ABSTRACT
In this essay I recall a revealing episode of the 1950s that sheds light on two campaigns of repression that significantly affected modern American life. In one, every level of government mobilized the entire society in a concerted effort to destroy the Communist Party. No event more vividly illustrates the ferocity of this campaign than the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953. In the other campaign, white supremacists used the power of state governments in the South to attack the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While the campaign against the Communist Party largely succeeded, that against the NAACP largely failed. The two overlapped on many occasions, one of which involved an effort by the State of Florida to damage the NAACP by investigating it, purportedly to determine whether the Miami branch of the organization had been infiltrated by Communists. Florida's harassment provoked protracted litigation that began in 1956 and ended in 1963 in a Supreme Court decision, Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. 1
