War Of Fbi
Essay by 24 • March 15, 2011 • 598 Words (3 Pages) • 1,341 Views
The FBI's War on Black America documentary by Denis Mueller and Deb Ellis showed that the government of the United States allowed its federal law enforcement agency to carry out a war against its own black people during the period of the 1960s and early 1970s. The government agency was the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the tactics employed were blackmailing, smear campaigns, and ultimately, assassination. The Cointelpro policy of the FBI stated the four goals that it must accomplish to suppress the African American community movement for changes:
1. Prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups.
2. Prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.
3. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to the community.
4. A final goal should be to prevent the long-range growth of militant black nationalist organizations especially among youth.
This documentary showed me that the FBI and other government agencies utilized powerful resources against the civil rights movement and its leaders, and as a result forced unnecessary suffering on the African-American community, who are already suffering from economic and civil rights setbacks created by the government.
The FBI followed their Cointelpro goals closely. It blackmailed, spread false rumors, and sent its agent to infiltrate among civil rights organizations to create distrust. When all else failed, the FBI utilized arms attacks to assassinate civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and his friends of the Black Panther organizations.
Facing with economic bleak and civil rights suppression, it was the spark that ignited the African American community to revolt. In the 1960s and 1970s, series of marches, protests and riots broke out in various major cities in America. Instead of enforcing federal laws that ensure equality of civil rights, the FBI unleashed a reign of terror and intimidation on the African American population by cooperating with white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in order to discourage
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