Charles Francis sets three books down on the table. “These are the last three biographies of President Eisenhower,” he says. “Not one of them mentions Executive Order 10450.”
That 1953 presidential order is the subject of a lawsuit brought against the Justice Department by the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., of which Francis, 65, is president.
With Dwight D. Eisenhower’s signature, the government fired thousands of federal employees for being gay or lesbian, and Francis wants the department to release the internal memos, documents and communications surrounding it.
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