Selections from FBI files on political activists including Betty
Friedan, Abbie Hoffman, Martin Luther King, Aaron Swartz, and
Malcolm X. The FBI has always kept tabs on political activists.
During the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover, it was a Bureau-wide
obsession. Did you see that guy who didn't quite look like a
journalist, taking pictures at a demonstration? He was probably
FBI. Did you say something mildly subversive in a radio interview?
It went in your file. Did you attend a meeting of a left-leaning
organization? The attendee who didn't contribute but took copious
notes was possibly an informant. This third volume of selected FBI
files liberated by MuckRock documents the FBI's pursuit of
activists and dissenters ranging from Margaret Sanger to Malcolm X.
Despite the absence of evidence, Hoover suspected Communist
influence in every political protest. He grilled Martin Luther
King, Jr., about Communist sympathizers in the civil rights
movement (while offering reporters off-the-record hints about
King's extramarital affairs). The Bureau investigated the supposed
threat posed by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers but not
threats to them, even after the detonation of a bomb in their
office. The Bureau persevered: files on Holocaust survivor Hedy
Epstein cover six decades, from unfounded rumors of Communist
connections to her participation in a Black Lives Matter
demonstration. Recently, we hoped against hope that a former FBI
director would save us from our current political predicament.
These documents remind us of the FBI's troubling history. The
Activists Roger Nash Baldwin, Cesar Chavez, Hedy Epstein, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Betty Friedan, Thelma Glass, Fred Hampton, Abbie
Hoffman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk, Bayard Rustin,
Margaret Sanger, Aaron Swartz, John Trudell, Malcolm X, Howard Zinn
General
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