The Florida Legislature's Response to the Charlie Johns Pamphlet

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The pamphlet also includes a handy glossary of homosexual terms and deviate acts. Florida's citizens are warned about such things as pigmalionism, which apparently is having a thing for statues. The state attorney in Dade County said the pamphlet itself was a threat to school kids in his county. Charlie Johns left the Senate entirely after the pamphlet came out.

Long before Governor Ron DeSantis declared a new war on wokeness, Florida lawmakers in the 1950s and 60s tried going after the NAACP, suspected communists and gay people in Florida schools and universities. The lawmakers upended life for countless numbers of their fellow Floridians before being upended themselves by their own zeal for the cause. Now that DeSantis is bringing this playbook to a presidential campaign, Rachel Maddow and Isaac-Davy Aronson ask what we can learn from the last time Florida went down this path.

Featuring guests:

Stacy Braukman, author of Communists and Perverts Under the Palms: The Johns Committee in Florida, 1956-1965

Shevrin Jones, Florida State Senator

Robert Buccellatto, historian and co-host of the Florida History Podcast