The FBI and Civil Rights

The FBI and Civil Rights
Author: Dale Anderson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2014-11-17
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1633559351

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a national agency dedicated to investigating federal crimes. Founded as a small team of special agents on July 26, 1908, the Bureau was first charged with enforcing the growing body of federal laws covering the United States as a whole. Almost from the beginning of its 100-year history, the Bureau has been the subject of legend and controversy. It has also evolved into a vast and sophisticated national law-enforcement agency. Whether as a federal crime-fighting force or a source of investigative support of local and state police forces, the modern FBI strives to embody its ideals of fidelity, bravery, and integrity. For many years, the FBI avoided civil rights cases, but escalating racial violence during the 1960s forced the Bureau to begin investigating these cases. Today, the Bureau works in three key civil rights areas-hate crimes against minority groups, abuse of power by public officials, and human trafficking. These types of cases pose many challenges to the FBI, but the Bureau today is committed to stopping people who would deny others their right to be treated with fairness and equality under the law.

A Spy in Canaan

A Spy in Canaan
Author: Marc Perrusquia
Publisher: Melville House
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612194400

Only Ernest Withers, a key figure in the civil rights movement, could have delivered such iconic photographs—and the kind of information the FBI wanted . . . Renowned photographer Ernest Withers captured some of the most stunning moments of the civil rights era—from the age-defining snapshot of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., riding one of the first integrated buses in Montegomery, to the haunting photo of Emmett Till’s great-uncle pointing an accusing finger at his nephew’s killers. He was trusted and beloved by King’s inner circle, and had a front row seat to history . . . but few people know that Withers was also an informant for the FBI. Memphis journalist Marc Perrusquia broke the story of Withers’s secret life after a long investigation culminating in a landmark lawsuit against the government to release hundreds of once-classified FBI documents. Those files confirmed that, from 1958 to 1976, Withers helped the Bureau monitor pillars of the movement including Dr. Martin Luther King and others, as well as dozens of civil rights foot soldiers. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assasination, A Spy in Canaan explores the life, complex motivations, and legacy of this fascinating figure Ernest Withers, as well as the dark shadow that era’s culture of surveillance has cast on our own time. Includes an 8-page, black-and-white photo insert.

The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Author: David J. Garrow
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1504011538

The author of Bearing the Cross, the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., exposes the government’s massive surveillance campaign against the civil rights leader When US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy authorized a wiretap of Martin Luther King Jr.’s phones by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he set in motion one of the most invasive surveillance operations in American history. Sparked by informant reports of King’s alleged involvement with communists, the FBI amassed a trove of information on the civil rights leader. Their findings failed to turn up any evidence of communist influence, but they did expose sensitive aspects of King’s personal life that the FBI went on to use in its attempts to mar his public image. Based on meticulous research into the agency’s surveillance records, historian David Garrow illustrates how the FBI followed King’s movements throughout the country, bugging his hotel rooms and tapping his phones wherever he went, in an obsessive quest to destroy his growing influence. Garrow uncovers the voyeurism and racism within J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI while unmasking Hoover’s personal desire to destroy King. The spying only intensified once King publicly denounced the Vietnam War, and the FBI continued to surveil him until his death. The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly demonstrates an unprecedented abuse of power by the FBI and the government as a whole.

The Promise of Patriarchy

The Promise of Patriarchy
Author: Ula Yvette Taylor
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2017-09-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469633949

The patriarchal structure of the Nation of Islam (NOI) promised black women the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization's men, who were fiercely committed to these masculine roles. Black women's experience in the NOI, however, has largely remained on the periphery of scholarship. Here, Ula Taylor documents their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. Taylor shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments. Telling the stories of women like Clara Poole (wife of Elijah Muhammad) and Burnsteen Sharrieff (secretary to W. D. Fard, founder of the Allah Temple of Islam), Taylor offers a compelling narrative that explains how their decision to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America.

A More Beautiful and Terrible History

A More Beautiful and Terrible History
Author: Jeanne Theoharis
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0807075876

Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction

Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers

Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers
Author: Preston Lauterbach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393247937

The little-known story of an iconic photographer, whose work captured—and influenced—a critical moment in American history. Who was Ernest Withers? Most Americans may not know the name, but they do know his photographs. Withers took some of the most legendary images of the 1950s and ’60s: Martin Luther King, Jr., riding a newly integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama; Emmett Till’s uncle pointing an accusatory finger across the courtroom at one of his nephew’s killers; scores of African-American protestors, carrying a forest of signs reading "I am a man." But while he enjoyed unparalleled access to the inner workings of the civil rights movement, Withers was working as an informant for the FBI. In this gripping narrative history, Preston Lauterbach examines the complicated political and economic forces that informed Withers’s seeming betrayal of the people he photographed. Withers traversed disparate worlds, from Black Power meetings to raucous Memphis nightclubs where Elvis brushed shoulders with B.B. King. He had a gift for capturing both dramatic historic moments and intimate emotional ones, and it may have been this attention to nuance that made Withers both a brilliant photographer and an essential asset to the FBI. Written with similar nuance, Bluff City culminates with a riveting account of the 1968 riot that ended in violence just a few days before Dr. King’s death. Brimming with new information and featuring previously unpublished and rare photographs from the Withers archive not seen in over fifty years, Bluff City grapples with the legacy of a man whose actions—and artistry—make him an enigmatic and fascinating American figure.

Activists Under Surveillance

Activists Under Surveillance
Author: Jpat Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262517892

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

Activists Under Surveillance

Activists Under Surveillance
Author: Jpat Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262356392

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

FBI's Civil Rights Program

FBI's Civil Rights Program
Author: Barry Leonard
Publisher:
Total Pages: 12
Release: 2009-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781437908640

The Fed. Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the primary fed. agency responsible for investigating all allegations regarding violations of fed. civil rights statutes. These laws are designed to protect the civil rights of all persons, citizens and non-citizens alike, within U.S. territory. The mission of the FBI¿s Civil Rights Program is to enforce fed. civil rights statues and to ensure that the protected civil rights of all persons in the U.S. are not abridged. To address these concerns effectively, the program has been divided into four sub-programs. In order of priority, these are: Hate Crimes, Color of Law, Human Trafficking, and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. This document describes each of these sub-programs. Illustrations.

FBI Surveillance of Mexicans and Chicanos, 1920-1980

FBI Surveillance of Mexicans and Chicanos, 1920-1980
Author: José Angel Gutiérrez
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2020-09-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1793615810

A multi-chapter book, first of its kind, that identifies, describes, and analyzes FBI documents revealing the hidden history of surveillance of Mexicans and Chicanos in the United States of America.