Sorry, I'm not desperately interested in whether Hoover was or wasn't a cross dresser - the question is, what would the impact be if he is removed from office (or as is sensibly suggested by GerographyDude, given a law school chair somewhere. (The equivalent of a Webley Mk IV with one round and a brandy decanter). His predominance in US life between the late 30's and 1972 must mean that there are significant opportunities for huge variations in the way the US developed in that period. As someone might have said an examination on the US Constitution '48 years of power concentrated in one person is a recipe for abuse'. Discuss'
 
If Hoover is out in 1943, I assume the association of civil rights with communism is much less, there will always be folks trying to discredit civil rights. There will still be the anticommunist fever in the late 40s early 50s, too many people beside Hoover were pushing that to change it much. Somebody other than Hoover might slow Macarthy down, but tailgunner Joe is going to make his presence known. IMHO any FBI director is likely to be tempted to have secret files to use, however depends on who gets the job as to how far this goes.
 
Here's the thing, would FDR want this coming out during war time?

Given JEH's well known and public antipathy to Eleanor (not to mention his possession of blackmail material on her), I think he might have welcomed the fall of the mighty. In a different context, FDR's support for Donovan and the OSS in the face of special pleading from the FBI tells its own story. Not to mention FDR's instructions that the FBI were to keep out of the Manhattan project locations - all FBA investigations into personnel security matters were run through the White House.
 
Meyer Lansky supposedly had proof. Of course, the last thing he wanted was a different FBI director. But if Hoover decides not to be too aggressive in pursuing organized crime...
from Betty Medsger's book The Burglary about an early '70s burglary of a suburban FBI Philadephia office by counter-cultural activists:

' . . . the FBI's "war against the Weatherman Underground had been won by La Cosa Nostra." . . . '
https://books.google.com/books?id=N...ge&q="had been won by La Cosa Nostra"&f=false

Yes, the Weatherman Underground was some serious, scary shit. But a good administrator has to be able to pursue multiple goals.

Landmass Wave, I think we're in general agreement that J. Edgar was not very aggressive at all in regards to organized crime. In fact, I think the case can be made that he did a piss poor job regarding the mob.
 
Last edited:
There was still no TV back then, so it would have to be newspapers or books.

Who's going to print that? Would it be considered pornographic back then?

Of course they could deliver a print of the picture (whatever that is) to each congress member and perhaps someone would talk and be believed.

I'm still unconvinced it would become public knowledge, though: Strom Thurmond was a fierce segregationist and had conceived a daughter with a black woman.
Apparently the fact was not unknown among his constituents and yet it didn't come out publicly until after his death.

There were simply things that respectable newspapers didn't do at the time.
FDR's wheelchair was also obvious to journalists, yet nobody took a photo or wrote a line about it.
 
Last edited:

Archibald

Banned
I'm still unconvinced it would become public knowledge, though: Strom Thurmond was a fierce segregationist and had conceived a daughter with a black woman.
Apparently the fact was not unknown among his constituents and yet it didn't came out publicly until after his death.
That blew my mind in 2002 and still blows my mind even today. Strom, you old asshole. He must have been insanely drunk when he did that. Or completely high on whatever powerful drug was available in the 40's. There is no other rational explanation.
Kind of Hitler awaking one day in 1938 and telling Eva Braun "I'm done with you, nazism and Germany. Today I fly to San Fransisco, I'll rent a flat there in Ashbury with Stalin and Trostky, my beloved communist and jewish friends. We are so in love."

Maybe someday we will learn that Jesse Helms was born a woman.
 
Last edited:

Ak-84

Banned
Regarding Thurmond, I remember reading a aide’s recollection about assisting him with his work. One day he dictated a very firey pro-segregationist speech. Once that was done, he moved onto the next item in the work tray. A letter on behalf of a WW1 veteran constituent. Who was black and being denied some benefit or the other. Apparently he (Thurmond) ripped into the dept for being racist.

On topic, contrary to popular belief, homosexuality was not discovered after the Stonewall riots. If Hoover was gay, and it’s a big if. Sexual proclivities are something which would be difficult to hide, for a powerful man with enemies. No ones ever come up with conclusive proof, and it’s not for lack of trying. Or lack of knowledge of the concept in the era.

For it to affect Hoover simple homosexuality claims (a run of the mill accusation in that era) are insufficient.

It needs

either a very powerful person hell bent of removing him and finding this as an excuse

Or

Some aggravating factor. Like being caught with an underaged person or in a tryst with the son of some prominent individual.
 
That blew my mind in 2002 and still blows my mind even today. Strom, you old asshole. He must have been insanely drunk when he did that. Or completely high on whatever powerful drug was available in the 40's. There is no other rational explanation.
Kind of Hitler awaking one day in 1938 and telling Eva Braun "I'm done with you, nazism and Germany. Today I fly to San Fransisco, I'll rent a flat there in Ashbury with Stalin and Trostky, my beloved communist and jewish friends. We are so in love."

Maybe someday we will learn that Jesse Helms was born a woman.

Well, from a white perspective, the racial-purity rationale(such as it is) for the anti-miscegenation taboo only really applies to black male/white female pairings, since that could result in a white woman giving birth to a visibly black child, hence disgracing her family. With a white male/black female pairing, the black woman could end up giving birth to a child who might be a little lighter in skin-colour than usual, but the child is not going to be acknowledged by the white father's family anyway, so it doesn't really matter. If the father's family REALLY wanted to pursue the matter, he could always claim that the black woman had sex with a white guy other than him. Whereas a white woman gving birth to a black child pretty much has to confess that she slept with a black man, and has brought black offspring into the family. So, I could see Strom thinking "Well, even if she does have a kid, the general public will never know it's mine anyway, so what the hey."

And yes, I realize that white male/black female pairings were also taboo(not to mention illegal under Jim Crow), but I think the taboo is a lot more readily absorbed when you're faced with the prospect of a black child coming into your family.
 
I hate to break this to you, but the whole "J. Edgar Hoover was a crossdresser" actually originated in a supermarket tabloid.


When Clint Eastwood did his(pretty good)
movie on Hoover a few years ago, he too
looked into this whole cross-dressing thing
& concluded there wasn't anything to it- &
don't you think Hollywood would have loved
to say there was?
 
When Clint Eastwood did his(pretty good)
movie on Hoover a few years ago, he too
looked into this whole cross-dressing thing
& concluded there wasn't anything to it- &
don't you think Hollywood would have loved
to say there was?

Well, as I recall, Eastwood gave an interview saying that the lack of substantial cross-dressing material was one of the things that attracted him to the script. So he might have been going into it with the assumption that the stories were false.

Though even that movie felt itself obligated to throw in one(fictionalized) cross-dressing scene, where Hoover walks into his late mother's room and puts on her dress. Not sure what the exact point of that was, though probably something to do with Hoover recognizing he was gay, and somehow seeing it as a rebellion against his anti-gay mother.

I agree, it was a pretty good film(scripted by the guy who did Milk). Fairly sympathetic portrayal of a same-sex relationship, especially interesting when you consider who it was about.
 
White men/black women in the USA was going on even before the fist slaves arrived in that the slave ships' crew often "used" female slaves under transport. In the antebellum south the use of female slaves forsex was one of those things that was obvious - after all where did those lighter skin kids come from - but was never mentioned in polite society. Up through the early 20th century the houses in New Orleans would grade black prostitutes by their known or implied race mixture (mulatto, quadroon, octaroon etc). Institutional racism should not be confused with the ability of the staunchest segregation supporter to show human decency to blacks, although they had to know their place. Overt, nasty, person to person racism was considered to be low class and not done by "better" folks. The point of this is the ability of Thrurmond to have a black woman as a mistress or a casual sex interest, or to go to bat for a black constituent of the "worthy" sort (like a veteran) does indicate some sort of cognitive dissonance, but rather is completely in line with the "old south" attitude on race.

I doubt any white man was ever prosecuted for a covert relationship with a black woman, it was only when it became open or tried to lead to marriage (see Loving v Virginia). In the 40s a white man in the south having a covert relationship with a black woman, even with pregnancy, would be a social severe tut-tutting. A person of stature (or anyone) being outed as gay would spike their career.
 
Top