President Trump’s dismissal of FBI director James Comey is certainly a
topic worthy of discussion and debate. In typical Trump fashion, his
amateurish administration has given a variety of contradictory
rationales for the action. While there may be confusion about what
precipitated the decision, there should be no confusion about the FBI’s
long history of persecuting black people in this country.
No one should forget the FBI played a major role in prosecuting Marcus Garvey. A young agent named J. Edgar Hoover
led the investigation during the Wilson and Harding administrations.
Hoover destroyed the Garveyite movement by arranging a trumped up charge
of mail fraud. Garvey was convicted, imprisoned and deported from the
United States.
The FBI never relented in this strategy of actively opposing the
black struggle for human rights. In fact every FBI agent was responsible
for managing at least one informer to report on activities in black
communities. Political action was not the only target of attack. Writers
such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, W.E.B. DuBois, and James Baldwin
were all under FBI surveillance. The works of Lorraine Hansberry, Ralph
Ellison and others were submitted to the FBI by a network of informers.
-- Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider: No Tears for the FBI" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).