Florida Senate - 2019                                   SCR 1220
       
       
        
       By Senator Book
       
       
       
       
       
       32-01678-19                                           20191220__
    1                    Senate Concurrent Resolution                   
    2         A concurrent resolution acknowledging the injustices
    3         perpetrated against the targets of the Florida
    4         Legislative Investigation Committee between 1956 and
    5         1965, and offering a formal and heartfelt apology to
    6         those whose lives, well-being, and livelihoods were
    7         damaged or destroyed by the activities and public
    8         pronouncements of those who served on the committee.
    9  
   10         WHEREAS, following the special session of the Florida
   11  Legislature in July 1956, the act establishing the Florida
   12  Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC) became law, and
   13         WHEREAS, following its establishment, the committee, in
   14  conjunction with Tallahassee police, surveilled, harassed,
   15  intimidated, and arrested members of the Inter-Civic Council,
   16  students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University,
   17  and other participants in the bus boycott and carpool network
   18  that began in May 1956 and continued until December 1956, and
   19         WHEREAS, on February 1, 1957, the FLIC held its first
   20  public hearings, questioning Virgil Hawkins, an African-American
   21  man who had been trying to enter the University of Florida law
   22  school since 1949, as well as National Association for the
   23  Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attorneys Francisco
   24  Rodriguez and Horace Hill, claiming that the NAACP was violating
   25  the law by soliciting plaintiffs for desegregation lawsuits, and
   26         WHEREAS, on February 25, 1957, the committee began public
   27  hearings in Miami, demanding that the local NAACP branch
   28  surrender all records, including membership lists, and claiming
   29  that the branch had been infiltrated by current and former
   30  communists, and
   31         WHEREAS, the committee devoted the years of 1957 and 1958
   32  to besmirching NAACP members as criminals and communist
   33  sympathizers in order to slow or halt their efforts to
   34  desegregate Florida schools and public spaces, and
   35         WHEREAS, in November and December of 1958, the chief
   36  investigator of the FLIC began an inquiry into alleged
   37  homosexual activity by faculty, staff, and students at the
   38  University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville; allowed officers of
   39  the UF police department to entrap and question without legal
   40  counsel those suspected of such activity; and threatened and
   41  coerced those individuals with a public hearing or perjury
   42  charges into confessing and identifying others as alleged
   43  homosexuals, and
   44         WHEREAS, the committee continued the UF and Gainesville
   45  investigations into 1959, having entrapped and intimidated
   46  dozens of individuals on and off campus, interrogating them in
   47  motel rooms and basements, resulting in the firing of 14 faculty
   48  and staff at UF, and
   49         WHEREAS, in the spring of 1959 the committee reported to
   50  the Florida Legislature that homosexual professors were
   51  recruiting students into “homosexual practices,” and they in
   52  turn were becoming teachers in Florida’s public school system
   53  and recruiting even younger students, and
   54         WHEREAS, the committee began 4 years of statewide
   55  investigations into alleged homosexual activity by public school
   56  teachers, administrators, and students, working with local law
   57  enforcement agencies and employing the same tactics used at the
   58  University of Florida, and cooperating with the Florida Board of
   59  Education to revoke individuals’ teaching certificates, and
   60         WHEREAS, in the spring of 1961, the committee began an
   61  inquiry into alleged homosexual activity, liberal teaching
   62  methods, curricula, and policies at the University of South
   63  Florida (USF) in Tampa, and
   64         WHEREAS, the FLIC investigator and attorney, together with
   65  local law enforcement, questioned USF faculty, staff, and
   66  students in a motel room without appropriate legal counsel, and
   67  gathered information about the allegedly anti-Christian, pro
   68  integration, and pro-communist slant of reading assignments,
   69  classroom lectures, and invited campus speakers, and
   70         WHEREAS, the committee held public hearings to question USF
   71  faculty and administrators about the content of their courses,
   72  and policies related to hiring faculty and inviting speakers in
   73  an effort to discredit them as atheists, integrationists, and
   74  communist sympathizers, damaging individuals’ careers and the
   75  state’s national standing in higher education, and
   76         WHEREAS, in 1964 and 1965, the committee published
   77  misleading and inflammatory reports about homosexuals and civil
   78  rights activists in Florida, drawing continued unfavorable
   79  national attention and perpetuating falsehoods against residents
   80  of this state, and
   81         WHEREAS, the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee
   82  spent 9 years at the expense of the taxpayers of this state
   83  using unconstitutional and unjust methods to discredit and
   84  combat legal, peaceful desegregation efforts; to destroy or
   85  otherwise jeopardize the livelihoods and reputations of
   86  educators, administrators, and other professionals in Florida’s
   87  public schools and universities; and to create a climate of fear
   88  that caused pain and suffering among vulnerable residents and
   89  made Florida a national symbol of intolerance, NOW, THEREFORE,
   90  
   91  Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida, the House
   92  of Representatives Concurring:
   93  
   94         That the Legislature acknowledges the injustices
   95  perpetrated against the targets of the Florida Legislative
   96  Investigation Committee between 1956 and 1965, and offers a
   97  formal and heartfelt apology to those whose lives, well-being,
   98  and livelihoods were damaged or destroyed by the activities and
   99  public pronouncements of those who served on the committee.