Stacy Braukman

In 1956, state Senator Charley Johns was appointed the chairman of the newly formed Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, now remembered as the Johns Committee. This group was charged with the task of unearthing communist tendencies, homosexual persuasions, and anything they saw as subversive behaviour in academic institutions throughout Florida. With the cooperation of law enforcement, the committee interrogated and spied on countless individuals, including civil rights activists, college students, public school teachers, and university faculty and administrators.Today, the actions of the Johns Committee are easily dismissed as homophobic and bigoted. Communists and Perverts under the Palms reveals how the creation of the committee was a logical and unsurprising result of historic societal anxieties about race, sexuality, obscenity, and liberalism. Stacy Braukman illustrates how the responses to those societal anxieties, particularly the Johns Committee, laid the foundation for the resurgence of conservatism in the 1960s. Braukman is considered and nuanced in her stance, refusing a blanket condemnation of the extremism of a committee whose influence, even decades after its dissolution, continues to be felt in the culture wars of today.

For much of the 20th century, Atlanta was a magnet drawing newcomers from around the nation. Atlanta's growth from a small Southern town to a Sunbelt colossus in many ways parallels the changes that shaped America during those 100 years: industrialization, technological innovation, suburbanization, and battles over racial equality. Largely overlooked in the Atlanta story, however, are the experiences of lesbians and gay men. In a city governed by powerful business interests and an ethos of Christian conservatism, gays and lesbians maneuvered in ways both large and small, public and private, to find personal happiness, professional fulfillment, and, eventually, a political voice. Until recently, Atlanta's gay and lesbian history survived and perished with the memories of the men and women who lived it. Now a small part of that history has been preserved in this collection of unforgettable images.