FBI documents from the years 1942-1963, reflecting Du Bois's support of and participation in Communist organizations, his anti-American statements issued abroad, and the statements that his supporters made to defend him against charges of communism.
How FBI surveillance influenced African American writing Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's white-bread Federal Bureau of Investigation. But behind the scenes the FBI's hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, F.B. Eyes exposes the Bureau’s intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem’s renaissance and Hoover’s career at the Bureau, secretive FBI "ghostreaders" monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover’s death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau’s close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as William J. Maxwell reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century. Taking his title from Richard Wright’s poem "The FB Eye Blues," Maxwell details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, he shows that the Bureau’s paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover’s ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship. Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, F.B. Eyes is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.
This is the first book to discern the contribution of Du Bois' work to criminology and criminal justice through a comprehensive review of his papers, articles and books. Beginning with reflections from childhood, the author traces Du Bois's ideas and reveals how he was a pioneer in several key areas of criminology and criminal justice.
This is the first book to discern the contribution of Du Bois' work to criminology and criminal justice through a comprehensive review of his papers, articles and books. Beginning with reflections from his childhood, the author traces Du Bois' ideas on crime and justice throughout his life. This includes a unique analysis of Du Bois' experience as an object of the criminal justice system, a review of his FBI file, his 1951 trial and his pioneering social scientific research program at Atlanta University. The book illustrates the depth of Du Bois' interest in the field and reveals how he was a pioneer in key areas of criminology and criminal justice. The book contains five appendices which include four original papers written by Du Bois as well as maps from The Philadelphia Negro.
Pioneering historian, sociologist, editor, novelist, poet, and organizer, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the foremost African American intellectuals of the twentieth century. While Du Bois is remembered for his monumental contributions to scholarship and civil rights activism, the spiritual aspects of his work have been misunderstood, even negated. W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, the first religious biography of this leader, illuminates the spirituality that is essential to understanding his efforts and achievements in the political and intellectual world. Often labeled an atheist, Du Bois was in fact deeply and creatively involved with religion. Historian Edward J. Blum reveals how spirituality was central to Du Bois's approach to Marxism, pan-Africanism, and nuclear disarmament, his support for black churches, and his reckoning of the spiritual wage of white supremacy. His writings, teachings, and prayers served as articles of faith for fellow activists of his day, from student book club members to Langston Hughes. A blend of history, sociology, literary criticism, and religious reflection in the model of Du Bois's best work, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet recasts the life of this great visionary and intellectual for a new generation of scholars and activists. Honorable Mention, 2007 Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards
Carrying W.E.B. Du Bois from his birth in Massachusetts in 1868 to his death in Ghana in 1963, this concise encyclopedia covers all of the highlights of his life--his studying at Fisk, Harvard, and Berlin, his tiff with Booker T. Washington, his role with the NAACP and Pan-Africanism, his writings, his globe trotting, and his exile in Ghana. With contributions by leading scholars and a foreword by David Levering Lewis, the book provides a complete overview of Du Bois's life. Featuring the highlights of his life, the events and personalities that influenced him, his intellectual contributions, and his activism, this book provides a complete understanding of this highly influential intellectual activist. With the conclusion of the Cold War, there is the opportunity to obtain a fuller, more complete understanding of Du Bois' entire life. Providing full coverage of his latter crucial years--often ignored in earlier works--this book provides the latest scholarly insights, including a major entry by prizewinning scholar Brenda Gayle Plummer.
From the moment of Einstein's arrival in the U.S. in l933 until his death in l955, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, with help from several other federal agencies, busied itself collecting "derogatory information" in an effort to undermine Einstein's influence and destroy his prestige. For the first time Fred Jerome tells the story of that anti-Einstein campaign, as well as the story behind it--why and how the campaign originated, and thereby provides the first detailed picture of Einstein's little known political activism. Unlike the popular image of Einstein as an absent-minded, head-in-the-clouds genius, the man was in fact intensely politically active and felt it was his duty to use his world-wide fame shrewdly in the cause of social justice. A passionate pacifist, socialist, internationalist and outspoken critic of racism (Einstein considered racism America's "worst disease"), and personal friend of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, Einstein used his immense prestige to denounce McCarthy at the height of his power, publicly urging witnesses to refuse to testify before HUAC. The story that emerges not only reveals a little known aspect of Einstein's character, but underscores the dangers that can arise, to threaten the American Republic and the rule of law, in times of obsession with national security.