Florida Legislative Investigation Committee

The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (also known as the Johns Committee) was established by the Florida Legislature in 1956, during the era of the Second Red Scare and the Lavender Scare. Like the more famous anti-Communist investigative committees of the McCarthy period in the United States Congress, the Florida committee undertook a wide-ranging investigation of potentially subversive activities by academics, Civil Rights Movement groups, and suspected communist organizations, and also attempted to eliminate homosexuals from state government and public education.

Commonly referred to as the Johns Committee after its first chairman, state senator and former governor Charley Eugene Johns, 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 and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as pro-Castro and anti-Castro groups.

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