- Lewis Bosworth: I was at home in my apartment one day in 1962, and the phone rang.

[rotary phone rings] It was one of my friends.

He explained to me that there was this purge going on to rid the University of gay male students.

- Scott Seyforth: Lewis Bosworth, he is one of only two former students that has ever spoken publicly about their involvement in the purge.

- The purge was a systematic effort to identify gay students and staff and discretely remove them from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The policy was a carryover fr om the paranoia of the 1950s, starting with the Red Scare.

- Joseph McCarthy: Even if there were only one communist in the State Department, that would still be one communist too many.

- Which led to the Lavender Scare, a campaign to ban homosexuals from working in the federal government.

- Ashley Brown: Gays and lesbians really became the scapegoats.

It is assumed that gay men and lesbians are actually threats to national security and that they can be blackmailed.

- The hunt for homosexuals at the University began as a response to the Haresfoot scandal.

Fourteen years later, in 1962, the purge pressed on.

- Dick Wagner: The Dean of men, Dean Zillman, started to compile a list of hundreds of male homosexuals on campus.

And he would call people in and ask them to name names, which was clearly a McCarthy-type tactic.

- Theodore Zillman had been an attorney and personally questioned suspected homosexuals.

Heavy consequences awaited those who confessed.

- Dick Wagner: The University would inform parents, basically, would force the kids to come out.

- Scott Seyforth: They were ruining people's lives.

Kicking out people right before graduation.

There are cases of students attempting suicide.

You read these transcripts.

It's heartbreaking.

- One name on Zillman's list was sophomore Lewis Bosworth.

- Lewis Bosworth: I was getting calls from the Dean's office to come in, and I ignored it as long as I could, simply on the grounds that it wasn't any of their business.

- Scott Seyforth: Dean Zillman didn't like it when people didn't respond to his request.

- Lewis Bosworth: A detective from the University Police came to my place of employment and threatened me.

And so, I finally did go to the Dean of Men's office.

They certainly were a whole lot worried about gay men, young men.

- Scott Seyforth: Dean Zillman interrogated him.

It must have been terrifying to be on the receiving end of an interrogation about your sexuality in the 1960s.

- Lewis Bosworth: I was afraid that I might be expelled.

Well, I lied through my teeth when he asked me if I was homosexual.

Since I denied everything, there wasn't anything they could do with me.

- But Dean Zillman had other plans.

- Lewis Bosworth: I had been accepted to a program abroad, a junior year abroad program.

Well, they reneged on that.

They took away the scholarship.

I graduated in '64.

There were other people involved in that who fared less well than I did.

- Hunted, harassed, the University's years-long purge ensured that hundreds of gay students would never make it to graduation.

- Lewis Bosworth: It was important to their quote-unquote investigation to get as many names on their list as they could, and I refused to do that.

I didn't give them any names.

- Defiant in the face of bigotry, Lewis Bosworth went on to become an outspoken activist.

He later returned to UW-Madison and built a career ce ntered on welcoming students, helping them navigate the college experience rather than kicking them out.

[birds chirping] - Scott Seyforth: It was spring of 2013.

I went into the LGBTQ+ graduation ceremony.

And sitting at one of the tables was Lewis Bosworth, sitting by himself.

I was stunned.

I said, "Lewis, what is it like for you to be at this?"

He says, "Scott, it's unimaginable.

"When I was this age, this would have been unimaginable."

- Dick Wagner: One of the amazing things about Wisconsin is that early on, gay and lesbian people found ways to affirm their own identity.

In their own way, they could achieve a certain amount of liberation.