Karen L. Graves – författare

And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida's Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers is a history of state oppression of gay and lesbian citizens during the Cold War and the dynamic set of responses it ignited. Focusing on Florida's purge of gay and lesbian teachers from 1956 to 1965, this study explores how the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, commonly known as the Johns Committee, investigated and discharged dozens of teachers on the basis of sexuality. Karen L. Graves details how teachers were targeted, interrogated, and stripped of their professional credentials, and she examines the extent to which these teachers resisted the invasion of their personal lives. She contrasts the experience of three groups--civil rights activists, gay and lesbian teachers, and University of South Florida personnel--called before the committee and looks at the range of response and resistance to the investigations. Based on archival research conducted on a recently opened series of Investigation Committee records in the State Archives of Florida, this work highlights the importance of sexuality in American and education history and argues that Florida's attempt to govern sexuality in schools implies that educators are distinctly positioned to transform dominant ideology in American society.

Mad River, Marjorie Rowland, and the Quest for LGBTQ Teachers' Rights addresses an important legal case that set the stage for today's LGBTQ civil rights–a case that almost no one has heard of. Marjorie Rowland v. Mad River School District involves an Ohio guidance counselor fired in 1974 for being bisexual. Rowland's case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the justices declined to consider it. In a spectacular published dissent, Justice Brennan laid out arguments for why the First and Fourteenth Amendments apply to bisexuals, gays, and lesbians. That dissent has been the foundation for LGBTQ civil rights advances since.  In the first in-depth treatment of this foundational legal case, authors Margaret A. Nash and Karen L. Graves tell the story of that case and of Marjorie Rowland, the pioneer who fought for employment rights for LGBTQ educators and who paid a heavy price for that fight. It brings the story of LGBTQ educators' rights to the present, including commentary on Bostock v Clayton County, the 2020 Supreme Court case that struck down employment discrimination against LGBT workers.