11 Facts About Johns Committee

Florida Legislative Investigation Committee was established by the Florida Legislature in 1956, during the era of the Second Red Scare and the Lavender Scare.

Charley Johns Committee was leader of the Pork Choppers, rural legislators who dominated the Florida Legislature because of chronic misrepresentation, giving a city such as Orlando the same weight in the Legislature as rural Wakulla County.

The "hysteria over the prospect of desegregation" led Johns to recast his proposed committee, successfully, as a tool to investigate the NAACP's activities in Florida.

In 1961, the Legislature directed the Johns Committee to broaden its investigations to include homosexuals and the "extent of [their] infiltration into agencies supported by state funds, " particularly at the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the University of South Florida.

However, the Johns Committee had already begun interrogating suspected homosexuals among students and faculty on Florida campuses before the Legislature gave specific authorization for it.

Related searches

Johns Committee prohibited the accused from confronting their complainants, seldom informed subjects of their legal or constitutional rights, and rarely offered them sufficient time to secure an attorney or prepare a defense.

Johns Committee investigated faculty at the University of South Florida, a newer university the Pork Choppers looked on with disfavor.

Not content with rooting out homosexuals, the Johns Committee's investigators interfered with academic freedom on state college campuses:.

Criticism of the Johns Committee's work intensified after the 1964 publication of its report, Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida, informally called "the Purple Pamphlet" on account of its cover, which immediately became infamous for including pictures of homosexual activity.

Florida Legislative Investigation Johns Committee has been called Florida's version of McCarthyism, and a Florida version of the House Un-American Activities Johns Committee.

In 2000, University of Florida student Allyson A Beutke produced a half-hour documentary on the workings of the Johns Committee, Behind Closed Doors, as her master's thesis in mass communication.