How a Florida music teacher helped stop a Cold War-era anti-gay crusade
Why it matters: William James Neal's legal victory over a state-funded committee "dealt an instant deathblow" to a ruthless purge of gay teachers and students in the 1950s and early 1960s, writes author Robert W. Fieseler.
Fieseler's new book, " American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives," puts a fresh spotlight on Neal, a former choir director at the segregated Gibbs Junior College.
Flashback: In 1956, North Florida lawmaker Charley Johns spearheaded what became known as the Johns Committee, which investigated NAACP members and queer Floridians behind closed doors using aggressive, humiliating tactics — all in the name of rooting out communism.
Nine years and $500,000 later, the group "failed to unearth one Communist," Fieseler wrote.
But it did derail countless lives and careers, something state leaders still haven't apologized for (despite repeated efforts).
Zoom in: Among them was Neal, a pianist and Korean War veteran born in New Smyrna Beach who spent years teaching and accompanying church choirs in St. Pete.
He earned his master of arts at Columbia University and toured the country as a solo pianist. He also directed choirs at Gibbs High, Gibbs Junior College and Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach.
In his role at the segregated junior college, which local officials opened in 1957 to avoid integration at St. Petersburg Junior College, Neal's wildly popular choir held concert fundraisers for local charities and performed for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Enter the Johns Committee.
In October 1960, lead investigator Remus J. Strickland interrogated Neal about his alleged "homosexual activity" for three hours, only 30 minutes of which was recorded.
Without a lawyer, Neal was on his own to face Strickland's questions while a police officer and a high-ranking Pinellas County Schools official looked on.
That was only the beginning of Neal's nightmare. In April 1961, the state revoked his teaching license, along with the licenses of four other Pinellas teachers.
"I was completely devastated," Neal told a Tampa Bay Times reporter in 1993. "I went to a friend's house and slept for three days. I was like a block of ice."
Yes, but: Neal soon "resolved to do what no other victim of the Johns Committee dared before," Fieseler wrote. "He sued."
Neal hired white attorneys and fled the state. His race never came up in legal papers or media coverage of the suit, which Fieseler posited was a strategic move by Neal.
In October 1962, "a Black gay man won in segregated Florida," Fieseler said. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Neal.
I read Fieseler's book ahead of moderating a recent event featuring the author at St. Pete's Tombolo Books.
I now consider it required reading for Floridians, especially as queer and Black folks continue to face attacks from people in power — a dynamic Fieseler equated to"a second Red Scare."
What's inside: The book relies on a trove of sloppily redacted records kept for nearly 30 years by Tallahassee paralegal Bonnie Stark, who Fieseler credits as the first Johns Committee scholar for her master's thesis, " McCarthyism in Florida."
It offers the most comprehensive narrative to date on the Johns Committee's work.
What they're saying: Neal's court victory "didn't just help William James Neal by restoring his teaching credentials," Fieseler told me.
"It helped to hamstring and shut down all of the anti-homosexual interrogations that the Johns Committee was performing outside of the bounds of law."
Neal didn't return to Florida, instead finishing out his teaching career in Maryland. He died in 2008, and his gravestone epitaph reads, "Beloved Friend," Fieseler wrote.
"And that's how I remember him," he told me, adding later that people like Neal give him hope.
"When I think about these figures and these histories … I feel patriotic, and I feel hopeful," he said. "I see the root and the lineage for how people resisting now can learn lessons from those who resisted and succeeded then."
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The Hill
12 minutes ago
- The Hill
Texas Democrats explain quorum breaking, Republicans demand arrests to force Trump-ordered redistricting vote
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Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Reading the tea leaves from cryptic Supreme Court orders can be perilous business because the justices are not bound by the questions they ask at oral argument, the offhand comments they make at a judicial conference, or even their monumental 'shadow docket' rulings on emergency petitions that have become all too common. But a technical briefing order in a long pending case out of Louisiana, posted on the Supreme Court's website after 5 p.m. on a Friday in August, was ominous. The order was likely intended to obscure that the court is ready to consider striking down the last remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, known as Section 2. 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In June of this year, rather than deciding the case it heard in March, the court issued an order in Callais setting the case for re-argument and stating that 'in due course, the Court will issue an order scheduling argument and specifying any additional questions to be addressed in supplemental briefing.' Justice Clarence Thomas impatiently dissented from the order, saying now was the time to recognize that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the court's racial gerrymandering case are on a collision course and to kill off Section 2 or rewrite it to be toothless. We waited weeks for the court to issue its rescheduling order and when it came this past Friday it was a doozy. The court pointed specifically to a set of pages in plaintiffs' brief which argue that Section 2 is unconstitutional, at least as applied in this case, and that the Voting Rights Act cannot serve as a compelling interest to defeat a racial gerrymandering claim when race predominates. 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Even if the court less drastically says that Section 2 could not be used to require the second congressional district in this case, such a superficially more minimal ruling would mean the quick unraveling of most Section 2 districts because if the facts in Louisiana don't justify drawing a second district, most other Section 2 claims would fail too. A ruling killing or crippling Section 2 would be in line with what we have come to expect from the Roberts Court. Back in 2013, the court struck down as unconstitutional the other main pillar of the Voting Rights Act, the one requiring that jurisdictions with a history of race discrimination in voting get federal approval before making changes in voting laws that could decrease minority voting power. When the court did that in Shelby County, holding that the formula for deciding which jurisdictions had to get preclearance was outdated, Chief Justice John Roberts left open the possibility that Congress could write a new formula, knowing full well that it wouldn't be able to write one that would satisfy both a majority in Congress and the Supreme Court. He further assured us that 'Our decision in no way affects the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting found in § 2.' And now, that second pillar could well fall too. Court conservatives likely thought teeing up the issue of overruling Section 2 on a hot summer weekend would avoid public notice. But that's a short term strategy. Come next June, any decision to strike down what's left of the Voting Rights Act could kick off the start of a new civil rights movement and more serious talk of Supreme Court reform in the midst of crucially important midterm elections. A court fundamentally hostile to the rights of voters places the court increasingly at odds with democracy itself. Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
42 minutes ago
- The Hill
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