FBI spied on, criticized black writers for half a century

From 1919 to 1972, the Federal Bureau of Investigation kept an eye on prominent African-American writers, spending considerable effort to document and critique their work. This revelation comes from newly declassified documents about the early years of the agency uncovered by William Maxwell, a professor at Washington University in St Louis.

"I knew [FBI chief J. Edgar] Hoover was especially impressed and worried by the busy crossroads of black protest, left-wing politics, and literary potential," says Maxwell. "But I was surprised to learn that the FBI had read, monitored, and 'filed' nearly half of the nationally prominent African American authors... the FBI had outdone most every other major institution of U.S. literary study, only fitfully concerned with black writing."

In one file on Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay, for example, the FBI labeled the writer a "notorious Negro revolutionary," and kept track of him even as he traveled abroad to Russia and the U.K.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up