Selma Voting Rights Movement
Getting Started
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Civil Rights Events
Despite years of Freedom Movement
struggle, suffering, and sacrifice, few Black voters have been added to voting
rolls in the Deep South . Blacks who try to
register face legal barriers, so-called "literacy tests," terrorism,
economic retaliation, and police harassment. By the end of Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964,
after lynchings, shootings, beatings, jailings, evictions, and firings, only
1,600 new voters have been registered in that state — barely .004 of
the unregistered Blacks.
While Blacks have deep and bitter
knowledge about denial of voting rights, it is only in the aftermath of Freedom
Summer, the lynching of Chaney,
Schwerner, & Goodman, and the MFDP
Challenge to Democratic Convention that awareness of this as a
national issue has begun to slowly emerge among white northerners. (And there
is little appreciation that similar issues apply to Latinos in the Southwest,
and Native Americans in many areas.)
So far as the Johnson administration
is concerned, voting rights are not on the agenda for now. After receiving the Nobel Prize, Dr. King
meets with the president in December of 1964. Johnson assures King that he'll
get around to Black voting rights someday, but not in 1965. LBJ tells King that
1965 is to be the year of "Great Society," and "War on
Poverty" legislation — not civil rights. "Martin," he says, "you're right about [voting rights]. I'm
going to do it eventually, but I can't get a voting rights bill through in this
session of Congress" (Situation 1).
In Selma ,
Alabama , the seat of Dallas County Dallas County
Passage of the Civil Rights Bill in July 1964 brought hope to Dallas County
On Saturday, July 4, four Black
members of the literacy project — Silas Norman, Karen House, Carol Lawson and
James Wiley — attempt to implement the new law by desegregating [in Selma Selma ,
no matter what some federal law in Washington
Sunday evening there is a large mass
meeting — the first big turnout in months. Sheriff Clark declares the meeting a
"riot." Fifty deputies and possemen attack with clubs and tear gas.
Monday, July 6, is one of the two monthly voter registration days. SNCC
Chairman John Lewis leads a column of voter applicants to the Courthouse. They
hope the new law will offer them some protection, but Clark
herds 50 them into an alley and places them under arrest. As they are marched
through the downtown streets to the county jail, the deputies and possemen jab
them with clubs and burn them with cattle prods.
On July 9, Judge James Hare issues an
injunction forbidding any gathering of three or more people under sponsorship
of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL [Dallas County Voter’s League] as organizations, or with the involvement of 41 named leaders including
the SNCC organizers, the Boyntons, Marie Foster, Rev. L.L. Anderson, Rev. F.D.
Reese, and others. In essence, this injunction makes it illegal to even talk to
more than two people at a time about civil rights or voter registration in Selma Alabama
Activists and their attorneys file
appeals. They know that on some bright day in the distant future, the blatantly
unconstitutional order will eventually be overturned by a higher court. But
here and now it paralyzes the Movement. Neither DCVL nor SNCC have the
resources — human, financial, legal — to defy the injunction with large-scale
civil disobedience. The weekly mass meetings are halted — for the remainder of
1964 there are no public Movement events in Selma , Alabama
SNCC had been the primary civil rights organization in Selma Mississippi
Back in September of 1963, when four
young girls were killed in the Birmingham
bombing of the 16th Street Montgomery
…
Their draft plan called for building and
training a nonviolent army 20-40,000 strong who would engage in large-scale
civil disobedience by blocking roads, airports, and government buildings to
demand the removal of Governor Wallace and the immediate registration of every
Alabama citizen over the age of 21. When she presents the idea to Dr. King, she
tells him, "... you can tell people not to fight only if you offer them a
way by which justice can be served without violence." Rev. C.T. Vivian and
SNCC & CORE activists support the idea, but King and most of his other
advisors do not consider it feasible.
A month later, Diane and James Bevel
again raise the plan, later called the "Alabama Birmingham and the situation in Danville VA
Ultimately, the “Alabama Project” idea is put on the shelf until after the
1964 Presidential Election.
In November 1964, with the Civil
Rights Act passed and Goldwater defeated, the Bevels again raise the "Alabama
Project," arguing that the time has come to move on voting rights — which
cannot be won without national legislation that eliminates "literacy
tests" and strips power from county registrars. Such legislation, they
argue, can only be won through mass action in the streets (Alabama Project
4).
Rev. F.D. Reese of the Dallas County Voter’s League (DCVL) recalled: “In late 1964, SNCC's finances were
dwindling. This organization was also beginning to experience internal
differences regarding philosophies. The organization's effectiveness was waning
in Dallas County Dallas
County Selma
DCVL becomes the SCLC affiliate in Selma and SCLC commits to a voting rights campaign in Alabama with an initial focus on Selma
…
Saturday, January 2, 1965, is set as
the date for defying the injunction and commencing a massive direct action
campaign. There are no illusions. Selma, Dallas County, and the Alabama Alabama
Major differences now separate the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Both nationally and in Selma Selma
Once close allies in the southern
struggle, the two organizations are now on divergent paths. Dr. King and SCLC
are still deeply committed to nonviolence, integration, multiracial activism,
and appeals to the conscience of the nation. But after years of liberal
indifference, federal inaction, and political betrayal, many in SNCC now
question, and in some cases explicitly reject, some or all of those concepts.
SNCC is oriented toward building
grassroots community organizations led by those at the bottom of society.
Rather than seeing themselves as leaders, SNCC field secretaries view
themselves as community organizers empowering local people to take control over
their own lives. For its part, SCLC maintains that the community is already
organized around the Black church, an institution that has sustained and
shepherded Blacks through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, two
world wars, and the modern era of school desegregation and bus boycotts. As
they see it, Black ministers are, and always have been, the accepted community heads,
and that the focus should be on moving those churches and preachers into
social-political action. SNCC argues back that the ministers and congregation
leaders are primarily concerned with issues affecting the Black elite and they
do little for the sharecroppers, maids, and laborers who fill the pews. SCLC
responds that splitting Black communities into rival camps weakens everyone and
aids no one.
SNCC field secretaries toil
anonymously in the most dangerous areas of the South with little or no media coverage
or recognition, and they deeply resent the flood of publicity and adulation
bestowed on Dr. King when he visits locales where they have been working for
years. Some SNCC members express that bitterness by referring to him in a
mocking tone as "De Lawd."
Though King accepts such derision with
easy grace, other SCLC leaders and staff bristle with hostility. In SNCC's
view, local Black communities can provide their own leaders and that
media-centric, "big-name" outsiders like King not only hinder that
process but are unnecessary. To SCLC, nationally-recognized spokesmen who can
articulate the Freedom Movement to the world are essential, and some openly
scoff at what they see as SNCC's over-idealization of local activism, noting
that whenever King speaks in a Black community it is those very same local
people who flood the aisles to overflowing.
In SCLC's view, the only way to
substantially change the lives of those at the bottom of society is to win
transformative national legislation like the Civil Rights Act. SNCC sees little
value in federal laws that are weakly enforced and that, in any case, do not
even attempt to address the grinding poverty of the great majority of the Black
population. …
…
In order to win legislation at the
national level, SCLC has to influence and maintain ties with the Johnson
administration and the northern-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But LBJ
and those same liberals betrayed the MFDP at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City
On December 28, Dr. King convenes a … meeting
where he presents the SCLC plan, now called the "Project for an Alabama Selma
injunction on January 2, engage in mass action and voter registration in Dallas County ,
and then spread out into the rural counties of the Alabama
Bob Moses and Ivanhoe Donaldson of
SNCC argue against the SCLC proposal. Instead, they urge support for the MFDP
congressional challenge. But local leaders and activists from Selma
and elsewhere in Alabama
…
Inside city hall and over at the
county courthouse, the white power-structure cannot agree on how to handle the
direct action campaign that SCLC has just publicly announced. Newly elected
Mayor Smitherman, a local refrigerator salesman, is a "moderate"
segregationist. He hopes to attract northern business investment — Hammermill
Paper of Pennsylvania is considering Selma Albany
GA.
Short-tempered Sheriff Jim Clark and
arch-segregationist Judge Hare furiously disagree. They and their hard-line,
white-supremacy faction are committed to maintaining southern apartheid through
brutal repression. As they see it, billy-clubs, electric cattle-prods, whips,
jail cells, and charging horses, are what is needed to keep the Coloreds in
line — and if Yankee business interests don't like it, they can take their
investments elsewhere.
These two factions are at war with
each other. Baker narrowly lost to Clark in the sheriff's race, carrying the
(white) city vote but not the rural areas. Now they angrily spar over
jurisdiction. Baker's cops patrol the city except for the block where the
county courthouse sits, which Clark and his deputies control. Outside the city
limits, Clark and his volunteer posse reign supreme.
In the mid-1960s, more than 200 men
belonged to the Dallas
County Clark and semi- uniforms of khaki
work clothes and plastic construction-site safety helmets. They were armed with
electric cattle-prods and a variety of hardwood clubs including ax-handles.
Some were mounted on horseback and carried long leather whips they could use to
lash people on foot. Originally formed after World War II to oppose labor
unions, under Clark the posse's mission was to defend white supremacy and
suppress all forms of Black protest. And not just in Dallas County
The January 2nd date is chosen because
Sheriff Clark will be out of town at the Orange Bowl football game in Miami Clark to lead them,
there is little chance that sheriff's deputies will break up the mass meeting
on their own.
Rev. F.D. Reese recalled: “The day
before the scheduled Mass Meeting it snowed. On 2 January 1965, the first Mass
Meeting since July 1964 was held at Brown Chapel. … Around 3:00 p.m. on 2 January 1965 we
thought no one was going to show for the mass meeting. ... Slowly the people
started coming into the church. The Courageous Eight had given every indication
that we were ready to go to jail. Law enforcement officers were present to see
how many people would turn out. More people turned out than the city
authorities expected. They did not arrest us. There were too many Black people
inside and outside of Brown Chapel to be confined to the Selma City Jail.”
The mass meeting is a huge success,
some 700 Black citizens from Selma , Dallas County Miami
… Now that the injunction has been
defied without arrests or violence, the focus turns to the demand for voting
rights. The voter registration office at the courthouse is only open on
alternate Mondays — the next date is January 18. That gives two weeks to
recruit, organize, and train voter applicants to show up en masse to register.
On Sunday the 3rd, King leaves for
speaking engagements, fund-raising events, and meetings to organize national
support. Diane Nash Bevel coordinates SCLC and SNCC staff, now operating in
pairs, who fan out through Selma's Black neighborhoods, canvassing door-to-door
to talk about voter registration. Though fear is still pervasive, a few
courageous souls step forward. On Thursday, January 7, evening meetings and
workshops with prospective registrants are held in each of Selma
Bernard Lafayette, SNCC's first Selma
organizer who has close ties to both SNCC and SCLC, arrives from Chicago Selma
King returns to Selma
…
On Monday morning, January 18, Black
citizens gather at Brown Chapel. After freedom songs, prayers, and speeches,
Dr. King and John Lewis lead 300 marchers out of the church in Selma Sylvan Street Martin
Luther King Street
Judge Hare and Sheriff Clark are
furious at Baker's "betrayal." Clark, his deputies, and his posse,
wait at the courthouse where they — not Baker — have jurisdiction (Marching
1).
Works cited:
“The Alabama Selma Selma & the
March to Montgomery
“The Black Belt, Dallas County , and Selma
Alabama Selma Selma & the
March to Montgomery
“Marching to the Courthouse.” Selma Selma & the
March to Montgomery
“SCLC & SNCC.” Selma Selma & the
March to Montgomery
“The Selma
“Selma Selma Selma & the
March to Montgomery
“The Situation.” Selma Selma & the
March to Montgomery
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Interview
Conducted by Esther Rabbit July 26, 2019
7 Questions With Author Harold Titus
He enjoyed coaching many of his school’s boys and girls sports teams. Basketball was his favorite sport. He and his wife have lived the past 22 years on the central Oregon coast. For 10 years Titus was active in local and state politics.
Seven years ago he took great pleasure in giving his children and grandchildren copies of his novel, “Crossing the River.” A year ago his second historical novel, “Alsoomse and Wanchese,” was published. Both are legacies of sorts, expressions of who he is, testaments of what can be achieved by hard work.
For the ones of you who are new to my blog, I’m Esther, writer, content creator for authors and massive nerd. If you’re interested to know all the tips & tricks surrounding the process From Writing To Publishing Your Novel, you’re only a click away. For more goodies, articles and giveaways, please consider subscribing to my Newsletter.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I am both. First, regarding characters and events, a historical novelist must honor what most historians have agreed upon to be established fact. You must never thumb your nose at truth; you must not substitute intentionally or ignorantly made up stuff. Jeff Shaara does both in Rise to Rebellion, his account of the beginning of the American Revolution. For instance, he has Major John Pitcairn (whom he identifies as Thomas Pitcairn) witnessing the skirmish at Concord’s North Bridge.
Pitcairn never left the center of town! Most of the characters in my novel, Crossing the River, were actual people. I personalized all of them based on what historians know about their thoughts and beliefs and how they conducted themselves. Minor characters that historians know little about I fictionalized, changing their surnames to respect their actual beings. All of this required plotting. The known sequence of events that occurred April 19, 1775, determined the sequence of events of my novel.
Writing my second novel, Alsoomse and Wanchese, was an entirely different experience. Historians know very little about actual Algonquians during the 1580s because their limited sources — reports provided Walter Raleigh by Englishmen engaged in exploration and colonization — focused almost entirely on English endeavors. Almost no effort was made to record what individual Algonquians thought or, in detail, did.
Two Algonquians, Manteo and Wanchese, were taken back to England in 1584 to learn to speak English. From these two natives, Raleigh and his people learned a little bit about North Carolina coastal Algonquian history. The information is sketchy, therefore difficult to interpret. Historians offer conflicting suppositions.
Who attacked whom resulting in a major Roanoke defeat seven or ten years before the arrival of the first Englishmen at Roanoke Island? Whom and where had the Roanoke chief Wingina been fighting in 1584 when he was wounded? My novel begins in the fall of 1583. Before I started writing my first chapter, I had established the identity and strengths and weaknesses of most of my characters – nearly all of them fictitious. I knew how I wanted to particularize the major Roanoke tribal defeat but not Wingina’s wounding.
I knew I had to create events to fill the time gaps between these two important events and the 1584 arrival of the English. My characters, seeking to resolve their individual and tribal conflicts, did that. One fictitious event created impetus for the next. Worthy of note, I had not decided Alsoomse’s fate until several chapters before I finished the novel’s first draft.
What’s your definition of the first draft?
Alsoomse and Wanchese has forty chapters. I wrote them in identical stages: write five chapters, stop, review, eliminate glaring blemishes, write another five chapters. Two years after I had started, I saw before me what I considered to be my first draft. A year and a half later, 18 read throughs of all of the chapters completed, I submit the manuscript to my publisher.
What are some of the myths around self-publishing / traditional publishing?
The biggest myth that I am cognizant of is that indie writers are hacks. Their works are of poor quality. Proof? Mainstream publishers won’t look at their manuscripts. Agents know this and behave accordingly. Bookstores like Barnes and Noble will not purchase books from indie publishers for fear that the books will not sell.
Such stores might be willing to take three or four books directly from the author providing that the author agrees to take them back if they don’t sell. The reading public reads mainstream published books more than indie books. I myself have appreciated mainstream published books more.
However, I have read several excellent indie novels, Ethan’s Peach Tree by Stan Jensen and A Circle of Earth by Patricia Weil — to name two. Literary agents’ rejection slips do not define necessarily the quality of an unrecognized writer’s work.
Another myth is that mainstream publishers do the grunt work of publicizing your work. Sit back, relax, accept the fruits of your considerable labor. Afterward, when the time seems right, think about starting your next novel.
From what I have read, you are still on your own, doing presentations at distant libraries where nobody shows up; setting up a website to collect followers that might, after a passage of time, take a chance on your book and fork over twenty bucks; finding website owners that are willing to interview you; accepting invitations made by individuals on the internet who say they want to review your book.
Looking back, what advice would you give yourself at the beginning of your journey?
Lower considerably your expectations.
In your community only people who know you will purchase your novel. I advertised in the newspaper of a town 30 miles north of where I live that I would be doing a talk/book signing at the local library. Nobody showed up.
Most people do not leisure-read. Most who like to read are not historical fiction enthusiasts. Those who do read historical fiction gravitate to stories about the Roman Empire or Tudor England. If a reader selects a novel about a time period in American history, most often it is the American Civil War or World War II.
Expect little monetary reward for your product. Each of my paperback novels costs readers approximately twenty dollars. (My publisher determines the price, not me) If a reader purchases one of them on-line from Amazon, after my publisher, the printer, Ingram, and Amazon take their cuts, I net approximately three dollars. If I buy books from my publisher (at a reduced price) to sell to people here in town, I (not my publisher) must pay the shipping cost. The post office makes as much money as I do — about four dollars per book.
A book store on Roanoke Island will sell my Alsoomse and Wanchese novel provided that I ship several copies to it (at my expense) and that I agree that the store gets to pocket 40% of the price it charges purchasers. Adding the cost of paying the post office shipping costs twice (buying the copies from my publisher and sending them to the Roanoke store) to what the publisher and printer would take, I would lose six dollars on each transaction.
The store would have to sell the book for thirty-two (not twenty) dollars for me to break even. Any book that they could not sell would be shipped back to me at my expense. I suspect that this is standard practice with independent stores. Chain stores do not stock indie novels.
Had I known all of the above beforehand, I am not certain that I would have gone forward. Which would have proved to have had greater import? Financial practicality or the desire to communicate what I have learned about human beings, educate, and create?
How do you imagine your target reader?
He/She would be somebody who thoroughly enjoys historical fiction, who is curious about modes of living and cultural practices and beliefs different from our own, who is eager to draw parallels as well as recognize differences, who has a thirst for knowledge, who is empathetic toward characters that need/deserve support, who advocates social justice, who detects in the novel universal themes, who appreciates depth of content, who does not believe that romance or non-stop action are essential elements of a rewarding book.
Is there anything you learned from reader reviews?
One lesson I learned is not to exchange books with another indie writer to give and receive reviews. Knowing that the author of the book that I was reviewing would be judging my own work, I had difficulty being entirely truthful. One writer’s book had its merits and what I considered several shortcomings.
Believing it deserved a 3.5, I rated it a 4. Even though her remarks were complimentary, the writer rated Crossing the River a 3. Another writer gave me two of her books to review. This person’s narrative ability was definitely lacking. I provided several examples of this, striving to be honest, gave one of the books a generous 3-star rating and the other an undeserved 4-star rating. The writer gave Crossing the River a 4-star rating before my ratings of her books appeared on goodreads.com. A week or so later, she changed her rating of my novel to a 3.
Lesson Two.
Wanting to find somebody on the internet willing to review Alsoomse and Wanchese, I accepted an invitation from a person who was pushing her website and who purported to be an devotee of historical fiction. A month or so later, she posted on goodreads.com this one-sentence review:
“While it was refreshing to see a novel with Native American protagonists, I found that the plot moved too slowly to hold my interest.”
She rated the novel 2 stars.
Later, on her website, she posted what appeared to be a full, fair review. Only I could detect that she had not read past the first three or four chapters of the forty-chapter novel. Hours and hours saved, on to the next book had apparently been her decision. If you are going to base your review and rating on three or four chapters, at least admit it. Either that or don’t do the review.
Four people in the last two months have offered via email to review Alsoomse and Wanchese. I asked each of them why they chose my book. None of them messaged back. I stay away now from volume reviewers.
Just how much research is there behind a novel? Tell us how it looks behind the scenes.
Computer file after computer file of cut-and-pasted information about North Carolina coastal plain trees, birds, fish, native settlements, Algonquian culture, agricultural practices, weapons and warfare, religious beliefs, societal structure, the structure of longhouses, gender responsibilities, trade, the making of bows and arrows and of pottery, the curing of wounds, the parts of an English bark, English clothing and weaponry. (What have I left out?)
Add information about the reign of Queen Elizabeth as it pertains especially to attempts at colonization in North America. Everything I could find about Algonquian leaders mentioned in reports written by Englishmen. Different interpretations by historians about what actually happened before and after the English arrived and settled on Roanoke Island.
As I wrote I discovered that the story took certain directions that required me to research something vital to the story-telling. For instance, I decided that a confrontation between Roanoke natives and a war-like neighboring tribe needed to take place. Over hunting rights.
So where would this confrontation take place? Somewhere along the shoreline of Pamlico Sound nearly halfway between the opposing villages. Most of the terrain along the coastline is very swampy, not conducive to game seeking fresh water. I found an article on the internet about a former lake near the coastline that had eroded into its present state, Stumpy Point Bay. Centuries ago a peat fire had erupted and burned there for several months. Afterward, underground water, filling the exposed cavity, had created the lake. It was still a lake in 1583. I had what I wanted!
When you write a passage about a character making his way through thick vegetation on his way to attack a hostile village, research enables you to visualize what he encounters. From Alsoomse and Wanchese:
They had now gotten through the switchcane. They were entering a dense pocosin thicket. Wanchese indentified leafy wax myrtle; by its little white upside-down clustered flowers zenobia; by its long, white, dangling fingers titi; its black fruit not yet formed large galberry, twice as high as any man present.
Worst of all were bamboo vines, climbing over everything, large thorns sticking out of old growth. “Tear away only the new growth,” Cumay warned. “Be careful where you put your legs and feet. Try not to step on rattlesnakes.”
…
The thicket ended. Scattered pond pine, loblolly bay, and loblolly pine indicated the change, even though wax myrtle and inkberry were present. Happily, the bamboo vines were gone. “We are getting close,” Cumay, stopping, whispered. “Past that grove of pine is an old cornfield. We can hide behind the myrtle until you decide when to strike.”
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Civil Rights Events
Hoover FBI
National Academy ,
a sort of West Point for the future elite of
law enforcement (Summers 3).
Hoover Hoover
Hoover Hoover Hoover Hoover
Hoover
Dr, King answered back. As a general rule, Dr. King prefers not to
respond to false charges and personal slanders against himself. But when the
Freedom Movement as a whole is smeared he stands to its defense. On April 23 he
tells a press conference: "[It
is] difficult to accept the word of the FBI on communistic infiltration of the
Civil Rights Movement when it has been so completely ineffectual in protecting
the Negro from brutality in the Deep South" (Hoover 1-2).
Though he considers himself entitled
to defame and vilify anyone he chooses, the slightest criticism of himself or
the FBI sends Hoover Hoover
In October, the world learns that Dr.
King has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hoover America
King responds that he is "appalled and surprised" by Hoover
Hoover
From their illegal hotel bugs they
assemble a composite audio sex-tape. They package the tape with a phony letter
supposedly from an unidentified Afro-American man. The letter threatens King
with public exposure unless he commits suicide before accepting the Nobel
Prize. To conceal its FBI origins, they mail it from Miami Atlanta , staff
members are busy preparing for Dr. King's trip to Europe
for the Nobel Prize. They assume it's just another recording of a King speech,
so without reading the letter they toss the package into a pile of low-priority
correspondence to be dealt with when someone has time. Dr. King doesn't
actually hear the tape or read the letter until weeks after returning from Oslo (Hoover
In part, the letter said: King, there
is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34
days in which to do [This exact number has been selected for a specific
reason; it has definite practical significance]. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it
before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
It was thirty-four days before the
Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies (Halperin 86).
Publicly, Hoover Chicago
Dr. King fears that the public
controversy with Hoover Selma Hoover
Dr. King's effort partially succeeds. Hoover and the FBI cease their public attacks, but covert
efforts to destroy King and thwart the Freedom Movement continue (Hoover
Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
lived in Washington , D.C. Seward Square
The eight decades of Hoover Hoover
Hoover
joined the Bureau – at that time just the Bureau of Investigation (the word
"Federal" was only added in the 1930s) – as America's first great
Communist scare was getting under way, and handpicked as his assistant a man
named George Ruch. … Ruch expressed astonishment that left-wingers should even
"be allowed to speak and write as they like". Hoover and Ruch
favoured deporting people merely for being members of radical organisations,
and used the Bureau to spy on lawyers representing those arrested in the
infamous Red Raids of 1920. One of them, on whom he was to keep tabs for half a
century and deem "the most dangerous man in the United States
In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge appointed him
head of the Bureau of Investigation, a position Hoover Hoover Hoover Hoover 's conditions were met
and he set out on a rejuvenation campaign which would build the Bureau into one
of the most powerful government agencies in 20th century America
… To make his agency respectable, Hoover
The
favourable publicity Hoover
In 1936 [President Franklin] Roosevelt
instructed Hoover to keep him informed on fascist and Communist activities in
the U.S. Hoover took the opportunity to increase his domestic surveillance
efforts and to maintain a "Custodial Detention List" which included
names of "questionable" individuals for possible accusations during
wartime. This list included Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he personally despised for
her liberal leanings, and later, Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy.
Lyndon B. Johnson, a personal friend to Hoover, postponed the F.B.I. director's
retirement indefinitely. Hoover
…
… Hoover's
Division 8, euphemistically entitled Crime Records and Communications, had a
priority mission. Crime Records pumped out propaganda that fostered not only
the image of the FBI as an organisation that spoke for what was right and just,
but of the Director himself as a champion of justice fighting "moral
deterioration" and "anarchist elements". Hoover
By 1960, the FBI had opened “subversive” files on
some 432,000 Americans. Hoover deemed the most sensitive files as “personal and
confidential” and kept them in his office, where his secretary, Helen Gandy,
could watch them (Ackerman
2).
Hoover's
public position on race, Southerner that he was, was that of the paternalistic
white nativist. Less openly, he was racially prejudiced. He shrugged off the
miseries of black Americans, preferring to claim they were outside his
jurisdiction. "I'm not going to send the FBI in," a Justice
Department official recalled him saying testily, "every time some nigger
woman says she's been raped." FBI agents paid more attention to
investigating black militants than pursuing the Ku Klux Klan.
...
A rumor has persisted that Hoover Washington and – true or not – Hoover
The
unfolding story of the civil rights protest movement and the leadership role of
Martin Luther King, Jr., is a most ignoble chapter in the history of FBI spying
and manipulation. As the civil rights movement grew and expanded, the FBI
pinpointed every group and emergent leader for intensive investigation and most
for harassment and disruption …. The NAACP was the subject of a COMINFIL
investigation. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were listed by the FBI as
"Black-Hate" type organizations and selected for covert disruption of
their political activities. But the most vicious FBI attack was reserved for
King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. All of the arbitrary
power and lawless tactics that had accumulated in the bureau over the years
were marshaled to destroy King's reputation and the movement he led. The FBI
relied on its vague authority to investigate "subversives" to spy on
King and SCLC; its vague authority to conduct warrantless wiretapping and
microphonic surveillance to tap and bug him; its secrecy to conduct covert
operations against him. The campaign began with his rise to leadership and grew
more vicious as he reached the height of his power; it continued even after his
assassination in 1968. (Halperin 63).
In a memoranda sent to Hoover, King's “I Have a
Dream” speech [culminating the March
on Washington] was characterized as
"demagogic," and the presence of "200" Communists among the
250,000 marchers caused the Intelligence Division to state that it had
underestimated Communist efforts and influence on American Negroes and the
civil rights movement. King was singled out:
“He stands head and shoulders over all other Negro
leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We
must mark him now . . . as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this
Nation from the standpoint of Communism, the Negro, and national security”
(Halperin 77).
On October 10 and 21, Attorney General Robert Kennedy gave
the FBI the authority to wiretap King. "Hoover had come to Bobby Kennedy and President Kennedy and
said, 'Look, Stanley Hoover
On October 18, 1963, the FBI distributed a … memorandum
on King, not only to the Justice Department, but to officials at the White
House, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Defense
Department, and Defense Department intelligence agencies. It summarized the
bureau's Communist party charges against King and went much further. According
to - Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, it was a personal diatribe . .
. a personal attack without evidentiary support on the character, the moral character
and person of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it was only peripherally related to
anything substantive, like whether or not there was Communist infiltration or
influence on the civil rights movement.... It was a personal attack on the man
and went far afield from the charges [of possible Communist influence].
The attorney general was outraged and demanded
that Hoover Hoover
In November, John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas , Texas
While the nation mourned, the FBI held a
conference at the beginning of December to plan its campaign to destroy King
and the civil rights movement. At that all-day meeting FBI officials put
forward proposals …. Officials of the nation's number-one law enforcement
agency agreed to use "all available investigative techniques" to
develop information for use "to discredit" King. Proposals discussed
included using ministers, "disgruntled" acquaintances,
"aggressive" newsmen, "colored" agents, Dr. King's
housekeeper, and even Dr. King's wife or "placing a good looking female
plant in King's office" to develop discrediting information and to take
action that would lead to his disgrace.
… By January, the FBI had initiated physical and
photographic surveillance of King, deploying its most experienced personnel to
gather information, and had placed the first of many illegal bugs in Dr. King's
room at the Willard Hotel in Washington ,
D.C.
According to Justice Department regulations at the
time, microphonic surveillance, although it necessitated a physical trespass
and was more intrusive than a phone tap, did not require the approval of the
attorney general. Even under its own regulations, however, the FBI could only
use this technique to gather "important intelligence or evidence relating
to matters connected with national security." In this case the FBI planned
to use "bugs" to learn about "the [private] activities of Dr.
King and his associates" so that King could be "completely
discredited." It was clearly illegal.
The Willard
Hotel
For J. Edgar Hoover, "immoral" behavior
was a crime comparable to "subversive" activity-and of equal utility.
Hoover Hoover Willard Hotel
With Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson pressing action on
civil rights legislation and calling for a "War on Poverty," Martin
Luther King was a man the country and the world thought worthy of honor. In
December 1963, Time magazine named him "Man of the Year." … Hoover
wrote across a memorandum, "They had to dig deep in the garbage to come up
with this one."
In 1964, while continuing his
"nonviolent" activities on behalf of civil rights in St. Augustine,
Florida, and other cities, King was awarded honorary degrees by universities;
he was invited by Willy Brandt, the mayor of West Berlin, to speak at a
ceremony honoring the memory of President Kennedy; he had an audience with Pope
Paul VI in Rome; and, in October, he was named by the Nobel Prize Committee to
receive the Peace Prize in December (Halperin 77-80).
…
two noted specialists in psychiatry and psychology said they believed Hoover 's sexual torment was very pertinent to his use and
abuse of power as America
Dr John Money, professor of medical psychology at
Johns Hopkins University, thought Hoover Hoover Hoover
Works cited:
Ackerman, Kenneth
D. “Five myths about J. Edgar Hoover.” The Washington
“Biography: J.
Edgar Hoover.” American Experience. Web. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eleanor-hoover/
Halperin, Morton;
Berman, Jerry; Borosage, Robert; and Marwick, Christine. “The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U. S.
“The History Of
The FBI's Secret 'Enemies' List.” NPR Fresh Air. February 14, 2012. Web. https://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/146862081/the-history-of-the-fbis-secret-enemies-list
“Hoover
1964 July-Dec. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64c.htm#1964fbi
1964 July-Dec. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64c.htm#1964fbi
Summers,
Anthony. “The Secret life of J Edgar
Hoover.” The Guardian. December 31,
2011. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/01/j-edgar-hoover-secret-fbi
“Biography: J.
Edgar Hoover.” American Experience. Web. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eleanor-hoover/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)