{"id":7235,"date":"2021-01-12T15:05:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T15:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=149004"},"modified":"2021-01-12T15:05:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T15:05:53","slug":"by-any-means-necessary-the-fbi-vs-civil-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/12\/by-any-means-necessary-the-fbi-vs-civil-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"By Any Means Necessary: The FBI vs. Civil Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director for nearly half a century, J. Edgar Hoover, had a carefully groomed<\/a> image, cultivated by fawning pop culture and news reporting. The agency and its employees were seen as crime fighters busting the mob and Cold Warriors investigating \u201ccommies.\u201d But MLK\/FBI<\/a><\/em>, a new documentary by director Sam Pollard, exposes the sinister role that Hoover and his G-Men played as foot soldiers in another holy war: opposing the struggle for Black equality.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

MLK\/FBI<\/em> is based on David J. Garrow\u2019s 1981 book, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From \u2018Solo\u2019 to Memphis<\/em>, as well as documents recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n

Pollard\u2019s 104-minute film chronicles Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s rise on the national scene, threatening to become what Hoover feared would be a \u201cBlack Messiah\u201d\u2014a charismatic leader who\u2019d galvanize Black Americans in their liberation struggle\u2014and the Bureau\u2019s nefarious scheme to undermine him.<\/p>\n

Following the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his renowned \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, William C. Sullivan, the FBI\u2019s domestic intelligence head, wrote a memo<\/a> asserting, \u201cWe must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

MLK\/FBI<\/em> painstakingly reveals the surveillance by the Bureau\u2019s \u201cBig Brothers\u201d via wiretapping the home and office phones of King and other civil rights organizers, bugs surreptitiously placed in King\u2019s hotel rooms, and the use of paid informants, including a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffer and longtime movement photographer.<\/p>\n

According to the documentary, this carefully coordinated clandestine campaign of snooping aimed to cull damaging insider information that could be used to discredit\u2014and even destroy\u2014King and his cause. The first source of alarm, as far as U.S. secret police go, is King\u2019s ongoing relationship with attorney Stanley Levison, a trusted adviser whom author David Garrow, one of the film\u2019s interviewees, calls \u201can unsung hero\u201d of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

The FBI uncovers evidence that Levison has communist ties, about which Hoover informs President John F. Kennedy. During a subsequent White House visit, Kennedy privately urges King to break  ties with Levison; King agrees to cease communicating with him. But FBI eavesdropping discovers that King continues to stay in touch with the suspected communist, which enrages Hoover.<\/p>\n

The relationship between the Black liberation struggle and communism is a leitmotif of MLK\/FBI<\/em>. In one clip, King is seen on a national TV news program responding to a question from Dan Rather, saying \u201cIt is amazing so few Negroes have turned to communism in light of their oppression\u201d in the segregated United States.     <\/p>\n

In addition to numerous sexual liaisons allegedly recorded by the G-Men\u2019s spying, King was also purportedly an accessory to a coerced sexual act he observed but didn\u2019t attempt to stop. Having been unsuccessful in toppling King with redbaiting, Hoover\u2014who dubbed<\/a> King \u201cthe most notorious liar in the country\u201d\u2014plots to cause the married clergyman\u2019s downfall by exposing sordid details of his personal life.<\/p>\n

Despite these machinations against him, King persisted in fighting the good fight. This confounded Hoover, who was unable to find any mass media outlets willing to release the dirt the Bureau claimed to have dug up.  <\/p>\n

\n

MLK\/FBI<\/em> consists of black-and-white and color archival material and news clips from historic moments of the epoch, ranging from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Bull Connor\u2019s police dogs and firehoses in Birmingham to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond.<\/p>\n

These scenes are intercut with Hollywood agitprop ballyhooing FBI prowess, such as 1951\u2019s I Was a Communist for the FBI<\/em>, and celluloid stereotypes of Blacks. This imagery is often accompanied by original commentary and interviews by subjects speaking offscreen and heard in voiceover. They include King associates Andrew Young and former FBI Director James Comey.  Watching these historical frames unspool before one\u2019s eyes is edifying, especially in light of today\u2019s racial reckoning.<\/p>\n

Pollard is a gifted filmmaker whose extensive credits include directing episodes of the 1990\u2019s Oscar-nominated series Eyes on the Prize and 2017\u2019s Sammy Davis, Jr.: I\u2019ve Gotta Be Me<\/em>. In MLK\/FBI<\/em>, Pollard has created a case study of COINTELPRO\u2014the U.S. government surveillance of dissenters. A shrewd political observer, Pollard doesn\u2019t let Presidents Kennedy and Johnson off the hook for the roles they played in the surveillance of  King.<\/p>\n

Although presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy is remembered for his compassionate, extemporaneous speech in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968 following King\u2019s murder, MLK\/FBI<\/em> notes Kennedy\u2019s part, as U.S. Attorney General, in authorizing Hoover\u2019s eavesdropping. As Garrow puts it, \u201cThe FBI was not a renegade agency. It was fundamentally a part of the existing mainstream political order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Significantly, at the documentary\u2019s end, King confidant Clarence Jones wisely sums up what may be MLK\/FBI<\/em>\u2019s main conclusion: That King\u2019s purported trespasses in private life don\u2019t diminish what he achieved in public as a world historical leader who changed the United States.   <\/p>\n

MLK\/FBI \u200bopens in select theaters such as the Cinelounge in Hollywood and on demand January 15 (the ninety-second anniversary of King\u2019s birth).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director for nearly half a century, J. Edgar Hoover, had a carefully groomed image, cultivated by fawning pop culture and news\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7236,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7235\/revisions\/7236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}