Florida SB 338: Sampling of Beach Waters and Public Bathing Spaces

Bill Text

338 
Injustices Against the Targets of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee 
2025-11-04T03:19:14Z 
Acknowledging the injustices perpetrated against the targets of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee between 1956 and 1965 and offering a formal and heartfelt apology to those whose lives, well-being, and livelihoods were damaged or destroyed by the activities and public pronouncements of those who served on the committee, etc. 
Original Filed Version 
2026 
S 
SCR 
Concurrent Resolution 
__ 

 Florida Senate - 2026 SCR 338 

 By Senator Smith 

 17-00361-26 2026338__ 
 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 a special session of the Florida 
 11 Legislature in July 1956, the act establishing the Florida 
 12 Legislative Investigation Committee 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 committee held its first 
 20 public hearing, questioning Virgil Hawkins, an African-American 
 21 man who had been seeking admission to the University of Florida 
 22 College of Law since 1949, as well as National Association for 
 23 the 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 of its records, including membership lists, and 
 29 claiming that the branch had been infiltrated by current and 
 30 former communists, and 
 31 WHEREAS, during 1957 and 1958, the committee devoted itself 
 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 committee’s 
 36 chief investigator began an inquiry into alleged homosexual 
 37 activity by faculty, staff, and students at the University of 
 38 Florida in Gainesville; allowed officers of the University of 
 39 Florida 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 University of Florida 
 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 the University of Florida, 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 that those 
 52 students were in turn becoming teachers in Florida’s public 
 53 school system 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 State 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 and liberal teaching 
 62 methods, curricula, and policies at the University of South 
 63 Florida in Tampa, and 
 64 WHEREAS, the committee investigator and attorney, together 
 65 with local law enforcement, questioned University of South 
 66 Florida faculty, staff, and students in a motel room without 
 67 appropriate legal counsel and gathered information about the 
 68 allegedly anti-Christian, pro-integration, and pro-communist 
 69 slant of reading assignments, classroom lectures, and invited 
 70 campus speakers, and 
 71 WHEREAS, the committee held public hearings to question the 
 72 University of South Florida faculty and administrators about the 
 73 content of their courses and policies related to hiri