e In the 1950s, the state of Florida supported and even sponsored, a state committee that stalked, intimidated, and terrorizing LGBTQ people. They attacked students, employees at state universities, and schools.

The terror group was commonly called the "Johns Committee" and was named after the founder, Senator Charley Eugene Johns.


The Beginning

After the failed attempt to eradicate civil rights groups, the committee made a list of organizations they did not favor. One of these groups was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

They changed their mission from hunting down communists to preserving racial segregation. The committee claimed communists backed the civil rights groups. However, their lawsuits weren't winning in court. So they changed tactics-attacking the gay community.


Finding Targets

In the 1950s, hundreds of students and teachers were forced out of their universities and their jobs due to the intimidation and terrorizing received from the state-funded legislative committee.

For a decade, the House and the Senate went around ruining the lives of Americans based on their skin color and their sexual orientation.

The committee, which existed from 1956 to 1965, was designed to investigate all organizations and activities that "violated the laws of the state and constituted violence."

The Johns Committee was formed amid the U.S.-Soviet Union Cold War and Red Scare. The members of the legislative team targeted "homosexual professors who were recruiting other people to join their homosexual practices."

Victims were subjected to mental torture as they were interrogated in a room where there was only one table and a hanging lightbulb.

The committee decided that communists could easily blackmail gays and lesbians with threats of exposing their sexual orientation-a view that was not as widely accepted at the time.

They investigated and arrested LGBTQ employees in institutions and the federal government. They claimed people who were part of the gay community were unsuitable for the jobs and constituted security risks.

The witchhunt was known as the Lavender Scare.


The Purge

The committee terrorized hundreds of LGBTQ members under the guise that they were preventing the "suspects" from "endangering the state of Florida."

According to the state archives, the Johns Committee collaborated with school administrators and the local police department to conduct numerous interrogations on targets. The interrogations were often done in motels with no legal representation.

The committee would ask the victims if they've ever engaged in "homosexual activities" or whether they "enjoyed normal sexual relationship" with their wife.

Some interrogations happened after victims were entrapped in the men's bathroom of courthouses. An investigator would place themselves beside their targets and ask if they wanted to engage in homosexual activities. If they replied yes, they concluded the man was gay.

They then force the target to give them the names of the friends who were possibly gay. They also asked whether there were any gay professors on campus.

The committee would also recruit and pay students to entice suspected LGBTQ individuals to engage in sexual activities.

At the University of Florida, school administrators dismissed at least 70 students and professors. The Florida Education Association had also requested a list of teachers who were "guilty of moral deviation."

The Johns Committee destroyed most of the evidence, but one memo revealed they still had over 300 "pending investigations." They planned to spread their investigation to grade schools.


Facing Trouble

Their aggressive tactics eventually gained attention. In 1964, a decade into their crusade, they published "Homosexuality and Citizenship in Florida," which was called a "state-sponsored pornography" for how it depicted LGBTQ activities.

The government reportedly spent $720 to print more than 2,000 copies.

The book, known as the Purple Pamphlet, featured graphic images meant to depict gay men. They also used sexual pictures of young boys to connect homosexuality to pedophilia. The pamphlet was supposed to be for the benefit of individuals who were "concerned with the moral climate of the state."

The pamphlet was stamped with the seal of the state of Florida-a sight that was very unwelcome to taxpayers. The following year, the lawmakers cut funding to the committee, leading to the collapse of the organization.

Five decades later, the state has yet to acknowledge the terror and the wrongdoing caused by the legislative team. Florida still upholds the law where members of the LGBTQ community can be fired just because of their sexual orientation.

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