Journalist and author Fieseler\u2019s vital account shines a light on the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee\u2014\u201ca forgotten cabal of gerrymandered white legislators that went after Black and queer citizens in the mid-twentieth century at the height of anti-Communist hysteria.\u201d This pursuit led to the surveillance and persecution of Black NAACP activists and then to the firings and expulsions of hundreds of homosexual professors and students in schools and colleges across Florida\u2014a \u201cpurge,\u201d in the words of state lawmakers. Some of these injustices were remedied only when they reached the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts. Fieseler follows the political careers of FLIC chairman Charley Johns, a staunch segregationist, and chief investigator Remus Strickland, whose \u201cdogged pursuit of alleged homosexuals verged on megalomania.\u201d The author humanizes this history with portraits of some of its victims, including University of Florida undergraduate Art Copleston, who was pulled from class and interrogated, and tenured music professor John Faircloth Park, entrapped in a courthouse men\u2019s room. Modeled on the Red Scare\u2019s House Committee on Un-American Activities, FLIC, also known as the Johns Committee after its chairman, quickly became \u201can investigation in search of something new to investigate.\u201d Fieseler describes how he gained access to the records of FLIC\u2019s closed meetings, scandalous and previously unavailable to the public. A task force empowered to investigate \u201csubversive crime\u201d soon became corrupt itself. Most saliently, the author also draws parallels to later Floridians who would continue to wage attacks on Blacks and gays: Anita Bryant (and her Save Our Children campaign) and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (backer of the Don\u2019t Say Gay bill and the Stop WOKE Act). The persecution of \u201cthe other\u201d has not set with the Florida sun.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Journalist and author Fieseler\u2019s vital account shines a light on the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee\u2014\u201ca forgotten cabal of gerrymandered white legislators that went after Black and queer citizens in the mid-twentieth century at the height of anti-Communist hysteria.\u201d This pursuit led to the surveillance and persecution of Black NAACP activists and then to the firings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}