When Revelations Really Aren’t That Revelatory: Dr. King and Human Rights Struggle

Any appreciation for the history of human rights struggle in the United States makes the more recent revelations about the “surveillance state” less revelatory than inevitable.  It is merely the incompleteness of those liberation struggles that has meant an ability – and need – for power to surveil more and more and for this surveillance to move increasingly from the political battlefield to incorporate “civilians.”  For those who were/are consciously involved in political struggle surveillance has always been an overwhelming concern.  Before his more famous exploits chasing organized crime, even before there was an FBI, J. Edgar Hoover made his first target Marcus Garvey, Anarchists and organized labor.  By the time Hoover’s organization turned its focus to Dr. King his state surveillance compatriots had already cut their teeth on King’s movement predecessors such as Vicky Garvin and Esther Cooper Jackson.  This kind of surveillance blossomed into the full-blown Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) where the FBI targeted King specifically as an increasing threat “should he abandon his supposed obedience to white, liberal doctrines (nonviolence) and embrace Black Nationalism.”  In fact, earlier, immediately after King’s 1963 “Dream” speech William C. Sullivan, head of Hoover’s surveillance programs said King had become, “the most dangerous Negro… from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security…”  In fact, it is interesting to note how often the word “surveillance” is followed by “harassment” when in files and histories about those in political struggle. This is demonstrated partially in the example of Hoover and Sullivan conspiring through phony letter-writing to encourage King to kill himself.  This was merely one of what were “at least 25 illegal attempts by the FBI to discredit King,” a man Hoover would also call, “the most notorious liar in the country.”   Dhoruba bin-Wahad, former political prisoner, Black Panther Party member and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army, said recently during a gathering of those concerned about surveillance and political activism that at the level of ideas, critique and education there should be no attempt at secrecy since none can legitimately be expected anyway.  Put it out there, say what you think.  Debate, argue, educate, critique all in the open because someone is listening anyway.  By putting it on the table there can be no misuse of people’s positions or ambiguity about who said what and in what context.  And now that more of us are being swept into surveillance webs cast by an increasingly incestuous public and private partnerships It stands to reason that incomplete liberation movements would lead to an equivalent increase in the conditions that require those movements and, therefore, the kinds of increased surveillance we are now seeing (or not).

JARED BALL, imixwhatilike@gmail.com