Florida Legislative Investigation Committee
Encyclopedia
Florida Legislature
The Florida State Legislature is the term often used to refer to the two houses that act as the state legislature of the U.S. state of Florida. The Florida Constitution states that "The legislative power of the state shall be vested in a legislature of the State of Florida," composed of a Senate...
in 1956, during the era of the Second Red Scare
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
and the Lavender Scare
Lavender scare
The Lavender Scare refers to the fear and persecution of homosexuals in the 1950s in the United States, which paralleled the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism....
. Like the more famous anti-Communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
investigative committees of the McCarthy
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
period in the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, the Florida committee undertook a wide-ranging investigation of potentially subversive activities by academics, civil rights groups, and suspected communist organizations, and also attempted to eliminate homosexuals from state government and public education.
Legislative mandate
Commonly referred to as the Johns Committee after its first chairman, state senator and former governor Charley Eugene JohnsCharley Eugene Johns
Charley Eugene Johns was an American politician. Johns, a Baptist, served as the 32nd Governor of Florida from 1953 to 1955.Johns was born in Starke, Florida. He worked as a railroad conductor...
, its broadly worded mandate from the Legislature was to
investigate all organizations whose principles or activities include a course of conduct on the part of any person or group which could constitute violence, or a violation of the laws of the state, or would be inimical to the well being and orderly pursuit of their personal and business activities by the majority of the citizens of this state.
The Florida Legislature in the 1950s and later was controlled by the very conservative "'Pork Choppers,' rural legislators determined to curb the influence of the 'Lamb Choppers,' legislators representing more progressive city folk." Former governor Johns was a key figure among the twenty "Pork Choppers" from rural North Florida in the 40-member state senate, who effectively dominated the workings of state government.
One of the Johns Committee's first tasks was to investigate and reprimand faculty and staff at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black college, for supporting the Tallahassee Bus Boycott of 1956–1957. The committee sought to prove communist links to the NAACP, but were rebuffed when the NAACP got a ruling from the United States Supreme Court denying the Johns Committee access to their membership lists. The committee also investigated the activities of other politically active organizations, such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
and the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, as well as pro-Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
and anti-Castro
Opposition to Fidel Castro
The Cuban dissident movement is a political movement in Cuba whose aim is "to replace the current regime with a more democratic form of government". According to Human Rights Watch, the Cuban government represses nearly all forms of political dissent....
groups.
Assault on homosexuality
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 state colleges and universities such as the University of FloridaUniversity of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
, Florida State University
Florida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
, and the University of South Florida
University of South Florida
The University of South Florida, also known as USF, is a member institution of the State University System of Florida, one of the state's three flagship universities for public research, and is located in Tampa, Florida, USA...
. Having the power to subpoena witnesses, take sworn testimony, and employ secret informants, the committee spread terror among the closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
and gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
population in state colleges, often using uniformed policemen to pull students and professors out of classes for interrogation. All homosexual acts were crimes
Sodomy laws in the United States
Sodomy laws in the United States, which outlawed a variety of sexual acts, were historically universal. While they often targeted sexual acts between persons of the same sex, many statutes employed definitions broad enough to outlaw certain sexual acts between persons of different sexes as well,...
under Florida law at that time and remained so until the United States Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court case. In the 6-3 ruling, the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by proxy, invalidated sodomy laws in the thirteen other states where they remained in existence, thereby making same-sex sexual activity legal in...
ruling in 2003. Admission of homosexuality constituted moral turpitude
Moral turpitude
Moral turpitude is a legal concept in the United States that refers to "conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty or good morals." It appears in U.S. immigration law from the nineteenth century...
and was grounds for firing or expulsion from college.
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. In 1958, committee chairman Johns illegally sent a covert investigator to the University of Florida after his son, Jerome Johns, told his father that "effeminate instructors had perverted the curriculum." Other students identified professors as homosexuals for such flimsy reasons as observing them eating lunch together or wearing Bermuda shorts
Bermuda shorts
Bermuda Shorts, also known as walking shorts or dress shorts, are a particular type of short trousers, now widely worn as semi-casual attire by both men and women...
on campus. Investigator Strickland
hired student informants with FLIC funds, used highway patrolment to remove professors from the classroom, and telephoned some instructors late at night, demanding that they provide testimony in Strickland's motel room at his convenience. He also 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.
Students, too, faced the committee's wrath. While faculty and staff suffered immediate dismissal if suspected of homosexuality, gay students could remain on campus only if they visited the infirmary and submitted to psychiatric treatments throughout their academic career. . . . The FLIC compelled personnel at the UF medical center to disclose information found in patient records and . . . also reserved the right to seize clinical records as it did when investigators seized paperwork on thirty-five female students who had given birth out of wedlock at the UF facility.
One victim, University of Florida honors graduate Art Coppleston, described the experience of interrogation this way:
I arrived at the University of Florida on my 25th birthday in September 1957. Having completed four years in the Air Force, I was anxious to move ahead quickly with my education, and get on to a working career. …I was called in to be interrogated three or four times during the next two years. Each time, it was the same setting, and the same set of questions. Each time I was unceremoniously marched out of class, in front of the instructor and all my classmates, by a uniformed policeman. Once this occurred during a final exam in accounting. …At each interrogation, I refused to tell them anything. Each time I was amazed that, while I was truly terrified by their tactics and their threats, I was able to stonewall their questions and refuse to give them the answers they were so desperate for. I came to realize that they, as a group, were really a very dumb bunch of redneck, illiterate people, clumsily wielding a vast amount of power over others.
The investigations ruined many lives and careers. For example, in March 1959, the chairman of the University of Florida geography department, Professor Sigismond Diettrich, a married man, attempted suicide after being interrogated by the committee's agents and then forced to resign by the university's president. By 1963, the Johns Committee could boast of having caused the firing of 39 professors and deans, as well as the revoking of teaching certificates for 71 public school teachers, all suspected or admitted homosexuals. Scores of students were interrogated and subsequently expelled from public colleges across the state, as well.
In recent years, President J. Wayne Reitz and the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
administration of that day have been harshly criticized for their close cooperation with the Johns Committee, allowing uniformed investigators to come onto campus and to make tape recordings of interrogation sessions with faculty and students. Many faculty were too afraid of exposure to resist the violation of their civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
:
The American Association of University ProfessorsAmerican Association of University ProfessorsThe American Association of University Professors is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership is about 47,000, with over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations...
informed professors of their rights, but those who had something to fear were too afraid to ask for an arrest warrant or subpoena. Either of these would mean that their private lives could be played out for the public to read about in the newspaper.
In all, 15 University of Florida professors were fired in 1959 as a result of the committee's investigation.
Attack on academic freedom
Not content with rooting out homosexuals, the Johns Committee's investigators also interfered with academic freedomAcademic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
on state college campuses:
Once in Tampa [at the University of South FloridaUniversity of South FloridaThe University of South Florida, also known as USF, is a member institution of the State University System of Florida, one of the state's three flagship universities for public research, and is located in Tampa, Florida, USA...
], the committee singled out faculty for allegedly picking up on male students, scheduling speeches by "known communist sympathizers," teaching evolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
as fact and assigning "obscene" books of "intellectual garbage" like the classic Catcher in the Rye. …Many deans objected to the committee's activities, and local editorials blasted the report as "a disgrace" and "a shameful document." USF suspended Sheldon N. Grebstein, assistant professor of English, after the committee denounced him for handing out "indecent" reprints of literary criticism aimed at BeatBeat generationThe Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
writers.
Another source states that
the committee surmised that USF's curriculum corrupted students through the use of "trashy and pornographic" works such as The Grapes of WrathThe Grapes of WrathThe Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
and Brave New WorldBrave New WorldBrave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
and that some faculty "were not qualified to teach" because they introduced evolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
into their lectures in biology classes.
The purple pamphlet
Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida
Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida, also known as the Purple Pamphlet, was published in January 1964 by the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee of the Florida legislature led by Senator Charley Johns. The booklet contained several pornographic images and a glossary of terminology used...
, informally called "the Purple Pamphlet" on account of its cover, which immediately became infamous for including pictures of homosexual activity. More than two thousand copies of the report were printed, some of which were later reportedly sold as pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The report included such dire warnings
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
as these:
The best and current estimate of active homosexuals in Florida is 60,000 individuals. The plain fact of the matter is that a great many homosexuals have an insatiable appetite for sexual activities and find special gratification in the recruitment to their ranks of youth. The homosexual's goal is to "bring over" the young person, to hook him for homosexuality. A veteran investigator of homosexual activities… said, "We must do everything in our power to create one thing in the minds of every homosexual and that is to keep their hands off our children. …if we don't act soon we will wake up some morning and find they are too big to fight. They may be already. I hope not." We hope that many citizen organizations in Florida will use this report… to prepare their children to meet the temptations of homosexuality lurking today in the vicinity of nearly every institution of learning."
Similar claims that unrestrained homosexuals would prey on children
Homosexual recruitment
Homosexual recruitment is a term used, primarily in the U.S., to describe alleged attempts by homosexuals to actively "recruit" otherwise heterosexual youths into the 'gay lifestyle'. Allegations of gay recruitment are sometimes leveled at efforts by gay activists to encourage homosexuals to "come...
were later repeated and widely publicized by Anita Bryant
Anita Bryant
Anita Jane Bryant is an American singer, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and gay rights opponent. She scored four Top 40 hits in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Paper Roses", which reached #5...
in her successful Save Our Children
Save Our Children
Save Our Children, Inc. was a political coalition formed in 1977 in Miami, Florida, U.S. to overturn a recently legislated county ordinance that banned discrimination in areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation based on sexual orientation...
campaign to repeal Dade County's gay rights ordinance in 1977. Partly due to her victory there, in 1978 the Florida Legislature
Florida Legislature
The Florida State Legislature is the term often used to refer to the two houses that act as the state legislature of the U.S. state of Florida. The Florida Constitution states that "The legislative power of the state shall be vested in a legislature of the State of Florida," composed of a Senate...
, still dominated by a small group of North Florida senators, passed a bill prohibiting homosexuals from adopting children; the statute has survived several court challenges, and was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Middle District of Alabama...
in 2004.
Disbandment and sealed records
Lawmakers outraged at what the media were calling "state-sponsored pornography" forbade the printing of further copies and eliminated funding for the Johns Committee at the next legislative session. The committee subsequently disbanded and ceased its work on July 1, 1965, having amassed 30,000 pages of secret documents, which were left in the custody of the Legislature, to be kept sealed for 72 years. In 1993, however, bowing to pressure from Florida historians under the state's public records law, the Legislature authorized the placement in the Florida State Archives of a photocopied set of the records, with all individuals' names blacked out except those of the committee's members, staff, and public officials. The redacted records are available for public review at the archives in TallahasseeTallahassee, Florida
Tallahassee is the capital of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, and is the 128th largest city in the United States. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2010, the population recorded by...
.
Aftermath
Although his committee folded when the Legislature withdrew funding, Johns remained proud of his work:In a 1972 interview, Charley Johns said he saw the committee as a way to stamp out homosexuality. He said he was particularly disturbed by the number of homosexuals at U.F. "I don't get no love out of hurting people. But that situation in Gainesville, my Lord have mercy. I never saw nothing like it in my life. If we saved one boy from being made homosexual, it was justified."
Victims of the witch-hunt
Witch-hunt
A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...
felt differently, however. When interviewed in 2000, Art Coppleston said:
I moved on to a successful and somewhat normal life as a gay man. …But, never far in the background, has lurked the shadow of Investigator Tileston and the gnawing feeling that what I am, the very essence of my being, is somehow wrong. Bad. Sinful. Unworthy. I will probably never rid myself of those feelings. But time, and the new knowledge that others know about what went on in Florida some 40 years ago, makes those feelings a lot easier to bear.
Documentary film
In 2000, University of FloridaUniversity of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
student Allyson A. Beutke produced a half-hour documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
on the workings of the Johns Committee, Behind Closed Doors, as her master's thesis in mass communication
Mass communication
Mass communication is the term used to describe the academic study of the various means by which individuals and entities relay information through mass media to large segments of the population at the same time...
. The film aired on PBS stations in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and was shown at the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
The Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is a movie screening event that takes place each October in Tampa, Florida. The primary venue is the Tampa Theatre, but several other cinemas in or near the downtown area and in St. Petersburg simultaneously host the event as well...
as part of the "In Our Backyards: Florida Filmmakers" screening in October 2001. The documentary was also screened at the Florida Film Festival
Florida Film Festival
The Florida Film Festival, produced by Enzian Theater in Maitland, Florida, is an annual international film festival. Showcasing the best American independent and foreign films, the festival has become one of the most respected regional film events in the United States.-Overview:The Festival...
in Orlando
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
during June 2002. It also aired on The Education Channel in Tampa
Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
as part of the Independents' Film Festival in July 2002. The film earned a Louis Wolfson II Media History Center Film and Video Award.
Further reading
The following printed sources are held by the University of FloridaUniversity of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
library, and may be available at other libraries as well; see the library's listing, with call numbers, at Race, Ethnicity, and Politics in Florida.
- "Before the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee…" Transcript of testimony, Thursday, February 9, 1961. Tallahassee, Florida, The Legislature, 1961. One of the Johns Committee's publications.
- Schnur, James A. Cold Warriors in the Hot Sunshine: The Johns Committee's Assault on Civil Liberties in Florida, 1956–1965. Thesis, University of South Florida, 1995.
- Stark, Bonnie. McCarthyism in Florida: Charley Johns and the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, July, 1956 to July 1965. Thesis, University of South Florida, 1985.
- Wright, Devon A. The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee and its Conflict with the Miami Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Thesis, Florida International University, 2002.
Other printed or online sources discussing the activities of the Johns Committee:
- Elkins, Charles L. “From Plantation to Corporation: The Attack on Tenure and Academic Freedom in Florida,” Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 41, No. 4, 1998, pp. 757–65.
- Eskridge, William N., Jr. “ Privacy Jurisprudence and the Apartheid of the Closet,” Florida State University Law Review, Vol. 24, No. 4, Summer 1997, pp. 703–888.
- Graves, Karen. And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida's Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers. University of Illinois Press, 2009. ISBN 9780252076398 Detailed account of the Johns Committee's witch hunt against gay and lesbian educators; includes extensive bibliography on page 150.
- Poucher, Judith. “One Woman’s Courage: Ruth Perry and the Johns Committee,” Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida, ed. Kari Frederickson and Jack Emerson Davis. University Press of Florida, 2003, pp. 229–45. ISBN 0813026040
- Schnur, James A. "Closet Crusaders: The Johns Committee and Homophobia, 1956-1965," Carryin' on in the Lesbian and Gay South, John Howard, ed. New York: New York University Press, 1997, pp. 132-163. ISBN 0814735606 An extensive, detailed account of the Johns Committee's activities, with extensive source references in the footnotes.
- Sears, James T. Lonely Hunters: An Oral History Of Lesbian And Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968. Basic Books, 1997. ISBN 0813324742 Includes interviews with gay men and lesbians who were threatened by the Johns Committee's investigators.
- Sullivan, Gerard. "Political Opportunism and the Harassment of Homosexuals in Florida, 1952–1965," Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 37, No. 4, 1999, pp. 57–81.
External links
- Works by the FLIC:
- Complete text of Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida, Florida Legislative Investigation Committeee, Tallahassee, 1964 (the so-called Purple Pamphlet) at the Florida Heritage Collection, State University System of Florida
- The Black Experience: A Guide to African American Resources in the Florida State Archives. Includes history and description of the state library's holdings of Florida Legislative Investigation Committee Records, 1954–1965, Series S 1486 [19 cubic foot (0.538020093 m³)].
- Reports of Investigators on Meetings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Ku Klux Klan (Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, Records, 1954–1965, Series S 1486), Florida Memory Project, Florida State Archives and Library. Includes several images of field notes taken by FLIC spies who attended meetings of the Ku Klux KlanKu Klux KlanKu Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and the Southern Christian Leadership ConferenceSouthern Christian Leadership ConferenceThe Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
.
- Works by other authors, in chronological order:
- The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, James T. Sears, 1997.
- U. Florida student documentary exposes the state's anti-minority, anti-gay practices, The Independent Florida Alligator, October 2, 2000.
- Gannon, Michael. “ Crises That Have Faced Florida from Statehood in 1845 to the Present,” Democracy and the Economy in Florida at a Time of Crisis, The Rubin O’D. Askew Institute, 2002, pp. 6–9. (PDF document).
- USF History 101 — The witch hunt comes to USF, The Oracle, University of South Florida, September 24, 2003.
- The Johns Committee and UF, Gator Gay-Straight Alliance, University of Florida, April 27, 2005.
- The Tallahassee Bus Boycott — Fifty Years Later, The Tallahassee Democrat, May 21, 2006.
- A Brief Unofficial History of Activities and Policies Affecting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Persons at the University of Florida, Dean of Students Office, University of Florida, retrieved December 30, 2006.
- Documentary film:
- Behind Closed Doors: The Dark Legacy of the Johns Committee, 1999.
}