GLR September-October 2025

“visit” began a decade of transatlantic shuttling back and forth to the U.S. He admitted: “I think I must reconcile myself to being a transatlantic commuter—and turn to my advantage, and not impossibly the advantage of others, the fact that I am a stranger everywhere.” Boggs himself enters the story here, outlining his search for Yoran Cazac to help him in bringing back into print Baldwin’s Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood , which Cazac il lustrated. According to the artist, this “child’s story for adults” was for Baldwin “self-analysis, like a Fellini movie. He was working on himself.” Baldwin settled into what would become his final home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France in 1970, writing what was to be his last novel there. In discussing this story of a Black gay gospel singer, Baldwin remarked: “What I’ve really been feeling is that I’ve come full circle. From Go Tell It on The Mountain to Just Above My Head sums up something of my ex perience—it is difficult to articulate—that sets me free to go someplace else.” Still at work on a play set in a home like his own, The Welcome Table , Baldwin died in 1987. Among the family and friends surrounding him was Happersberger, “the one true love story of my life.”

Baldwin: A Love Story is enriched by Boggs’ access to the Schomburg’s Baldwin papers. The author’s previously unavail able letters reveal “how essential the epistolary form was for his self-interrogation.” Poet and University of Georgia profes sor Ed Pavli ć , who was given partial access to them in 2010, has said: “The private record, for me, just amplifies and con firms and makes more dramatic the public messages he was out to convey.” Boggs still had to rely on Pavli ć ’s brief quotes and glosses of Baldwin’s letters to his brother David, however. While some correspondence is available in other archives, the letters to David Baldwin, Delaney, Happersberger, and lifelong friend and economist Mary Painter remain under a Baldwin es tate-established twenty-year seal at the Schomburg. Baldwin: A Love Story is a vivid journey into Baldwin’s often difficult private world. Boggs luxuriates in well-chosen details but doesn’t overwhelm the reader with unnecessary minutia. Even the inclusion of a Turkish recipe for bathtub vodka doesn’t feel excessive, as it highlights the type of revelry that occurred during Baldwin’s time in Istanbul. Rewarding and smoothly written, Baldwin: A Love Story recalibrates our understanding of this important writer. It may prove to be the definitive biography of one of the literary giants of the 20th century.

Prehistory of the War on Woke

T HE CURRENT “War on Woke” is nothing new in Florida. Al though many point to Anita Bryant’s 1977 “Save Our Chil dren” campaign as its forerunner, the state’s attacks on the LGBT community began two decades earlier with the Florida Leg islative Investigation Committee, popularly known as the “Johns Committee.” Active from 1956 to 1965 and initially headed by

of Florida state legislators, as Fieseler notes, most of the work was done by the commit tee’s investigators, who worked with a ruth less disregard for investigatory standards and the legal rights of witnesses. At first, the committee focused on ho mosexual activities at the state’s major uni versities. Students suspected of being homosexual, both men and women, were re moved from their college classrooms, taken

F RED F EJES

AMERICAN SCARE Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives by Robert W. Fieseler Du tt on. 496 pages, $34.

Charley E. Johns, a conservative “pork-chop” state senator from North Florida, the committee originally fought efforts at school integration by attempting to show that the civil rights move ment was full of Communists. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately denied the committee access to the member ship records of the state’s NAACP . Frustrated, in 1958 the com mittee turned toward investigating the presence of homosexuals in state universities and public schools. Like Communists, ho mosexuals were seen during that era of the “Lavender Scare” as a threat to “the American way of life.” The activity of the Johns Committee in Florida’s schools and universities is an important part of the state’s queer history and has produced a wide range of studies, both academic and popu lar. Robert W. Fieseler’s new account, American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives , both draws upon this work and adds important new dimensions and facts. In par ticular, he goes into greater depth about how the initial investi gation into civil rights activities formed the context for the investigations into homosexuals. While the committee consisted Fred Fejes is director of the South Florida Queer History Project. 32

to off-campus motel rooms, and interrogated by the committee’s investigators. Sometimes the interrogations lasted up to ten hours. Those interrogated were not allowed lawyers or informed of their rights. College administrators cooperated with the committee, threatening to expel students who would not give names. Then-Governor Farris Bryant commended the committee’s work for bringing the threat of homosexuals before the Florida public. In 1961, he directed the Florida Children’s Commission to work with the Johns Committee by focusing on public schools. Over the next two years, sixteen public meetings were held across the state. Those attending heard about how to rec ognize a homosexual and the danger they supposedly posed to school-age children. By 1963, the Johns Committee could boast of having caused the firing of 39 university professors and deans, as well as the revoking of teaching certificates for 71 public school teachers, all suspected or admitted homosexuals. Scores of students were interrogated and subsequently expelled from public colleges across the state. The state legislature saw this work as important and in 1963 renewed the committee’s life for two more years and doubled its budget. More importantly, the committee’s staff began working

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