Many Black Community Leaders suggest that we should all have a better understanding of Black History. They suggest that many Conservatives could benefit from this as well. I couldn’t agree more.
Conservatives today need look no further than the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s reach into the Civil Rights Movement to find parallels today.
Young people looking to join protest groups such as BLM, Occupy, Anonymous, and the Minneapolis Terror Network formerly Known as Anti Racist Network, might also take a deeper look at the rich history that the FBI and CIA had within the Civil Rights Movement.
The FBI‘s “COINTELPRO” program targeted civil rights groups, including the CORE, for infiltration, discreditation and disruption.[27] In August 1967, the FBI instructed its program “COINTELPRO” to “neutralize” what the FBI called “black nationalist hate groups” and other dissident groups.[28]
Intended effects
The intended effect of the FBI’s COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups that the FBI officials believed were “subversive”[55] by instructing FBI field operatives to:[56]
- Create a negative public image for target groups (for example through surveilling activists and then releasing negative personal information to the public)
- Break down internal organization by creating conflicts (for example, by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters to try to create conflicts)
- Create dissension between groups (for example, by spreading rumors that other groups were stealing money)
- Restrict access to public resources (for example, by pressuring non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support)
- Restrict the ability to organize protest (for example, through agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests)
- Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities (for example, by character assassinations, false arrests, surveillance)
Freedom Rides 1961
In Birmingham, Alabama, an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor gave Ku Klux Klan members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police “protect” them. The riders were severely beaten “until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them.” James Peck, a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.[99]
The CIA denied any involvement.
Freedom Summer, 1964
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared: James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer’s apprentice; and two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student; and Michael Schwerner, a CORE organizer from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of the members of the Neshoba County sheriff’s department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The CIA denied any involvement.
Avoiding the “Communist” label
In order to secure a place in the political mainstream and gain the broadest base of support, the new generation of civil rights activists believed that it had to openly distance itself from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to Ella Baker, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference added the word “Christian” to its name in order to deter charges that it was associated with Communism.[234] Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and it kept civil rights activists under close surveillance and labeled some of them “Communist” or “subversive”, a practice that continued during the Civil Rights Movement. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the civil rights movement from “Reds” was challenged by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation from anyone who supported the SNCC’s political program and was willing to “put their body on the line, regardless of political affiliation.” At times the SNCC’s policy of political openness put it at odds with the NAACP.[233]
The CIA denied any involvement.
Robert F. Williams and the debate on nonviolence, 1959–1964
Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by Ella Baker and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.[279] Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC’s Amzie Moore,[279] Hartman Turnbow,[280] and Fannie Lou Hamer[281] all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show Radio Free Dixie throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy.
The CIA denied any involvement.
Kennedy administration, 1961–1963
Robert Kennedy’s relationship with the movement was not always positive. As attorney general, he was called to account by activists—who booed him at a June 1963 speech—for the Justice Department’s own poor record of hiring blacks.[286] He also presided over FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program. This program ordered FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of Communist front groups, a category in which the paranoid Hoover included most civil rights organizations.[291][292] Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.[293] According to Tim Weiner, “RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted.” Although Kennedy only gave approval for limited wiretapping of King’s phones “on a trial basis, for a month or so.” Hoover extended the clearance so his men were “unshackled” to look for evidence in any areas of the black leader’s life they deemed important; they then used this information to harass King.[294] Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on James Baldwin after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.[295][296]
The CIA denied any involvement.
