RACIAL MATTERS"": The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972

by Kenneth O'Reilly ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 12, 1989

Through a ploddingly well-documented course, O'Reilly (Hoover and the Un-Americans, not reviewed) follows J. Edgar Hoover's reaction to black America's struggle for equality from indifference in the 1940's to aggressive opposition by the end of the 1960's. O'Reilly's account begins in the 1940's, with Hoover's disinterest in peonage cases, in which white southern farmers were accused of holding black farm workers as indentured servants. O'Reilly attributes Hoover's decision not to pursue such charges to his recognition that the difficulty of convicting white farmers would lower the bureau's success rate. This was coupled with the Director's own racist opinion that black farm workers were not worth protecting. O'Reilly goes on to compare Hoover's unaggressive stance towards the KKK to the Bureau's valiant struggle against mobsters in the 1930's. While the FBI's fight against the Mob established its powers to work beyond the limits of state police, Hoover used the sensitive issue of state's rights to pawn off his responsibility to pursue the Klan or to protect civil-rights workers who came under attack by white supremacists. O'Reilly argues that the success of the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights inspired Hoover to begin an aggressive campaign to disrupt the civil-rights movement. Hoover's efforts included an increase in smear campaigns against civil-rights groups. In the late 60's, FBI agents sent anonymous letters about bogus rivalries and assassination attempts to members of the Black Panthers to foment division among its members, and, in the grossest abuse, information collected by an FBI informant was used in a Chicago police raid of a Black Panther apartment in which 16 policemen entered the apartment and executed two men inside. O'Reilly's dense study--filled with shocking quotes from government officials and gory descriptions of the repression of civil-rights workers in the South--gives a critical look at the FBI that is worth the price of wading through the author's dry presentation.

Pub Date: June 12, 1989

ISBN: 0029236827

Page Count: -

Publisher: Free Press/Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION