Introduction: Red Scare, Lavender Scare The story of FBI informant Angela Calomiris (1915-1995)—sometimes “Angie” to old friends—would never have come to light if she had not testified for the prosecution at the 1949 Smith Act trial of the leaders of the American Communist Party, where she had worked undercover since 1942. The names of others, who had reported on Communist Party activities and collected the same money from the FBI as Angela, were not revealed because they did not take a public stance. In defiance of convention, Angela—whose lesbian identity was no secret to most of the people she came in contact with, including FBI agents—took a chance based on high expectations of even more money, greater fame, and a good job in the photography field through her FBI connections. But as months turned into years, Angela’s star dimmed, and her hopes faded. McCarthyism also faded with the Senate censure of Joseph McCarthy, while the witch hunt for Communist sympathizers slowed down. Angela did not talk about her past, and the celebrity that had been hers.
She settled for the small real estate empire she had built in Provincetown, Massachusetts, at Land’s End on Cape Cod. Many old-timers remember her as the former proprietor of Angel’s Landing at 353 Commercial Street and a pillar of the community. She owned more properties on Commercial Street—for a while the Firehouse Leather shop—plus a house on Nickerson Street, a couple of lots in Wellfleet, and seaside cottages in North Truro. There were people in New York City who remembered Angela, too, old friends, dating back forty or fifty years. Some of them respected her ambition, determination, and what is sometimes called “entrepreneurship.” She was a small woman, a lesbian under five feet tall, but not the delicate type. On the contrary, she was somewhat masculine, with rugged features and very short hair. She had been born into a Greek immigrant family on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, but had risen out of poverty against all odds. She always kept an apartment in Greenwich Village, first on Jane Street, and then Horatio. At one time, she owned a brownstone on West 12th Street, just off Greenwich Avenue, in the Village. Hers was a real American success story.
Copyright © 2017 by Lisa E. Davis (Author). All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
