Communists and Perverts under the Palms

“Braukman's research is meticulous, and her ‘page-turner’ narrative offers a window into the past as one contemplates today’s social, cultural, and political hatreds. A must read.”—Choice

 “In what started as a crackdown on pro-racial integration factions in Florida’s colleges, gay students and professors quickly became the targets of a years-long hunt to eliminate ‘sexual deviance’ in the state’s public classrooms. . . . Braukman examines the effect the crackdown had on Florida’s universities and the wider civil rights movement for blacks and gays.”InsideHigherEd.com

 “Provides a valuable genealogy of right-wing, anti-gay, and anti-progressive organizations?how they grew and gave birth to similar organizations.”—Gay and Lesbian Review

 “What makes Communists and Perverts Under the Palms a penetrating read is not only its chronicling of a microcosm of the fight against civil rights, but its implications for how that fight is still waged by cultural conservatives today. . . . It is one of the best, and the most important, books of the year.”—Lambda Literary

Today, the actions of the Johns Committee are easily dismissed as homophobic and bigoted. Stacy Braukman reveals how the creation of the committee was a logical and unsurprising result of historic societal anxieties about race, sexuality, obscenity, and liberalism.