American historian and activist (1933–2022)
William Armstrong Percy III (December 10, 1933 – October 30, 2022) was an American professor, historian, encyclopedist, and gay activist. He taught from 1968 at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and started publishing in gay studies in 1985.
Early life and education.
Bill was born to Anne Minor Dent and William Armstrong Percy, II, of the Mississippi Percy family. His mother was raised by her widowed uncle, the distinguished Memphis lawyer Dent Minor. He was a descendant of 17th-century Dent settlers in Maryland and the Minors in Virginia. Dent's great-uncle John B. Minor taught law at the University of Virginia from 1845 to 1895 and served for decades there as dean of the Law School.\
Career.
Percy taught at the University of New Orleans, Louisiana State University, and the University of Missouri at St. Louis for two years each. In 1968 he moved to the University of Massachusetts at Boston. After gaining tenure and promotion to full professor there, in 1975 Percy "came out" to colleagues. He joined the fight for equal rights for gays in 1982 after meeting gay activist Charley Shively. Percy served as the other associate editor with Warren Johansson of the "Encyclopedia of Homosexuality" (1990), which won six prizes. It has recently been reprinted by Rutledge, costing $500 for the two volumes.
Paul Cartledge, of the University of Cambridge, described Percy's "Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece" (1996) as the first work to try to go beyond Kenneth Dover's "groundbreaking" "Greek Homosexuality." Dover's work, influenced by pseudo-Freudianism, was very homophobic. Cartledge noted there were finer works in German that were translated into English before Dover wrote.
Percy published "The Age of Marriage in Ancient Rome" (2003), arguing that Roman males married at younger ages than concluded by historians, and to younger women. The earlier average dates were found by Percy among his personal trove of ancient Roman wedding licenses and divorce papyri. Of all ancient people studied by Percy, only Greek males waited until about 30 to marry. In Sparta, they normally married females of 18, but in other free cities, they married females aged from 14 to 16, soon after the passage to puberty.
William Armstrong Percy III died on October 30, 2022, at the age of 88.
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