New from the University Press of Florida:
State of Defiance: Challenging the Johns Committee's Assault on Civil Liberties (June 2014), by
Judith G. Poucher (Florida State College). The Press explains:
The Johns
Committee, a product of the red scare in Florida, grabbed headlines and
destroyed lives. Its goal was to halt integration by destroying the
NAACP in Florida and smearing integrationists. Citizens were first
subpoenaed under charges of communist tendencies and later for
homosexual or subversive behavior.
Drawing on previously
unpublished sources and newly unsealed records, Judith Poucher profiles
five individuals who stood up to the Johns Committee. Virgil Hawkins and
Ruth Perry were civil rights activists who, respectively, foiled the
committee’s plans to stop integration at the University of Florida and
refused to divulge Florida and Miami NAACP records. G. G. Mock, a
bartender in Tampa, was arrested and shackled in the nude by police but
would not reveal the name of her girlfriend, a teacher. University of
Florida professor Sig Diettrich was threatened with twenty years in
prison and being "outed," yet he still would not name names. Margaret
Fisher, a college administrator, helped to bring the committee's
investigation of the University of South Florida into the open, publicly
condemning their bullying.
By reexamining the daring stands
taken by these ordinary citizens, Poucher illustrates not only the
abuses propagated by the committee but also the collective power of
individuals to effect change.
A few blurbs:
"Looks at Florida's Johns Committee in a new way: through the lives and
memories of Floridians affected by its persecutions in the 1950s. Their
stories are inspiring, disturbing, and instructive."--Sarah H. Brown
"Readers will learn a
great deal from the lives of these unsung but extraordinary people who
refused to cower before this instrument of legislative terror."--Steven
F. Lawson
More information is available
here.
