State of Defiance

“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 Hart Brown, author of Standing Against Dragons: Three Southern Lawyers in an Era of Fear

“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, author of Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle

“Judith Poucher’s account of the resistance to the Johns Committee gives us the individual stories that characterize successful social protest movements. Situated between civil rights, gay and lesbian history, and the fight over academic freedom, this book weaves difficult histories into a single narrative.”—Robert Cassanello, author of To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville

“An important addition to the expanding body of scholarship on the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. Readers will find intriguing the process by which ‘ordinary citizens’ championed integrity and conscience in the face of state oppression.”—Karen L. Graves, author of And They Were Wonderful Teachers: Florida’s Purge of Gay and Lesbian Teachers

“Presents a diverse cast of men and women battling for civil liberties.”—Lambda Literary Review

“Focus[es] on five ‘ordinary’ individuals subjected to the committee’s public and private interrogations who refused to give up the names of others.”—Florida Times-Union

“Successfully examines how ordinary Floridians resisted in the face of a horrible adversity, overcoming insurmountable odds in the process.”—Journal of American History

“Poucher’s book adds new dimensions to the historiography of the Johns Committee.”—Florida Historical Quarterly