Transcript
Kelly Therese Pollack (0:00)
This is Unsung History, the podcast where we discuss people and events in American history that haven't always received a lot of attention. I'm your host, Kelly Therese Pollack. I'll start each episode with a brief introduction to the topic and then talk to someone who knows a lot more than I do. Be sure to subscribe to Unsung History on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode. And please tell your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, maybe even strangers to listen to. Reed Edwin Pecram was born on July 26, 1914, in Boston, Massachusetts. He and his parents, Mary and Harvey, lived with Mary's mother, Laura, who had become an important figure in Reid's life. Harvey, a graduate of the Hampton Institute, traveled the east coast reciting poetry and performing in plays, even staging his own short play at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Pennsylvania in May 1917. In November of 1917, Harvey was inducted into the U.S. army, serving in France during World War I in the Veterinary Corps. He was discharged in 1919 as 100% disabled, likely referring to his mental health. By January 1920, Harvey was admitted to an asylum in Virginia, and Mary was granted a divorce and full custody of Reid. In 1921, Mary remarried and had two more sons with her new husband. Unfortunately, Reid did not get along with his stepfather, and after two years he chose to live instead with his grandmother. In 1929, Laura became Reid's legal guardian. In 1927, Reed was admitted to the Boston Latin School, one of the few African Americans to be admitted. Boston Latin School is the oldest public school in the United States, and its alumni include Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Reed thrived at the school, and upon graduation he attended Harvard University, beginning his study in 1931, where he was again in an extreme minority as an African American man. In 1935, Reid, who was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a degree in Romance languages and literatures. He completed an honors thesis in French literature. Reid was the first in his family to earn a bachelor's degree, but that wasn't enough for him. He had applied for a Rhodes Scholarship, but when that didn't come through, he stayed at Harvard to begin graduate school, earning his master's degree in comparative literature in 1936. Despite his achievements, Reid was not admitted into the doctoral program at Harvard, so he left Boston and his grandmother and headed to New York to study English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Although he wanted to be back at Harvard, Reid did enjoy living in New York City, and he made the most of it, attending plays, seeing Marian Anderson sing, and making friends. After a year at Columbia, Reid returned to Harvard in 1937. There he fell in love with Leonard Bernstein, then an undergraduate at Harvard. Reid wrote a letter and poem to Bernstein, including the lines, Just to see you has been enough, and to touch your hand is consummation, whether in a room without the music or in the open surrounded by satyrs, whether in a room without all this or with all this, and it is still enough. Bernstein, though, rejected his advances, calling the poem repulsive. Reid again set his sights on Europe, and he received funding from the John Harvard Fellowship and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which had developed a fellowship program to support African American scholars and artists. Reid planned to study at the Sorbonne and to conduct research at the Bibliotheque Nationale. In August 1938, Reid set sail for a Paris that was quickly headed toward war. Although other Americans were preparing to leave and the American Embassy told him to, Reid wrote to his grandmother, I shall stick it out until the bombs fall on my hotel. While in Paris, Reid published two articles in Modern Language Review, but he was unsuccessful in his many attempts to publish his fiction and poetry. In the spring of 1939, a mutual friend introduced Reid to Arne Hauptman, a Danish artist who was also living in Paris and who would become the love of Reid's life. Although Reid had a job waiting for him at West Virginia State College in autumn 1939 and the Rosenwald Fund declined to extend his funding, Reid chose to stay in Europe. He left his belongings in Paris and headed to Copenhagen in August of 1939 to be with Arne. As war was spreading throughout Europe, Reid and Arne made plans to flee Denmark before it was invaded. They headed to Italy, hoping they would be able to find a way to get a visa for Arne to travel to the US With Reid. There were many opportunities for Reid to travel back to the US but he refused to leave without Arne. In Italy, things went from bad to worse as the country entered the war on the side of Germany. As foreigners, Reid and Arne were unable to work and they lived in utter poverty, the relationship viewed with suspicion. Eventually, the Italian police separated them, forcing them to live in different towns. In December 1943, after Germans had taken charge of the section of Italy where Reid and Arna lived, Reid was interned in an Italian concentration camp. Arne was sent to a different camp, but eventually they were reunited. Though still incarcerated in the summer of 1944, Reid and Arna escaped with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Hiking to avoid detection and surviving on whatever food they could find. Finally, in December 1944, they were found and rescued by an advance patrol of the all African American 370th Regiment of the 92nd Division. In August 1945, seven years after he left, Reid returned to the United States. Like his father, he was hospitalized for what was described as a mental disorder. After four years of treatment and possibly a lobotomy, Reid returned to Boston to live with his mother. He sang in the church choir and worked intermittently as a translator. Sadly, Reid never saw Arne again. Reid Pegram died at age 67 on April 20, 1982, in Boston. He is buried with his mother in Forest Hills Cemetery with a gravestone bearing the name of his stepfather, with whom he never got along. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Etheline Whitmire, professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author of the Remarkable Life of Reid Pegram, the Man who Stared down World War II in the name of Love.