![]() ![]() “I’m hoping that a new generation of researchers will learn new lessons for how to outmaneuver these attempts.” ‘A double evil’ “We can only imagine the extent to which the current administration, and the current FBI, is working to discredit, disrupt, and destroy Black Lives Matter and other movements. reveal and confirm the kind of root investment in anti-Blackness and quelling dissent that has long been part of our government structure,” says Leigh Raiford, a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley. Today, the materials provide not only a window into the FBI’s past abuse, but also an unplanned guide for the Black activists demanding racial justice again, now 50 years later. In May, just before the movement for Black lives cascaded over the planet, the Library acquired a digital database of FBI records on the surveillance of African Americans throughout the 20th century, expanding the trove of federal records the Library has assembled over the years. Now, the UC Berkeley Library is working to put those pieces together. The objective, according to an FBI memo: to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the radical fight for Black rights - and Black power.ĭetails of that sabotage plaster internal FBI records, with thousands of pages scattered across a medley of databases. ![]() (The Bancroft Library, San Francisco Call Bulletin Collection, BANC PIC 1959.010-NEG, Part 3, Box 201, ) Malcolm X was one of many activists targeted by the FBI. In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed a covert surveillance operation targeting “subversive” civil rights groups and Black leaders, including the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and many others. The status quo - hallowed by hate, sanctioned by Jim Crow - was beginning to crack.īehind the scenes, Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation was keeping watch. ![]()
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