THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF REED PEGGRAM

Love, war, and madness.

Historian Whitmire draws on archival sources, including hundreds of letters, to recount the life of Reed Edwin Peggram (1914-1982), a gay Black Harvard doctoral student whose life was changed decisively by the exigencies of war. In 1937, he set out for Paris, funded by fellowships, where he would attend the Sorbonne and conduct research at the Bibliothèque Nationale to further his graduate work in comparative literature and his aim of becoming a French professor. His intellectual prowess had set him apart even as a child: Raised by his grandmother, a housecleaner, in Boston, he attended the prestigious Boston Latin School and was accepted into Harvard’s class of 1935; although African American students were required to live off campus, Peggram thrived in Harvard’s academic rigor, graduating magna cum laude. He embarked on graduate work at Columbia in 1936 and in Harvard’s doctoral program the following year, when he developed a mad crush on a Harvard junior, Leonard Bernstein—who rebuffed him. Soon Peggram was off to Paris, where he happily settled in: He joined the lending library at Shakespeare and Company, socialized with friends, and fell in love with Arne Hauptmann, a 22-year-old Danish art student. Urged to return home as war erupted, he refused unless he could obtain a visa for Hauptmann, whom he saw as his soulmate. The two men did leave France, hoping to find a safe haven in Florence. Instead, they often feared for their lives. Eventually imprisoned, they escaped when the Allies pushed north into Italy. Running for their lives, Peggram was found by an African American regiment in December 1944 and, suffering a mental breakdown, was finally sent home. His last years, sadly, were a trajectory of decline.

A sympathetic portrait of an extraordinary man.