The Civil Rights Movement
In actuality, the fight for civil rights and equality dates back to the years immediately following the Civil War. This period of time, known as Reconstruction (1865 - 1877) initiated a new age in which laws publicized the inferiority of Africans through racial segregation. The struggles of African Americans were expressed through freedom fighters like Frederick Douglass and fierce abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison. Yet, the deep-seated animosity of the white population ultimately drowned their voices. African Americans endured hardship for many decades; yet, their social standing improved incrementally as legislation and government action sought to achieve the betterment of all citizens. The overruling of the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which legalized segregation in public transportation and caused tensions among whites and African Americans to escalate, was a major turning point during the 1950s and 60s, which spurred the strengthening of African American organizations like the Civil Rights Movement (CRM).1
The landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) destroyed the foundation upon which legalized (de jure) segregation had been built for the past 60 years.2 The ruling came after a black farmer, Oliver Brown, sent his daughter to an all-white school, which was closer to their home than the all-black school she was required to attend. The outrage of the public propelled the case to the Supreme Court, where legalized segregation was ultimately deemed unconstitutional as it violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.3 This groundbreaking ruling gave the Civil Rights Movement fuel, rallying African Americans and strengthening their fight for freedom. The non-violence movement blossomed soon after, with Martin Luther King Jr.
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at the forefront. Under his leadership and partnership with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Movement conducted boycotts and sit-ins as they campaigned peacefully and patiently for their rights. Yet, some African Americans saw that these tactics were not garnering results4; thus, they took on new ideologies and branched out of the Civil Rights movement. But because of the evolving nature and politics that dominated the FBI, the Civil Rights Movement and other, more radical parties became the immediate focus during the 1960s.
The Beginnings of Hoover’s FBI and CoIntelPro
Contrary to its initial purpose of covertly investigating financial and economic misconduct, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) abandoned its Progressive Era values and adopted illicit tactics to maintain order. It began in 1908, when President Theodore Roosevelt called for an elite detective agency that would aid the Justice Department in “the detection and prosecution of federal crimes.”5 Roosevelt, a champion of progressive ideals, was relentless in bringing capitalistic corruption to its knees.
Throughout its early years, the FBI investigated robber barons and other businessmen who shared stakes in large, commercial monopolies, and even extended their work to protect African American Rights. Yet, paranoia and fear ultimately overtook the Bureau, as illegal measures like wiretapping, forgery, and murder were soon implemented to preserve the safety of the American public. J. Edgar Hoover’s appointment as director in 1924 signaled a loss of integrity within the FBI that continued until his death in 1972.6
From the start, Hoover demonstrated a strict belief in white supremacy, engaging in anti-black counterintelligence operations far before the 1960’s civil rights movements. Following World War I, he created white vigilante formations to keep blacks in their
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place by “whatever repressive means were available.”7 He held onto extreme personal biases towards select minorities and groups, and used his ruthless grip on the FBI to weed out those he saw as “undesirables” of society. He personally hired agents and subjected them to intense screening processes to ascertain whether they too shared his prejudices.8 Those who disagreed with his views were either never hired or promptly fired, as they would only impede Hoover’s well-oiled organization. Indeed, the strength of his convictions regarding white supremacy meshed well with those of influential white elitists who felt that African Americans be rightfully subjected to a subordinate social and economic position.9 Any sort of activity that might alter the “correct” hierarchy in American social life was a threat in Hoover’s eyes.10 He surrounded himself with an agency of like-minded men, from 441 agents at the outset, to 4,886 in 1944, to nearly 8,000 at the time of his death, to do his bidding in eradicating any perceived threats.11
Ultimately, Hoover’s Bureau set the stage for the level of paranoia that led to drastic measures against subversives.
The Counter Intelligence Program, or CoIntelPro, demonstrated the fear of Communism and also the desperate and illegal measures that the United States took to ensure the annihilation of organized dissent. As the politically charged atmosphere of the Cold War overwhelmed America, Hoover created the CoIntelPro program on August 28th, 1956, with the initial intent of surveillance on the Communist Party in the US; it was expanded in March 1960, and again in October 1963 to include groups considered “subversive.”12 In CoIntelPro, the Bureau’s “communications, logistics and internal procedures were worked out and agents perfected the skills necessary to conducting a quietly comprehensive program of domestic repression.”13 In other words, all aspects of
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the FBI were organized and special agents were trained in effectively carrying out these covert operations. From the outset, CoIntelPro focused on creating factions between parties, effectively breaking up groups from the inside. An example is the Communist Party (CP), who, by 1965, “one-third of the CP’s nominal membership consisted of FBI infiltrators and paid informants.”14 There were various techniques used by the FBI to extract and shut down organizations they viewed as threats, for example, a highly publicized “agent-baiting” mail campaign designed to shut down the New Left’s opposition of the Vietnam War in 1963, which recounts the violence and propaganda that the Bureau used to covertly mold public opinion of various groups in society.15 Yet another example is “Operation Hoodwink” in 1966, where undercover agents were used to convince the leadership of New York’s five Mafia families that the CP was organizing activities on the city’s waterfront and constituted a threat to the profits generated by racketeering and smuggling.16 The intended result was the elimination (in some cases, murder) of key CP organizers by the mob’s contract killers to cause internal conflict. The FBI, using this tactic, effectively sat back and wiped their hands while their work was finished for them. Most shocking was that there was no difference between the handling of U.S. citizens and foreign groups. The FBI, in its foundation, promised to uphold the Constitution. Yet, it unabashedly infringed upon the rights of United States citizens. But perhaps the most intense effort that CoIntelPro faced was the African American Movement. Said Hoover of CoIntelPro regarding the Civil Rights Movement: The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist,
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hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supported, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder.17
Hoover’s statement, in itself, reveals how flawed his ideology is. Threatening to end the Movement with whatever means necessary, with no regard to the law, demonstrated the Bureau’s strong determination and reveals its inherent prejudices.
The FBI and the Black Power Movement
From its inception in 1956, CoIntelPro took a special interest in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. With Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) at the forefront, the FBI was alerted by the movement’s “radical” principles of desegregation and voting rights, and was alarmed by the support it had garnered. Thus, the Bureau began infiltrating meetings and conferences. The motto was simple: to do whatever was necessary in order to squash King’s ever growing support. Failure to do so, in Hoover’s eyes, would mean a total loss of control and a mass uprising of these subversives. Indeed, the tactics used by the agents were invasive, dangerous, and illegal. Early on, to identify the key players in the Civil Rights movement, the FBI targeted them and made continuous efforts to discredit them: "King is growing in stature daily as the leader among leaders of the Negro movement ... so goes Martin Luther King, and also so goes the Negro movement in the United States,” said one anonymous agent.18 The Bureau went so far as to create a maelstrom of media propaganda that hinted at his communist influences and a string of extramarital affairs, as well as to incite harassment by FBI agents inside the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), all in an effort to “neutralize” him.19
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CoIntelPro treated the black liberation movement with much suspicion and fear.
The Civil Rights Movement, by nature, championed the importance of non-violence. Yet, some of the other dissident groups, like the Black Panther Party (BPP) and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), argued for a more violent and radical perspective than that of King’s. Given the widening difference between the BPP and the Civil Rights Movement, the Bureau decided on using even more force and illegal counterintelligence tactics to subdue this new branch of the Black Freedom movement.
The Black Panthers, known to the FBI as a black extremist organization, were a radical political organization that rapidly gained support in tandem with the Civil Rights Movement. The BPP, founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, operated in urban, metropolitan areas where much of the politically and economically disenfranchised African Americans lived.20 Whereas the Civil Rights Movement focused more on political equality, the Panthers sought to increase blacks’ social standing, advocating more control in cities, schools, and businesses. But perhaps the most apparent contrast was the BPP’s use of “self-defense.” Contrary to Malcolm X’s definition, calling for defense against attackers only when absolutely necessary, more often than not, Panthers were voluntarily arming themselves and violently taking to the streets. Yet, the Panthers used coercion to convince others of their cause, even blacks who were unwilling to participate. In May of 1969, the Party went so far as to firebomb a local black-owned convenience store because of the owner’s withholding of eggs for the Panthers’ citywide breakfast program.21 The passionate rallies and empowering speeches slowly were overtaken by the Party’s penchant for unnecessary violence. Ultimately though, this volatile group projected the image of masses of immigrants and minorities who were
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suffering silently at the hands of oppressors. Black leaders like Fred Hampton and Bobby Hutton, along with Seale and Newton, were seen as “messiahs,” who would release African Americans from their bondage.22
As a result, the Panthers grew in popularity along with other, like-minded organizations. In 1968, the Asian-American Political Alliance (AAPA) began at the University of California, Berkeley, by Richard Aoki, who had previously been a member of the BPP.23 Modeling the new organization after many of the tenets of the Panthers, Aoki and his associates struggled to remodel the image of Asian Americans and demanded respect from his community, affirming “the right of self-definition and selfdetermination.”24 More groups like the Brown Berets, a group formed by Chicanos, or Mexican Americans from southern California, were formed. In San Francisco, Chinese communities formed the Red Guard, and in New York, the Young Lords coalesced groups of immigrant Puerto Ricans into a unified movement. From California, the Panthers spread nation-wide, garnering support in 48 states by starting local chapters, and coalitions even expanded internationally in France, England, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.25 Due to the spread of their ideology, the Panthers allowed for different dissonant groups to form, ultimately adding to the unrest among minorities and movements under oppression from the government. These groups, though less influential in nature and possessing fewer resources, ultimately achieved success because the Panthers paved the way and set an example of minorities exercising their rights against the government.
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Ideologically, the Panthers adopted a “Ten Point Program,” with its most relevant point being the handling of African Americans by law enforcement. Calling for an end to police brutality and oppression by the law, the BPP denounced the inherent racism of the U.S. government and admonished its use of “domestic enforcement agencies to carry out [programs] of oppression.”26 Unlike the more optimistic views of the nonviolent movements occurring at the same time, BPP members felt as though they were pushed to their last resort, believing that, according to their manifesto, it was now their right to be “armed for self defense in [their] homes and communities against [the] fascist police forces.”27 Of course, combined with its growing popularity, this outright admission of potential violence by the BPP sent it sky-rocketing to the top of the FBI’s list of targets. The methods employed by the FBI to achieve “neutralization” varied, but agents initially used the technique of disinformation. One occurrence was when agents in San Francisco distributed copies of FBI-produced articles summarizing BPP Chief of Staff David Hilliard’s “anti-Semitism” to members of a Jewish organization immediately before a meeting between both parties, causing the event to be canceled abruptly.28 However, it was difficult for Hoover and his agents to smear reputations and characterize all BPP members as “thugs.” One such reason was due to the Panthers’ “serve the people” programs, in which members made efforts to improve the quality of life for African Americans in impoverished urban areas. One of the most important components of these efforts was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which began in 1968, designed to provide information and sufficient nutrition for children and adolescents at school and home.29 This program’s success made it almost impossible for the Bureau to find ideological faults in a program that did much social good.
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Another tactic used by CoIntelPro operatives was using infiltrators whom they placed within organizations. These agents were directed to motivate political disputes in the hopes of driving wedges between the Panthers and their affiliates. One of the FBI’s successes includes a New York Times article (presumably printed by the Bureau) suggesting that Eldridge Cleaver and other Panthers tortured James Forman, secretary of SNCC, though official reports from both Cleaver and Forman denied such actions.30 Further investigations by the committees suggested that the original article was created by Earl Anthony, an informant for the FBI who had been placed in the BPP’s Los Angeles headquarters.31 The FBI exacerbated these relations by fueling a media storm that reported the alliance between the Panthers and SNCC as deteriorating. In the end, the SNCC withdrew its partnership with the BPP. Additionally, similar to the paranoia that infected the Bureau itself, suspicion ran rampant through the BPP, so much so that “members [had] taken to running surveillance on one another in an attempt to determine who the police agents [were].”32 In fact, the BPP estimated that “thirty to forty percent of all Panthers had quit by the end of that year, and the actual proportion may be even higher.”33 In other words, the tactics of the FBI proved to be quite effective in eliminating large portions of the Party.
As efforts to subdue the Panthers continued, the Bureau began to escalate their own actions. Relying on a made-up tip that the Chicago headquarters were really a front for an illegal weapons storeroom, the police descended upon the building: “Typewriters were smashed, the office set on fire, newspapers and food for the Breakfast for Children Program and supplies for the health clinic destroyed, and the arrestees beaten.”34 Clearly, much more damage was caused than necessary, but it provided the perfect opportunity to
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destroy some of the Party’s integral resources, thus crippling it. But perhaps the most significant of all pretext arrests was that of David Hilliard, who was indicted for “threatening the life of the President of the United States” by stating that the Panthers would kill Richard Nixon and any others who prevented them from achieving their freedom.35 However, the charges were dropped immediately after it was made known that the FBI would have to reveal its wiretapping of the Panthers’ headquarters.36 Yet the severity of Hilliard’s situation forced the Party to post a nonrefundable $30,000 to release their Chief of Staff from prison, making a sizeable dent in the Party’s finances.37
Overall, the Black Panthers were known for the violent tendencies in their fight for their rights; however, contrary to popular belief, the FBI sought to crush them not only because of their growing popularity, but also because of their ability to influence and unify many of the smaller dissident groups that were also targeted. Truly worse than dealing with a rapidly growing subversive group, was countering a behemoth conglomerate of those who were bonded by their oppression and all shared the same values and desire for liberation. Yet, the FBI was successful in destroying potential alliances and weakening the overall effectiveness of the Panthers, as well as its affiliates.
The BPP’s imminent dissolution gave the Asian-American Political Alliance both inspiration in their nationalist movement, as well as lessons on how to proceed in accordance with the government.
Consequences of BPP Investigations and Church Committee Hearings
The actions of CoIntelPro were ultimately successful in creating both public paranoia and internal fragmentation of the Party, thus making its dissolution inevitable. The Black Panther Party, more than anything, was a symbol of the changing methods
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African Americans were using to seek their freedom. Tired of the visibly sluggish attempts of the Civil Rights Movements, leaders liked Hutton, Seale, and Hampton championed new ideas, where they could demand their rights rather than asking politely. However, by the turn of the decade, the Panthers had been almost entirely eradicated, with most leaders either having been murdered, jailed, or having resigned from their positions. The American public was given another reason to hate African Americans: the BPP’s outrageous agendas to disrupt the “white-man’s” hierarchy combined with their access to weapons and preference for violence made white Americans feel endangered and even more resistant to the Liberation movement. Yet, this increase in hostility gave fuel to the non-violence movements, who felt that now, more than ever, the public view of African Americans had to be amended. Ironically, the very groups that CoIntelPro wanted to crush gained even more support and gave rise to other like-minded organizations with the same agendas. In particular, the AAPA gained even more support and consequently joined forces with the Third World Movement in a new organization championing “Yellow Power.”38
Although CoIntelPro operations began to decline in number following the Black Panther Party’s investigations, the program itself was not discovered until 1971. Eight protesters calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a Bureau office in Media, Pennsylvania and distributed every single file to the various newspapers and journals.39 Most of the files found were of no immediate value, yet a key word, CoIntelPro, was posted on a stack of files that was delivered to Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, whose report was accounted in her book, titled The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI. The media continued with its coverage
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of some of the illegal operations of the Bureau until the government was forced to initiate a full-scale investigation to determine how deeply the FBI was involved in dealing with subversives.
Perhaps the most lasting and significant affect of the BPP was that it threw CoIntelPro under much scrutiny and subsequently set up an entirely new, modified list of guidelines that all intelligence agencies needed to follow. Senator Frank Church, along with Attorney General Levi, launched investigations into the actions of the FBI. The Church Committee’s goal, as stated in its proposal, was to set forth regulations for intelligence agencies.
Today we are here to review the major findings of our full investigation of FBI domestic intelligence, including the CoIntelPro and other programs aimed at domestic targets, FBI surveillance of law-abiding citizens and groups, political abuses of FBI intelligence, and several specific cases of unjustified intelligence operations. These hearings have one overriding objective: The development of sufficient information for Congress to legislate appropriate standards for the FBI.40
Indeed, the Church Committee reports reveal much of what is known today regarding the covert intelligence operations involving the Black Panthers. The Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations articulated many of the guidelines that are in place today. Ultimately, President Ford’s account during one of the Committee’s hearings was used as the basis for a new structure of intelligence gathering system. The reports suggest that “centralizing the command and control of the intelligence community…is the best way to ensure total accountability.”41 The plan
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details four major steps: first, there should be only one congressional oversight committee. Secondly, that the committee must be constantly monitoring intelligence actions on a daily basis and submitting accurate reports of those findings. Thirdly, a subgroup must be formed, the Operations Advisory Board, that oversees and reviews covert projects before they are put into action. Lastly, the Intelligence Oversight board must be available to detect abuses of the guidelines.42
With these rules, Church and fellow senators created an effective checks and balances system, where each board would regulate the authority of the other committees. This was quite different from Hoover’s bureau, which was almost dictatorial in nature. The Church committee thus had hopes that the new guidelines would “preclude abuses such as COINTELPRO from ever reoccurring.”43
In conclusion, the Black Panther Party was firstly, a symbol of African Americans’ frustration with the government and how they opted for different approaches in their fight for equality. Yet, at the same time, without the BPP, the pernicious nature of CoIntelPro and indeed the Bureau would not have been exposed. The Panthers were a key in the Church Committee’s decision to strictly regulate intelligence agencies, many of whose guidelines are still in place today.
However, one could wonder if alliances between the BPP and other parties were indeed salvaged and strengthened, the black liberation movement would be characterized differently. Contrary to the non-violence aspect that dominates public opinion, the SNCC and Panthers coalition, although progressive, would have been known mostly as a colossal militant organization. If they had been successful in achieving civil rights, one could speculate that attitudes towards African Americans today would be very different.
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But most importantly, the actions of the FBI give insight into the prejudices of the 1950s and 60s. To what extent was the FBI being biased? Both the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements reflect how ingrained these preconceptions were, not only in law enforcement, but also in society as a whole. These perceptions demonstrate the length to which a few powerful people would go to try and stabilize a shaky hierarchy that was clearly on the verge of being dismantled. The appalling actions of CoIntelPro reveal the overall perceptions of American society during this time period; yet, through its termination and subsequent investigation, it set the standard for modern day intelligence gathering of the future.
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Notes
1 Benjamin H. Kizer, "The Impact of Brown vs. Board of Education," Gonzaga Law Review 2 (1967): 1‐2.
2 Ibid, 2.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Race and Character of the FBI. 3, 2008.
6 Ibid.
7 Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Boston, USA: South End Press, 1988), 7:92.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 David Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, The Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (London, England: University of California Press, 2004), 45.
13 Churchill, Ward. Agents of Repression, 92.
14 Cunningham, David. There’s Something Happening Here, 45.
15 Ibid.
16 Churchill, Ward. Agents of Repression, 93.
17 The CoIntelPro Papers. Boston, USA: South End Press, 1990, 92.
18 Blackstock, Nelson. CoIntelPro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom. New York, United States: Anchor Foundation, 1988, 96.
19 Ibid.
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20 Self, Robert O. The Black Panther Party and the Long Civil Rights Era. N.p.: Duke University Press, 2006.
21 Ibid.
22 Race and Character of the FBI. 3, 2008.
23 Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, "Yellow Power: The Formation of Asian American Nationalism in the Age of Black Power, 1966‐1975," Souls, 2001, 29‐38.
24 Ibid.
25 Race and Character of the FBI. 3, 2008.
26 Ogbar, Jeffrey O.G. “Yellow Power,” 30.
27 Ibid.
28 Churchill, Ward. Agents of Repression, 97.
29 Ibid.
30 Richard Gid Powers, Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI (n.p.: The Free Press, 2004), 24.
31 Ibid.
32 Churchill, Ward. Agents of Repression, 98.
33 The CoIntelPro Papers. Boston, USA: South End Press, 1990.
34 Churchill, Ward. Agents of Repression, 101.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ogbar, "Yellow Power: The Formation," 31.
39 Office of the Deputy Attorney General, Ron Nesson Papers, Rep., at 72 (1974).
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40 Church Committee, Hearings Before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, S. Rep. No. 94, 1st Sess., at 2 (6) (Conf. Rep.).
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
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Bibliography
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