced to Chapel Hill Society. I
took two friends from Durham, we went to this address, walked into this
house and I met everybody that I.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
-
All right, this is the second side of my interview with Bill Hull and
the number for this tape side of the tape is 06.21.01-BH.2. All right,
so we were talking about how Chapel Hill was a gay friendly town, how it
was very accepting. Some people have talked about it being more laissez
faire, more than—
- BILL HULL:
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Very much so, very much. Something in your original paper that I did not
see, which was something that was made very evident to me was talking
about going to my first gay party ever on Chapel Hill on Meadow Brook
Lane right behind that cow or whatever it is that Sunshine Biscuit place
up there. There was this wonderful house and everybody that I met there,
I am still good friends with. But, the next day, the Monday that I went
to my first orientation, I went to which was, to me, the most wonderful
place in the whole world was Lenoir Hall. That cafeteria was at that
point, in 1963 of September was the meeting place of everyone to plan
out their schedules. I went there by myself, sat at a table with my tray
of food, two people that I had met the night before came up to me, no
they had seen me there, I did not meet them, they came up, mentioned
that they had seen me at the party and could they join me. I said, of
course, we became instant fast friends and I missed the rest of
orientation sitting there because people would come in, pull up another
table and before I knew it, dinner was being served and there must have
been twenty five or thirty people there, meeting, talking, meeting me,
welcoming me to the community.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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And they were all gay people?
- BILL HULL:
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All gay people, and faculty and students. It was wonderful.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Isn't that amazing.
- BILL HULL:
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I have never felt more accepted and more real in my entire life.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Wow, that is very impressive.
- BILL HULL:
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I would go to Lenoir Hall, you ate all of your meals there, and there was
invariably just tables of people there that would all pull the tables up
to this big enclaves of gay people, some were outrageous, we were
hootie, we were loud and not one ever looked at us—
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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No one ever batted an eyelash.
- BILL HULL:
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No one ever batted an eye. It was wonderful. Lenoir Hall to me was sort
of like my introduction to Chapel Hill Society, other than the gay party
that I went to the previous Saturday night of my Monday orientation; I
knew probably a good portion of the spectrum of Chapel Hill gay people.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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So the gay community was very integrated then and very—
- BILL HULL:
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Totally integrated.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Were those, were these professors openly gay, or did they—
- BILL HULL:
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Yes.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Did some of them have wives?
- BILL HULL:
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They were not openly gay, they were just obviously gay. I mean, they
were not cruising and accosting people.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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[Laughter] I didn't mean it that
way.
- BILL HULL:
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I know, but they were not, in any way, no. They were openly gay and
probably less openly gay than they might have been ten years before I
got there, because Chapel Hill in the 50s, I understand was really quite
outrageous—
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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In terms of repressive?
- BILL HULL:
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No, as far as people being flamboyant—
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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So, people were even more outrageous.
- BILL HULL:
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Yeah, maybe so, people were sort of—well, you could get away
with it in Chapel Hill.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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And that was during McCarthyism.
- BILL HULL:
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Yes, was it ever. It became almost a counter reaction, I think.