[Left out of GOP debates about “the weaponization” of the
federal government is the use of the FBI to spy on civil rights
leaders for most of the 20th century. Martin Luther King Jr. was one
of the targets.]
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‘THE MOST DANGEROUS NEGRO’: 3 ESSENTIAL READS ON THE FBI’S
ASSESSMENT OF MLK’S RADICAL VIEWS AND ALLIES  
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Howard Manly, Paul Harvey, Jason Miller, Trevor Griffey
January 13, 2023
The Conversation
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_ Left out of GOP debates about “the weaponization” of the
federal government is the use of the FBI to spy on civil rights
leaders for most of the 20th century. Martin Luther King Jr. was one
of the targets. _

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. relaxes at home in May 1956 in
Montgomery, Alabama., Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

 

Left out of GOP debates
[[link removed]]
about “the weaponization” of the federal government is the use of
the FBI to spy on civil rights leaders for most of the 20th century.

Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the targets.

As secret FBI documents became declassified, The Conversation U.S.
published several articles looking at the details that emerged about
King’s personal life and how he was considered in 1963 by the FBI as
“the most dangerous Negro.”

1. The radicalism of MLK

As a historian of religion and civil rights, University of Colorado
Colorado Springs Professor Paul Harvey [[link removed]]
writes that while King has come to be revered as a hero who led a
nonviolent struggle to build a color blind society, the true
radicalism of MLK’s beliefs remain underappreciated.

“The civil saint portrayed nowadays was,” Harvey writes
[[link removed]],
“by the end of his life, a social and economic radical, who argued
forcefully for the necessity of economic justice in the pursuit of
racial equality.”

2. The threat of being called a communist

Jason Miller [[link removed]], a North
Carolina State University English professor, details the delicate
balance that King was forced to strike between some of his radical
allies and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

As the leading figure in the civil rights movement, Miller explains,
King could not be perceived as a communist in order to maintain his
national popularity.

As a result, King did not overtly invoke the name of one of the Harlem
Renaissance’s leading poets, Langston Hughes
[[link removed]], a man the FBI suspected of
being a communist sympathizer.

But Miller’s research
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reveals the shrewdness with which King still managed to use Hughes’
poetry in his speeches and sermons, most notably in King’s “I Have
a Dream” speech which echoes Hughes’ poem “I Dream a World
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“By channeling Hughes’ voice, King was able to elevate the
subversive words of a poet that the powerful thought they had
silenced,” Miller writes.

3. ‘We must mark him now’

As a historian
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done substantial research regarding FBI files on the Black freedom
movement, UCLA labor studies lecturer Trevor Griffey points out
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that from 1910 to the 1970s, the FBI treated civil rights activists as
either disloyal “subversives” or “dupes” of foreign agents.

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Screenshot from a 1966 FBI memo regarding the surveillance of Martin
Luther King Jr. National Archives via Trevor Griffey photo
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As King ascended in prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, it was
inevitable that the FBI would investigate him.

In fact, two days after King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream
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speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
[[link removed]], William
Sullivan
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the FBI’s director of intelligence, wrote: “We must mark him now,
if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the
future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and
national security.”

_Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The
Conversation’s archives._[The Conversation]

Howard Manly [[link removed]], Race
+ Equity Editor, _The Conversation [[link removed]]_

This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

* Martin Luther King
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* FBI
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* civil rights activists
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* Domestic Spying
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* Racism
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* democracy
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