Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), there was a concerted effort to subvert the will of the people to avoid the rise of a black Messiah that would mobilise the African-American community into a meaningful political force.
The FBI’s War on Black America is a documentary exploration of the lives and deaths of people targeted by the US government’s COINTELPRO program; an FBI launched program focussed against organised efforts by African-Americans to gain rights guaranteed by the American constitution. It includes archival footage and interviews with people involved in the movement.
Why J Edgar Hoover created COINTELPRO
J Edgar Hoover had a personal anti-Communist, anti-subversive stance. Frustrated over limitations placed on the Justice Department’s investigative capabilities, he created COINTELPRO. The group conducted a series of covert and often illegal investigations intended to discredit or disrupt radical political organisations.
Initially, Hoover ordered background checks on government employees to prevent foreign agents from infiltrating the government. Later, COINTELPRO went after any organisation Hoover considered subversive, including the Black Panthers, the Socialist Workers Party and the Ku Klux Klan.
Hoover also used COINTELPRO’s operations to conduct his own personal vendettas against political opponents in the name of national security. Labelling Martin Luther King “the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation,” Hoover ordered around-the-clock surveillance on King, hoping to find evidence of Communist influence or sexual deviance.
This documentary establishes a historical perspective on the measures initiated by J Edgar Hoover and the FBI which aimed to discredit black political figures and forces of the late 1960′s and early 1970′s.
The FBI’s War on Black America combines declassified documents, interviews, rare footage and exhaustive research. It investigates the government’s role in the assassinations of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King Jr. Were the murders the result of this concerted effort to avoid a black Messiah?
COINTELPRO’s procedures were exposed to the public in 1971. The agency’s tactics which included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, planted evidence and false rumours leaked on suspected groups and individuals, were out in the open. Despite receiving harsh criticism, Hoover remained the director of the bureau until his death on 2 May 1972, at the age of 77.
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