The Lavender Scare

press release: Madison Opera's February production, Fellow Travelers, is set during the Lavender Scare, the period in the 1950s when, as part of the McCarthy-era Communist witch hunts, the U.S. government was searching for and firing employees suspected of being gay or lesbian.

PBS Wisconsin presents a screening of The Lavender Scare, the first documentary film to tell the little-known story of an unrelenting campaign by the federal government to identify and fire all employees suspected of being homosexual. Narrated by Glenn Close, the film was praised as “a gripping, nimbly assembled documentary... vivid, disturbing and rousing” by the Los Angeles Times. The screening will be followed by a discussion.