Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book

Title Activists under surveillance : the FBI files / edited by JPat Brown, B.C.D. Lipton, and Michael Morisy ; foreword by Jameel Jaffer
Published Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2019

Copies

Description 1 online resource (392 pages)
Contents Intro; Contents; Foreword; Notes on Selections for this Collection; Introduction from MuckRock; Guide to Exemptions; Glossary; 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
Summary 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
Notes Print version record
Subject United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation -- Records and correspondence
SUBJECT United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. fast (OCoLC)fst00528882
Subject Political activists -- United States -- Biography
Social reformers -- United States -- Biography
Governmental investigations -- United States -- History -- 20th century
Governmental investigations.
Political activists.
Social reformers.
United States.
Genre/Form Biographies.
History.
Records and correspondence.
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
Author Brown, J. Patrick, editor
Lipton, Beryl, editor
Morisy, Michael, editor
ISBN 9780262356381
0262356384