There were “by no means” agents with the nation’s highest local law enforcement office keeping an eye on Aretha Franklin — but they were.
The FBI kept a careful eye on the Soul Queen and her activity, and there was nothing unusual during the civil rights era when the bureau kept an eye on a group of prominent figures in the movement. Franklin passed away in 2018, and is best known for her robust catalog of R& B and gospel, but her FBI file shows that her potential – real and perceived – association with communist and black liberation organizations has been a regular focus of federal agents.
Despite the revision of the documents, clients and investigators appear to have concluded there was no cause for concern, despite extensive monitoring. The file also details death threats and attempted extortion targeting the singer, as well as a copyright infringement lawsuit.
The FBI press office does not have additional information on the 270-page dossier, he says, but Courage News’ Jane Daisy said it obtained the records in a Freedom of Information Act request. She wrote in a tweet Thursday that the journalist, who says she “frequently talks about abuses by Alphabet agencies, especially in relation to the civil rights movement,” requested the documents in 2018.
One document, sealed in September 1976, makes several poorly supported allegations against Franklin, including:
- A 1972 article in the “West Coast Communist Newspaper” notes that Franklin performed at a concert organized by a group linked to the Communist Party, which was raising funds for the release of Angela Davis, a political activist who was facing murder and kidnapping charges in California at the time;
- A confidential source later that year identified Franklin among “people associated with or known to the ‘leader’ of a black extremist group intent on destabilizing the island of Dominica” in northern Venezuela;
- An April 1973 review of the Black Liberation Army shows one document titled The Franklin Reservation Agency in New York City. The document described the BLA as “a paramilitary group… that uses urban guerrilla tactics against the established order with the aim of bringing about revolutionary change in America.”
Despite the allegations, the document states there was “no additional relevant information” regarding Franklin.
Those documents came after years of reporting on the beloved singer. In 1967, a classified memo titled “SCLC Homeland Security Communist Infiltration,” the Atlanta Negro Weekly reported that Franklin was going to attend the SCLC’s 10th anniversary party. The Southern Christian Command Center at the time was led by Reverend Martin Luther King, and is another popular target for FBI surveillance.
Days after King’s assassination, the Bureau expressed concern that Franklin, Sammy Davis Jr., Marlon Brando, Mahalia Jackson, and The Supremes were due to perform at a memorial service and that some artists “supported the concept of hard-line black power and most of them were at the forefront of the rights movement.” different civil.
It further states that “members of the (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) felt that the performance of these notable artists would provide an emotional spark that could ignite racial unrest in this region.” The Southern Christian Leadership Conference later decided not to hold the memorial service, the document said.
Her father, Reverend CL Franklin, also came to the attention of the FBI after he denounced England and praised communist China at an SCLC event in August 1968. According to the FBI document, the SCLC had “taken the line ‘hate America’ and A “pro-communist”, whom the Negroes would not recognize but would blindly follow.
In the following years, federal investigators would also look at: Franklin and fellow singer Roberta Flack’s contracts with Atlantic Records; In August 1968 a “clash” broke out at Red Rocks Coliseum in Denver after Franklin refused to perform; and her alleged connections to the BLA Party and Black Panther.
A January 1972 memo says that an informant provided a phone number obtained by Black Panthers, and via a “pretext phone call” — a trap in which law enforcement uses an informant to persuade the suspect to say something on a recorded line — “it was determined that Cecil Franklin He is the father of Aretha Franklin, a famous Negro singer and artist, and Mrs. Owens is her manager. The Los Angeles office is conducting no further investigation into Aretha Franklin.”
The bureau acknowledged in a May 1973 document that two sources, whose names have been omitted, told authorities that, to their knowledge, Franklin was not associated with “any radical movement.”
“In light of the fact that there is no evidence implicating Miss Franklin in BLA activities and given her fame as a singer, it is thought that it would not be in the best interest of the Bureau to attempt an interview with her,” explains the letter from an FBI agent in New York to then-acting director William Ruckelshaus.
CNN has accessed Franklin’s estate.
News of Franklin’s FBI files comes days after Mickey Dolenz, the last surviving member of The Monkees, announced that he had sued the bureau to release any files he or she had on his former bandmates. CNN has also reported on other surprising figures – ranging from blind activist Helen Keeler to rapper Tupac Shakur – on whom the FBI has kept files, and the FBI’s civil rights files provide the movement’s identity.
Here are some highlights from those archives:
Stokely Carmichael
As a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party, Carmichael has been a constant cause of concern for Federals—more than 200 pages in his FBI file can attest. A memo from a redacted sender to then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover says, “Mr. Carmichael advocates murder and riots as a means of establishing ‘black power,’ which, as I understand it, means the elimination of ‘whites.’ We both know that eliminating is something. It means getting rid of it, removing it, getting rid of it. Eliminating the white element in our country means eliminating practically the entire population.”
Cesar Chavez
An icon of the labor movement, his FBI file spans more than 2,000 pages. One of the memos states that “Chávez refuses to respond to any questionnaires sent to him by credit bureaus or similar organizations. He has been explicitly called a communist at Delano City Council meetings; however, (Revised) he has no specific information in this regard. that Chavez is associated with individuals of the “left” type and is known to distribute “People’s World” from his office in Delano, free of charge.”
WEB Du Bois
Despite being the author of twenty books on civil rights, Africa, and history, the FBI has had over 500 pages on the highly respected sociologist, with an emphasis on his socialist leanings. A secret sealed file says that, according to Dubois’ autobiography, “Twilight of Dawn,” the author “refers to a basic Negro creed, ‘We believe in the ultimate victory of some form of socialism throughout the world; This is common for ownership and control of the means of production and equality of income.”
fanny le hummer
The National Museum of Women’s History describes Hammer as “one of the most important, passionate, and powerful voices in the civil and voting rights movements,” and the US Department of Justice has certainly been keeping an eye on her work, even if she misspells her name, Fanny Hammer.
A June 1963 warrant outlines her arrest and other activists for sitting in the white section of a Greyhound bus and at a whites-only lunch office in Winona, Mississippi. Hammer told authorities that it took two days before she was informed of her charges – immoral conduct and resisting arrest – as two black prisoners beat her with blackjack on the order of the state policeman, while “a third white man in the cell hit the victim with his hand in an attempt to calm her screaming when the prisoners hit her.” She was eventually released on a $200 bond, which is roughly $2,000 today.
Fred Hampton
The police killed the leader of the Black Panther in his sleep in 1969, as reported in “Judas and the Black Christ.” It was three years before anyone faced trial (the prosecutor and 13 others were acquitted) and more than a decade before survivors of the raid received seven-figure compensation. However, a week after Hampton’s murder, Hoover received a letter from a withheld sender, in which he says, “There are disturbing indications that the Chicago police killed Fred Hampton in cold blood. … If Hampton was indeed murdered in his bed, the killers must present To justice if they are policemen. What is your office planning to do?”
Medgar Evers
The first field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963. Among the items in the lengthy dossier on the civil rights icon was a report the week before Evers was murdered, stating that he feared the NAACP and his home phones would be bugged. The document states that “the doubts arose due to an extraordinary amount of stillness, the feeling as if one were listening in a vacuum, unusual voices, faint voices, and a hollow voice as if someone were listening.”
Reverend Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King
Hoover seemed to hate Martin Luther King and tracked his every move. The then-FBI Director once wrote of the civil rights icon’s meeting with the Pope, “I am amazed that the Pope has given an audience to such a decadent.” Hoover even oversaw an FBI plot to neutralize King.
King’s wife, Coretta, was not immune to such scrutiny. A memo reviewing one of her books questioned the correctness of her behavior, and after her husband’s death, the FBI’s Atlanta proposed an operation to take care of her “in the event that the bureau was inclined to entertain counterintelligence measures.” The bureau also expressed concern about the “continued projection of the public image” of Coretta King and her late husband.
Malcolm and Betty Shabazz
Malcolm X, as he was known, was the subject of FBI surveillance from 1953 until his assassination in 1965, an effort identified in a file containing thousands of pages under his birth name and surname — but the bureau was keeping tabs on his wife, too, even after the Muslim minister was murdered. .
A 1965 Department of Justice memo details her “travel abroad” and warns that an article in Amsterdam News stated months earlier, “The possibility of a split in the ranks of the followers of the late Malcolm X Shabazz looms sharply this week as Malcolm’s widow, Mrs. Betty. She was Shabazz. On her way to Mecca to perform the annual Hajj during the Hajj season.” Another article cited by the FBI speculated that her flight was “sponsored by several African countries.”
Jackie Robinson
One of the greatest swing baseball players of all time, Robinson demolished the barrier that kept African Americans from playing major league baseball. But a decade into his retirement, the FBI paid close attention to his activism on behalf of James Meredith, who was shot four years after his merger at the University of Mississippi.
Years earlier, a 1958 memo cited an article in Voice of the People stating that Robinson “accepted the presidency of the New York State Organizing Committee for United Negroes and Allies of American Veterans”, noting that both the newspaper and UNAVA had communist ties, with the latter accused of being a “communist front.” to stir up racial friction.”
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