4. The full context of remarkable FBI letter can be found here: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html?_r=2&referrer= … (Very much worth reading).
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. Let's step back and think about J. Edgar Hoover's role as one of the pillars of American state racism.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
6. When we think of USA state racism we think of Southern politicians like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond but Hoover as important.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. Hoover's unrelenting hostility to black militancy is the dominant thread of his career from First Red Scare to his death.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
8. Hoover's racism as a policy position came to the fore during the First Red Scare, starting in 1919 and running through 1920s.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9 The book to read is T. Kornweibel's “Seeing Red ”: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925 (basis for these tweets).
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Replying to @HeerJeet
10. In the wake of first world war & attendant upheavals, period from 1919 onwards saw renewed black militancy, often led by war vets.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. Post-1917, USA caught up in Red Scare. Hoover's policy innovation was to combine red-baiting with opposition to black militancy
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Replying to @HeerJeet
12. As part of Justice Dept's General Intelligence Division (forerunner to FBI) Hoover in 1920s target black militants of all stripes.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
13. 1920s black militants came in many strips from black nationalists to liberal integrationists. Hoover opposed them all.
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14. During the first Red Scare, Hoover came to realize the power he could accrue as enemy of "subversives."
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Replying to @HeerJeet
15. But it's important to remember who the "subversives" were in Hoover's eyes: anyone who would subvert white supremacy.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
16. Hoover's anti-communism was inextricable from his racism. That's the reality mainstream political discourse shies away from.
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