American scare Florida's hidden cold war on Black and Queer lives

Journalist Fieseler (Tinderbox, 2018) delivers a historically corrective text, bringing to light a cruel and unjust period of Florida history. Between 1956 and 1965, the state government empowered and funded (with close to half a million dollars) the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC), aka the "Johns Committee," so called for its leader, Charley Johns. Often using suspected communism as a justification, the FLIC targeted and terrorized U.S. citizens, particularly educators, who were Black, and/or queer or accused as such. Many of these targeted citizens were dismissed from their employment, faced legal and familial consequences, and were driven from the state in shame. Fieseler's book is a dense, fascinating, essential piece of scholarship that restores a forcefully obscured record. The work is meticulous, and readers will encounter a plethora of facts: names, dates, laws, votes, and governmental procedures. For 30 years, Johns Committee scholar Bonnie Stark kept and secretly protected 21 bankers boxes with un-redacted records of the FLIC. In 2021, she handed them over to Fieseler in a parking lot. The legacy of the FLIC extends through Anita Bryant to Ron DeSantis and continues to affect Florida today. All readers, in every state, have a right to this masterwork of journalism.

Edgar winner Fieseler (Tinderbox) uncovers a mostly forgotten plot by Florida's government to terrorize its minority residents in this harrowing history. Drawing from a trove of secret documents given to him by whistleblower Bonnie Stark, Fieseler recounts a racist and homophobic mid-century witch hunt waged by the state against its own citizens. In 1956, state senator Charley Johns launched the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee as a local version of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Using the pursuit of communists as cover, Johns hunted down gay Floridians and members of the NAACP, who were then tried in inquisition-style hearings for subversive activities and "crimes against nature." It took nine years and nearly half a million taxpayer dollars before the committee was disbanded, with only a single conviction (for adultery) to its name. In its wake, the committee left a wreckage of lost careers and ruined lives, with teachers fired, scholars harassed, and hundreds of college students harangued (and some expelled). Fieseler's dogged reporting and narrative gifts make the history as gripping as it is frightening. This timely account of political power run amok is not to be missed. Photos. Agent: Peter Steinberg, UTA. (June)

Uncovering dark history in the Sunshine State. Journalist and author Fieseler's vital account shines a light on the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee--"a 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." 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--a "purge," 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 "dogged pursuit of alleged homosexuals verged on megalomania." 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's room. Modeled on the Red Scare's House Committee on Un-American Activities, FLIC, also known as the Johns Committee after its chairman, quickly became "an investigation in search of something new to investigate." Fieseler describes how he gained access to the records of FLIC's closed meetings, scandalous and previously unavailable to the public. A task force empowered to investigate "subversive crime" 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't Say Gay bill and the Stop WOKE Act). The persecution of "the other" has not set with the Florida sun. An essential work of recovering queer history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.