| FBI Witch Hunting My huge FBI file stretches from the 1950s to 1979 and involves about 3,000 pages which I've recovered via FOIA. Much is heavily censored. In addition, there are several hundred pages the FBI refuses to release on various grounds, including that of "national security." Here is a small sampling from the many pages specifically classifying me as a high priority agitator: Section A of the Reserve Index, Security Index and Rabble Rouser Index. |
 |
|
FBI agents follow me out of the Southwest,
where I'd been involved for several years in radical labor activities.
Radical writing. The story in Mainstream -- The
Destroyers -- was later picked as one of the 50 best short stories published in the United
States in 1960 (The Best American Short Stories and the Yearbook of the American Short
Story, 1961, Martha Foley and David Burnett). It was widely reprinted abroad. The
Destroyers involved violent racial prejudice and discrimination in the context of a
Southwestern forest fire -- based on an actual situation at a massive Northern Arizona
fire I'd been on as a 16 year old in the summer of 1950.
My wife, Eldri, and I went to Mississippi in the
summer of '61, for what became six years in the Deep South. I immediately became
extremely active in the developing Civil Rights Movement from my base as a professor at
Tougaloo Southern Christian College, a private black school. I was Adult Advisor to
the Jackson Youth Council of NAACP, a member of the board of directors of the
Jackson NAACP, and a member of the board of directors of the Mississippi State Conference
of NAACP Branches. With our development of the Jackson Movement, I become Chairman
of its Strategy Committee. We met many extraordinarily fine people. One was
Mrs. Doris Allison, then a leader of the Jackson NAACP, with whom I still remain in very
close contact. Medgar Wiley Evers, Mississippi Field Secretary of the NAACP, was one of
the bravest and most decent people with whom I've ever worked. A close colleague, he was
shot and killed by the racist Byron de la Beckwith at the climax of our historic Jackson
Movement in mid-June 1963. A week later, I and another colleague, Rev. Ed King, were
seriously injured and almost killed.
FBI continues targeting me in Mississippi.
More FBI Documents On Next Page