There once was a man named J. Edgar Hoover, who just couldn’t accept that the United States was changing. He was convinced that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was secretly a part of a Soviet conspiracy because, frankly, Hoover thought everyone who disagreed with him must be a Soviet spy. And that pesky Joseph Rauh Jr. certainly didn’t help by telling Hoover that King had an important role in the 1960 election campaign. King said that Robert Kennedy was the only one who could stop the mighty President Johnson (cue the superhero music) in his Democratic primary bid.
Hoover was on a mission, one could even call it an obsession, to find out if King was actually best buds with the Communists. You see, back in the swingin’ 1960s, it seemed like everyone knew someone who knew someone who had some kind of connection to the Communists. But ultimately, this paranoid detective work was really about one thing: making sure King didn’t get too big for his britches. Hoover, who affectionately referred to King as “the burrhead,” couldn’t stand the idea of King becoming more respected and influential, especially when he caught wind of some scandalous details about King’s personal life. Hoover was determined to use King’s private affairs as ammunition to tarnish his reputation.
Now, the thing about Hoover’s anti-King campaign was that it was all about power – specifically, making sure King didn’t get his hands on too much of it. After witnessing King’s stellar performance at the March on Washington in 1963, William Sullivan (the F.B.I. assistant director responsible for spying on Americans under Hoover) decided it was time to bug King’s room at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. You see, in the 1960s, bugging someone’s room was the ultimate way to get dirt on them. Sullivan wrote in a 1963 memo, “We must mark him now as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation,” as if King were some kind of supervillain that needed to be stopped.
Two months later, Robert Kennedy, then the attorney general, gave the green light for the F.B.I. to wiretap King’s home and offices in addition to his hotel rooms. Classy move, Mr. Kennedy. F.B.I. agents sneakily handed over files from their secret listening devices to journalists, but surprisingly, no major publication took the bait and exposed the F.B.I.’s shady activities. It wasn’t until some crafty activists broke into an F.B.I. office in 1971, copied a bunch of files, and sent them to Congress and newspapers that the public finally caught a glimpse of just how creepy and invasive the F.B.I. had been to King and other activists. The Washington Post, in a bold move, published the story, whereas The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and two representatives practically sprinted to return the files to the F.B.I.
But, let’s not just blame Hoover for this epic fail in American law enforcement history. From the president all the way down, there were plenty of people who knew about and approved the campaign against King. Most people during that time didn’t even like the civil rights movement – in fact, just before the March on Washington, a Gallup poll showed that a mere 23% of Americans thought it was a good idea.
It’s easy to point fingers at Hoover, but it’s important to remember that many, many others played a part in turning their backs on one of the greatest moral leaders in our history. As Ramsey Clark, Johnson’s third attorney general, wrote, “The course of the civil rights movement may have been altered” by the F.B.I.’s campaign against King. “The prejudice may have reached men who might otherwise have given great support – including even the president of the United States.” So, the next time you’re feeling nostalgic about the 1960s, let’s not forget the shady side of that era and how those in power tried their darndest to undermine those who dared to challenge the status quo.
