G. Payne, S. Nissler, I. Padalecki
In 1965, just a year after Davidson College became officially integrated, James Gibbons Pepper––a well-liked young man who served as an executive official in the Sigma Chi fraternity and a student athlete––graduated with a degree in Business Administration.1 Quips and Cranks, 1965. Archives and Special Collections, E.H. Little Library, Davidson College. DigitalNC. https://lib.digitalnc.org/record/29113?ln=en#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=124&r=0&xywh=2114%2C-206%2C2441%2C1483. James, known to most as “Jim,” fit the demographic profile of many Davidson students at the time: a legacy student from a wealthy, well-respected family who grew up in North Carolina and attended a prestigious preparatory academy in Virginia. According to Jim, however, he subverted the standard followed by many of his all-male Davidson peers when he moved to New York rather than returning to his small southern hometown. Jim experienced a significant transformation: after three years of working as a financier on Wall Street and experiencing city life, he realized he was gay.
Jim formed close relationships with other queer people and became a part of the gay community in New York City. He nostalgically describes life as a young, gay professional in the 1970s with a successful, burgeoning financial career and an active social life. “I knew hundreds of people, thousands maybe. […] There were party drugs, […] and […] there were some really fun clubs to go to. […] It was sort of a golden era of clubs, and I enjoyed every moment of it.”2Jim Pepper, Zoom interview by Sophia Nissler and Grace Payne, March 12, 2021. However, like many prominent queer New Yorkers whose careers depended upon not only their intellect, but also their social prowess and air of respectability, Jim did not openly discuss his sexuality with colleagues: “Everyone at work just socialized separately. I felt no need to share my sexual orientation.”3 Linda Hirshman, “Dying for the Movement: The Terrible Political Payoff of AIDS,” ch. 6, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution. Harper Collins, 2012. When the HIV/AIDS pandemic developed in the early 1980s,4 In the 1980’s, an illness known as HIV infected many gay men throughout the United States. In this moment of crisis and uncertainty, many gay men were subjected to medical negligence and stigma, seen as sexually immoral threats to public health due to harmful government narratives. However, this was also an era in which many LGBT folks came together to form activist organizations and lobby on behalf of the health and wellness of their community. To read more, visit this link: https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline Jim’s sexuality and his professional life converged: “When […] the AIDS crisis hit, it changed everything. And I became active. Just because there was so much ignorance, there was so much discrimination, […] I mean, people were dying.”5Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. Jim subsequently became one of the most prominent HIV/AIDS activists in the New York gay community. However, his journey as a leading advocate for queer rights began at Davidson.
Jim Pepper’s oral history interview, conducted by Davidson College students in May of 2021, highlights the tensions and convergence between the values he gained at Davidson and his HIV/AIDS activism in New York City. Furthermore, in analyzing his important post-graduate work in comparison to how he and other alums are frequently remembered for their monetary contributions to Davidson College, we can see the biases present in institutional memories of change.
Exclusion, Tolerance, and Difference: Jim Pepper’s Experiences at Davidson College
Jim Pepper’s educational foundation helped him make the transition from Davidson to New York City: “somehow in Davidson I learned to be really, really, really tolerant […] it taught me [to] say no to meanness.”7 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. Jim noted the growing religious diversity of Davidson and the admission of a Black man into his fraternity as a catalyst for his recognition of exclusion and inequality. Jim stated that at Davidson,
You become tolerant of differences … and I didn’t know that I was different. But it just kind of turned out I was! But I was tolerant of … all different kinds of people. […] And then at Davidson, […] they were not bigoted––maybe deep down, you know because of cultural things, they may have been––but when it came to voicing, they would voice against discrimination.8Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.
Jim claims that his time in college taught him valuable lessons that made him a tolerant and thoughtful individual. One of the key aspects of Jim’s Davidson experience that he cites as especially formative is the school’s Honor Code, which he feels helped instill in him the value of respect and an appreciation for community care.9 Davidson College has an honor code system, wherein incoming students make a written pledge to refrain from cheating, stealing, and similar behavior. This allows students to have a certain set of privileges, including take-home tests and increased community trust. To read more, visit this link: https://www.davidson.edu/about/distinctly-davidson/honor-code. Davidson also taught Jim how to think critically. “Davidson did teach me how to learn. To figure things out. And that’s what I think matters most when you get an education,” he says.10Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. Using this analytical lens, Jim goes on to profess his appreciation for the ambiguity of knowledge: “Half the stuff you learn will prove to be wrong. So … be flexible, be willing to take information that’s different from what you thought was so, and then be able to analyze it.”11Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.
However, having attended mostly private, religiously affiliated, all-male institutions where he felt exclusion was all too common, Jim believes he “lucked out” by not knowing about his sexual identity while at Davidson.12 These include Gibbons Hall School for Boys (now Carolina Day School; Asheville, NC), Woodberry Forest School (Woodberry Forest, VA), and Davidson College (Davidson, NC). “If I’d been out, I probably would not have been in a fraternity, and then I probably would have been, you know, ostracized by or kidded relentlessly on [by] the other students,” Jim says.13 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. Although college can be a time to experiment with sex and sexuality for many students, it is crucial to note here that the subject of sexuality, especially nonnormative sexuality, was deeply taboo in the Cold War U.S. where homophobic persecution was a state-sanctioned norm.14John D’Emilio, “Then and Now: The Shifting Context of Gay Historical Writing.” In The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture, 224. Duke University Press, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822383925.. Paradoxically, however, the pre-Stonewall era culture that kept Jim from exploring his sexuality in undergraduate school also allowed him to feel accepted by his Davidson peers and generally fulfilled in his social life:
When I was there, I could party, you know, no different from everybody else at Davidson and the fraternity. And I didn’t identify myself as being gay; it just hadn’t occurred to me. And I really didn’t know how to deal with women, though, because I had never––since puberty, I’d been away at school. I never, never dealt with women my own age, so you know it’s not that I was missing anything […] I was never really particularly at ease with women. And so, the sexuality part was, it just wasn’t in my mind.15 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.
Although he felt safe as a Davidson student, Jim does remember seeing overt discrimination take place in campus spaces, including Greek Life. He describes feeling discomfort during fraternity rush when his classmates who weren’t “cool characters” were relegated to the “losers’ room” during parties.16 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.Understandably, Jim felt even more disturbed by the way that his fraternity’s national guidelines still refused to recognize Black members after the college was desegregated––a practice that would continue even after Mike Maloy (‘70) became the Davidson’s first Black fraternity member, causing the local chapter of Sigma Chi to disaffiliate in 1969 and then disband altogether in 1972.17Jim Pepper, Zoom interview; Davidson College. “Historical timeline: From the College’s inception to the Commission on race and slavery,” Davidson Journal Fall/Winter 2020, (2021, January 15): 1. This is indicated by the fact that––according to an article published in the Davidsonian in 1969––the vote to disaffiliate in order to include Black students was contested by some on account of “unity” and “fairness.”18 Steve Roady, “Sigma Chi Disaffiliation Dissension Splits House,” Davidsonian (Davidson, NC), October 17, 1969, 1.
According to Jim, he “applauded” the fact that “[Sigma Chi] made [Mike Maloy] a brother, and [said] to hell with […] the national fraternity.”20 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.Jim goes on to express exactly how he felt about the exclusion he witnessed at Davidson and beyond, saying, about his fraternity: “[…] I liked the people; I didn’t like the way they excluded people. […] The idea of exclusion, […] it’s still with me. I don’t like exclusion, whether it’s [against] the women’s movement, or Me Too, or the Black movement, […] I just cannot embrace it at all.”21 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. In fact, it is through this same perspective that Jim has been able to look back at his time at Davidson. Although he was not aware of any Davidson peers who were openly gay at the time, he later realized that there were other queer students who attended school with him––including a friend who came out to him personally decades later, before tragically passing away from AIDS. In this way, Jim’s interview and experience emphasize a key point: we cannot assume a straight Davidson throughout history, despite that queer students do not appear in the archives until far into Davidson’s existence.
New York and HIV/AIDS: Postgraduate Experiences with Activism and Social Change
During Jim’s years at Davidson and his move to New York City, America underwent a period of social change and unrest that was “marked by sustained efforts to challenge inequalities in the nation’s political, economic, and social structures.”22 Kent W. Peacock, “Race, the Homosexual, and the Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961-1970,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 25, no. 2 (May 2016): 267. Furthermore, the cultural changes that occurred in the “Civil Rights decade” of the sixties allowed gay and lesbian “activists to achieve access to public space and a mainstream political vote.”23 Christopher Agee, “Gayola: Police Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco’s Gay Bars, 1950-1968,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 3 (July 2006): 488.
These social changes impacted Davidson’s culture and shaped the atmosphere that Jim encountered in the city. Jim portrays his time at Davidson as a formative reason for why he became part of the gay rights movement and advocated for gay rights in the eighties while balancing a successful career in finance. Davidson taught him how to learn and how to begin to recognize diversity.24 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. At Davidson, Jim did not yet know he was “different,” but he still felt nurtured. Jim’s recognition of the intersectionality of discrimination in college demonstrates a consciousness on the part of gay rights activists in the sixties and seventies that led to a push to build broader coalitions. For example, the Mattachine Society of Washington (a homophile activist organization) often compared the oppression of homosexuals to that of African Americans and drew parallels to the Civil Rights Movement as part of its effort to legitimize and clarify its strategies and center homosexual rights as civil rights.25 Peacock, “Race, the Homosexual, and the Mattachine Society of Washington,” 274, 276, 277.
However, Jim also credits New York itself in forming his life experiences. Whereas his classmates generally returned to their hometowns after Davidson, Jim moved to New York, “and so, my life experience is so different from them.”26 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. Jim’s reference to the experiences that he had because of New York’s sociopolitical culture highlights scholars’ arguments on sexual geographies and the location-specific nature of sexuality and culture. Public gay male scenes were quickly being developed in US cities, including New York, during the early 1970s, allowing for a greater interweaving of politics and sexuality that certainly contributed to Jim’s “different” experience and later activism upon moving to the city, particularly after connecting with members of the gay community, advocates, and even gay Davidson alum.27 Lucas Hilderbrand, “A Suitcase Full of Vaseline, or Travels in the 1970s Gay World,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 22, no. 3 (Sept. 2013): 375, 386.
Jim’s philosophy on and experience with activism in New York reflect broader tactics employed by organizations like ACT UP, which lobbied and protested against the FDA (and other government entities) and the media in efforts to increase funding and resources available to those suffering with HIV/AIDS and decrease the spread of stigmatized and victim-blaming messaging related to the epidemic. They protested with passion to communicate the urgent need for public health policies that would affirm the rights of all people to enjoy bodily autonomy and comprehensive, accessible care. As Jim alludes, their anger and disruptive action, while inconvenient, is what forced people to pay attention.28 Tamar W. Carrol, “Turn Anger, Fear, Grief into Action: ACT UP New York,” in Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 131-161; Deborah B. Gould, “CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Education in the Streets: ACT UP, Emotion, and New Modes of Being,” Counterpoints 367 (2012): 352-63, accessed April 18, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42981418. In June 2015, Davidson honored Jim with the John W. Kuykendall Award for Community Service at his fiftieth reunion. This moment was a convergence of Jim’s time at Davidson in the sixties and the activism he pursued New York City. Davidson issued a statement expressing that “With his usual drive and commitment, Jim assumed a leadership role in both fundraising for and the shaping of AIDS policy for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). He raised millions of dollars and enhanced awareness of this global health crises, undoubtedly helping to save countless lives.”29 “The 2015 John Kuykendall Award for Community Service,” Announcement, 5 June 2015, RG 35/4, Vice President for College Relations, Office of Alumni and Family Engagement, Davidson College Archives, Davidson, NC. https://www.dropbox.com/s/x5djhlkyclzcnxn/Jim%20Pepper%2065.pdf?dl=0. Jim expressed this drive and commitment while discussing the strategies that he pursued as an activist in New York:
You gotta be visible. And you have to be inconvenient. […] when you’re protesting, put caution to the wind. And you make your statement. And it’s good … the more outrageous it is, the more coverage it gets. That … and the more minds it changes. Some people, no matter what you do, they don’t like it. […] But you gotta do it sometimes.30 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.
While Jim’s activism and philosophy align with historical observations that occupying public space and asserting visibility were critical features of the gay rights movement and AIDS response during this period, Davidson’s remembrance of Jim’s exceptional work and his classmates’ response exhibits the remaining relevance of class and respectability in collective remembrance of activism. The statement from the college regarding Jim’s work centers the astonishing financial impact of Jim’s activism in New York and remarks upon his professional and activist achievements simultaneously, tying his (respectable) professional success in the finance industry to his work that led to the Stonewall Community Foundation.31 “In 1990, Jim co-founded the Stonewall Community Foundation to help educate others about the importance of philanthropy and encourage trust and estate planning. The Foundation has since distributed more than $14 million to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations.” See https://www.dropbox.com/s/x5djhlkyclzcnxn/Jim%20Pepper%2065.pdf?dl=0.While Jim speaks to the dual role of “respectable” activism such as fundraising in his interview, he also speaks to the difficult nature of achieving success and the “inconvenience” he and his fellow activists had to pose in New York City in order to make the strides. It is critical for the college’s memory of Jim to highlight not only his individual activism and hard-earned financial success, but also the broader contexts of radical, direct action that eschewed narratives of “respectability” and defined the activist philosophies of Jim and other gay rights activists in the 1980’s.
Institutional Memory and Oral History
Although Jim expressed great thanks to his time at Davidson for instilling in him values of justice, tolerance, and kindness that he carried forward into his activism in New York, he also discussed mixed receptions when he returned to Davidson in 2015. Though Jim expressed gratitude for the reaction he received from the Davidson administration, he described an awkward and dismissive reaction from some former classmates.32 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. He elaborated that many of his class did not seem to like the idea that he was gay, telling the following story about his roommate from Davidson:
I have no contact with him now. Because … I think he thinks it reflected on him. That he and I were roommates for basically six years, then … and I was gay. Well, what does that make him? I didn’t, you know, I don’t think he has exhibited so much good … good judgment. […] I’m sorry that that’s the reaction. But he wouldn’t … he hadn’t been to a reunion. … people didn’t come up to me, and have much to say.33 Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.
Though he did not receive a welcome reflective of his own generosity, Jim still finished the story with a laugh and an expression that the reaction of his classmates (pictured below) meant little in comparison to all that he had done in the years after his time at Davidson, stating: “Frankly, I don’t give a damn. [laughs] I don’t … they haven’t been part of my life for 55 years.”34Jim Pepper, Zoom interview.
It is essential that we tell the stories of changemaking alums like Jim Pepper in their entirety and reflect on how he is remembered by Davidson College. Although Jim received an award from the college on behalf of his activism, prior to conducting this interview, most of what the student interviewees knew of Jim Pepper related to his contributions to the art collections at Davidson College.36 Davidson College, “Art and Pepper,” https://plannedgiving.davidson.edu/meet-our-donors/art-and-pepper. This reflects broader patterns in institutional memories that prioritize the contributions of alumni on account of monetary donations to the college as opposed to the contributions they have made, as is emphasized by Davidson College’s Statement of Purpose, through living “lives of leadership and service”37 Davidson College, “Statement of Purpose,” https://www.davidson.edu/about/statement-purpose. on behalf of and as marginalized people. In fact, the work of Jim Pepper did far more than aid the LGBT community; the public health policies he and his peers advocated for, including compassionate use of experimental drugs for life-threatening illness, are still working to increase the health and wellness of all people well into the 21st century, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.38 Carrol; Jonathan Grein, Norio Ohmagari, Daniel Shin, George Diaz, Erika Asperges, Antonella Castagna, Torsten Feldt et al, “Compassionate use of remdesivir for patients with severe Covid-19,” New England Journal of Medicine 382, no. 24 (2020): 2327-2336.
Oral history is an essential method for expanding beyond singular institutional histories that emphasize stories related to donations made by alumni rather than diverse histories of change-making, especially those related to issues of sexual diversity.39 Nan Alamilla Boyd and Horacio N. Roque Rodriguez, Bodies of Evidence: the Practice of Queer Oral History (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012); Stever Estes, “Ask and Tell: Gay Veterans, Identity, and Oral History on a Civil Rights Frontier,” The Oral History Review 32, no. 2 (2005): 21-47. This task is especially urgent for those who survived the AIDS epidemic. Jim remembers: “AIDS killed all of my close circle of friends.”40Jim Pepper, Zoom interview. Though Jim survived the epidemic, so many queer elders were lost to this disease and government negligence towards its impact on the LGBT community.41 Donald P. Francis, “Commentary: Deadly AIDS Policy Failure by the Highest Levels of the US Government: A Personal Look Back 30 Years Later for Lessons to Respond Better to Future Epidemics,” Journal of Public Health Policy 33, no. 3 (2012): 290-300. Therefore, oral history interviews with folks like Jim Pepper are essential archival efforts to ensure that this generation of LGBT individuals are remembered not for the victim-blaming narratives the Reagan administration spun about their sexual promiscuity prior to the AIDS epidemic, but rather as a community that came together in extraordinary times when abandoned by the state to take care of one another and forge a collective queer consciousness and community.42 Boyd and Roque Rodriguez, Bodies of Evidence: the Practice of Queer Oral History.
Further, in conducting oral histories interviews with LGBT alums like Jim Pepper, who lived on campus before such students were actively recognized as part of the Davidson community, we can resist a depolicitized institutional remembering of those who have led incredible lives of leadership and service beyond the bounds of Davidson’s campus and the erroneous assumption that queer students did not exist and thrive at Davidsion prior to their institutional recognition. This requires active investment in remembering and archiving such lives through oral history projects, such as the Gender and Sexuality Oral History Project that began in 2020. These oral histories allow the Davidson community to reorient our ideas of “lives of leadership and service” towards recognizing the rich history of LGBT change-makers that worked, advocated, and contributed to Davidson and beyond prior to such a community being recognized by the college.