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Page 8 News Street Roots • March 4-10, 2016 ! Street Roots • March 4-10, 2016 "The FBI was deeply inter ested in At:rl- can-JImerlcan writing at a Black authors, blacklisted The extent o f J. Edgar Hoover's spying on black writers may surprise you, explains the author o f ‘F.B. Eyes' BY ROBIN LINDLEY CLAUDE »KAY W writers. It’s no secret that under director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI intensely monitored and disrupted African-American civil rights campaigns and militant groups in the 1950s and 1960s. The bureau’s hounding of Martin Luther King Jr. is legendary, with its tracking of his movements, wiretaps of his phones and electronic surveillance of his rooms, as well as an active program to discredit and undermine him and his associates. What may surprise and infuriate many is the extent of FBI surveillance of African- American literary figures, both acclaimed and obscure, during the course of Hoover’s J. Edgar Hoover led the F B I for nearly 50 years and worked for eight different presidents. entire career with the agency, from 1919 to his death in 1972. During this time, bureau “ghostreaders” closely examined all forms to collect the entire set of FBI files. of black American literary output, William J. Maxwell: It began with the ostensibly to anticipate political unrest. R.L: J. Edgar Hoover started at the FBI in acquisition of a handful of files for my first Maxwell details the intricate and lurid 1919, about the time Claude McKay became book, “New Negro, Old Left,” oil African- story of the FBI spying on black American the first major African-American writer American writers and communism in the authors in his book “F.B. Eyes: How J. targeted for surveillance. Was this program of 1920s and ’30s. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed surveillance Hoover’s idea? . The file that most caught my interest was African American Literature.” on poet Claude McKay. He was one of the Maxwell reviewed and analyzed almost WJ.M.: The program probably would founding figures of the Harlem Renaissance 14,000 pages of FBI documents on 51 and arguably its first p oet He wrote militant have existed without him. Early on, there writers, including Harlem Renaissance was not a thrust directed against black yet formally pristine sonnets, the most pioneer Claude McKay; poet Langston writers per se. McKay and his work was tied famous of which is “If We Must Die,” a call Hughes; the iconic novelists Richard Wright, to black resistance in the face of race rioting to the race riots of the so-called Red Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin; and Summer of 1919. As the head of the FBI’s in 1919. playwright Lorraine Hansberry. He also new Radical Division, the 20-something What startled me about the file was its explored how FBI ghostreaders came to Hoover was asked to investigate these riots. early date. The FBI was compiling influence the creation and reception of It was the intersection of African- information on a leading African-American African-American literature. American writing with postwar black poet as early as 1921. And the file exposed Maxwell has created a website (bit.ly/ radicalism, then, that gets the FBI accurate information about McKay that fbiblackwriters) that contains the thousands interested in reading black writers — not many critics and historians have been of pages he reviewed, called the “F.B. Eyes only McKay, but also like-minded poets reluctant to look at. Much of the file Digital Archive: FBI Files on African including Andy Razaf (later the lyricist of concerns McKay’s trip to the Soviet Union American Authors and Literary Institutions the songs “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Black for a meeting of the Comintern (Communist Obtained through the U.S. Freedom of and Blue”), Archibald Grimke and the International, a group that advocated for the Information Act.” better-remembered Langston Hughes. spread of communisim). And the file Maxwell, professor of English and African- Hoover, too, had a general interest in exposed the seriousness of McKay’s American studies at Washington University African-American life based on proximity. interest in communism and his eager in St. Louis, is also the author of “New He grew up in Washington, D.C., at the turn participation in the world communist Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing of the 20th century, when the city was movement — something that most academic and Communism between the Wars” and the actively segregating itself. Hoover was a critics had done their best to forget. editor of Claude McKay’s “Complete young man who watched segregation in So the first FBI file I consulted on an Poems.” African-American author revealed surprising housing, employment and social life being Maxwell discussed his book and his built all around him. Later, this experience things not only about the FBI interest in research by telephone from his office in African-American writers but also about that was likely intensified for him by rumors that S t Louis. his own family was not segregated enough, writer himself. It was the years after 9/11 from the perspective of white racism. He and the USA Patriot Act, however, with the Robin Lindley: How did you come to probably heard that his family tree unignorable return of state surveillance to undertake this sweeping study of FBI contained African-American relatives. everyday American life that made me want surveillance of African-American writers? think — what the sexual facet of that relationship was, but it was accompanied by intense gossip about Hoover’s homosexuality. It was also accompanied by the FBI’s public anti-gay strikes, which came to a head during the early Cold War. There thus may be a pattern of intimacy and distaste in the realm of sex as well as in the realm of race for Hoover. of Paul Robeson, the singer, actor and globetrotting black radical. From the 1920s on, then, the FBI was quite involved in the monitoring of African-American (writers’) travel abroad. R.L: How closely in your time period, 1919 through 1972, was Hoover monitoring the program on black writers? WJ.M.: Yes, as early as the 1920s, Du Bois was publicly saying, “It’s nice the Justice Department is finally paying attention to us. Too bad it’s not thinking about lynching.” WJ.M.: One point I make in the book is that the FBI was deeply interested in African- American writing at a time when most white I H y A w SI w PSL cultural institutions didn’t even know there j t was a renaissance in Harlem. * Hoover was at least bureaucratically on top ■ of the FBI’s C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R riter William J. Maxwell discovered that over the course of half a century, the FBI targeted the works and lives of more than 50 black News F.B.I HK scrutinizing of black writing. He got all the |ggK paperwork. But at H H various moments, as in the 1960s when he H | discovered James j j ||||g Baldwin’s work, he was personally and ' ,l-’1 * intensely interested H e worried about Baldwin’s “perversion” of American literature and scribbled this in his distinctive blue ink on one FBI document. 1 w njo y VAI »ÄS Hoover’s famous distaste for African Americans may have stemmed in part from a sense of unwanted kinship. R.L: I hadn’t heard these rumors of Hoover’s mixed-race background. z IAMES BALDWIN F.B.I. WJ.M.: In some versions, these rumors are ugly and scurrilous, as if to be black is to be tainted in some way. But there is at least one reputable genealogist, George Ott of Salt Lake City — thanks to the Mormons, a world capital of genealogy — who established that a branch of Hoover’s family held slaves in Pike County, Miss. There were very few racially pure people on mid-19th-century American plantations, of course. R.L: So Hoover’s obsession with black writers and other African Americans may be explained in part by his possibly being mixed race? WJ.M.: Yes, possibly. At least that’s the core of one rumor that troubled him. Better known is the accurate rumor that his emotional life was centered on a man, Clyde Tolson, who was second in command at the bureau. They dined daily and vacationed together for decades and effectively lived like husband and husband, with Tolson receiving the widow’s seat at Hoover’s funeral. I don’t know — no one does, I don’t R.L: Readt rs may also be surprised by the use of informants in targeting black writers and by publishing-industry folks who gave the FBI advance copies of the works of these writers before they were public. ; i I I ^ ngstow / /P / HUGHES WJ.M.: Yes. By the 1950s, the glory years of the Cold War, there were informants at least sympathetic to the FBI inside many major New York publishers. That didn’t mean there was outright censorship of a Soviet kind, but the FBI could slow down or punish the publication of some of the first critical work on FBI history. R.L: And the FBI made life difficult, too, for many African- American writers. They prevented people f rom federal jobs and even interfered with travel. J F.B.I WJ.M.: Yes. One of the ironic things I ■■ discuss in the book is I that the FBI was alert I to the international I range and importance of I African-American writing I earlier than most | academics were. The FBI helped to seize W.E.B. Du Bois’ passport, (and) they were involved in the ■ f withdrawal of the passport H I R.L: And several of these writers were aware of the FBI surveillance, and they responded directly to the FBI monitoring? R.L: The FBI and Hoover had a special interest in the complex writer James Baldwin? WJ.M.: He indeed was a complex thinker and, in the present, an increasingly important one for the young generation of black activists. He’s very often quoted in Black Lives Matter arguments, and Ta-Nehisi Coates (author of the National Book Award winner “Between the World and Me”) has of course been knighted as Baldwin’s official successor by Toni Morrison. Baldwin is thus very present now, and I think that has to do with his combined eloquence and pessimism about American race relations, and his ability to see American race relations through an international lens. Baldwin was also a bravely open gay man writing about the sexual nexus within American racism, and this strikes a chord with DeRay McKesson (a 30-year-old black activist visible today on social media) and other leaders of the young generation of activists. As his file shows, Baldwin is also their close predecessor in being tracked by national intelligence agencies. R.L: Did Baldwin’s sexuality affect Hoover’s obsession with his work? WJ.M.: Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, one of the most forthright Hoover additions to the James Baldwin file is Hoover’s scribbling on the side of a document: “Isn’t he a well-known pervert?” I’m not the first to notice that this question is somewhat ironic given Hoover’s emotional life. Hoover thought he should be discreet about his affections, and Baldwin, an incessant articulator of experience, was not discreet in any way, which made for a lot of suffering in his own day. ' The Baldwin file seems to be the longest single file that the FBI compiled on a black writer, and that reflects not only its interest in his sexual life but also the fact that Baldwin was directly and sometimes heroically involved in the civil rights struggle. He, in fact, maintained a sympathetic but distant relationship to the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, who counted on him for his public advocacy but also didn’t embrace the style of masculinity he presented. It was a complicated relationship. But the FBI saw it as all one and the same, and (it) imagined Baldwin as the most dangerous nationalist writer of that period. R.L: Were any of these authors under the same intense FBI scrutiny as Dr. King, with his rooms bugged and phones tapped? Page 9 WJ.M.: Yes, in a few cases in the ’60s and ’70s. Baldwin’s phone was definitely tapped, and he believed he was tapped, which is just as important if you’re interested in the history of his a rt I don’t know if Richard Wright ever thought his phone was tapped, but he understood that he was being read constantly. There were agents who did street-level surveillance of Lorraine Hansberry. They recorded when she had her haircuts. Once in her file they note that she had shifted to an “Italian-cut” style. Now that’s dose observation. But the FBI’s interference with King was finally above and beyond. I didn’t find evidence of attempts to blackmail literary people with their indiscretions, as the FBI did with King and some other political figures. The word in Washington held that Hoover had files on everyone in the Capitol, on anyone in the city’s public life — pretty much any extramarital affair or so-called deviant form of sexuality would be recorded there. R.L: Is there anything you’d like to add? WJ.M.: I think there is probably more out there. The book is a first stab. Readers can go to the files available at the “F.B. Eyes Archive” and do their own research there. One thing I’d like to suggest to people interested in history, and literary history in particular, is to write away for the FBI file on the person you are interested in, These files are absorbing and surprisingly revealing documents even, or especially, when they are inaccurate. There’s a funny way in which the FBI — a great keeper of secrets — is also the researcher’s best friend. It’s surprising how helpful these files can be. For years, it was difficult to get these files released without large redactions, but it’s less hard now. I don’t think the FBI is particularly worried about its Cold War history any longer, and I don’t believe it’s consciously censoring these files beyond legally permitted deletions for security and privacy, etc. R.L: So the FBI files were quite accessible? WJ.M.: Yes. Some files are excerpted or partially “blacked out” for reasons of national security or for keeping the names of private citizens private. But it’s easier to extract many files than you might think. I had good relations with the FBI records department when I asked for documents, and I think that historians should give the bureau the chance to do the right thing. This piece is excerpted from a longer interview on the History News Network at historynewsnetwork. org/article/160253. Reprinted from Street Roots sister paper Real Change, Seattle. Robin Lindley is a Seattle-based writer and attorney and the features editor o f the History News Network. He also has a special appreciation for Maxwell’s research. In the late 70s, Lindley reviewed thousands of F B I documents as a staff attorney with the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations. Contact him at robinlindley@ gmail.com.
