Review of Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972 by Kenneth O'Reilly

"Racial Matters": The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972, by Kenneth O'Reilly, is an examination of the actions and inaction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the civil rights movement. Focusing largely on the director of the FBI in this time frame, J. Edgar Hoover, it explains the ways in which Hoover's personality was indelibly stamped on everything which the FBI did. Additionally, O'Reilly shows the way in which the FBI's response to the civil rights movement changed over time, although most of these changes were nearly imperceptible to an outsider. Finally, he examines the response of the FBI to one particular member of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr.

J. Edgar Hoover was an interesting man, but O'Reilly barely touches upon the alleged seedier aspects of his life. Instead, he examines several key components of Hoover's personality that affected the way in which the FBI dealt with the civil rights movement. First of all, Hoover was known to be a racist. O'Reilly seems to attribute this to the fact that few people living when Hoover grew up were not racist in some way. Second, Hoover was a strong advocate of states' rights. He was reluctant to bring in the FBI on many cases because he felt that it would infringe upon the right or duty of local law officials to keep the peace.

The last thing he wanted, he claimed, was for the FBI to become "a national police force." (p. 64) Finally, Hoover constantly emphasized the fact that the FBI's mission was not to protect anyone, it was simply to investigate people. Therefore, intervention by the FBI in many instances would have been outside of their self-described jurisdiction. For the most part, Hoover's views were supported by the presidents who served terms while he was the director of the FBI. Whether they supported him out of fear he would resign or because they fully agreed with his views on race and jurisdiction is not entirely clear.

Hoover's response to the civil rights movement throughout was that it was essentially un-American. In order to support this claim further, he attempted to link the leaders of the movement to other un-American groups or sentiments. At first, he claimed Communist influences had brought about the civil rights movement. Much of the FBI's early work dealing with the movement was attempts to find the Communists within the movement or at least the Communists who were influencing the leaders. When it finally became painfully obvious that Communist infiltration was not the instigator, Hoover had found another influence to blame: militancy. In the later years covered by this book, as black militancy grew, Hoover found it easier to emphasize the ways in which the civil rights movement was against normal American ideals.

Although O'Reilly has very little to say on the people of the movement, other than their complete dissatisfaction with the FBI, he does spend a chapter on the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Initially, the surveillance by FBI agents was in an attempt to link him directly to the Communist Party, as an active member. When that scheme failed, they looked instead at his close associates, and tried to link them to the Communists. Finally, when they realized that the Communists had little to nothing to do with King, they switched their focus onto his purportedly immoral behavior. On numerous occasions, his hotel rooms were bugged in order to obtain "evidence" of him having sexual relations with, particularly, white women. The main reason why the FBI wished to discredit King was because Hoover, among others, saw him for what he was: a highly charismatic leader with the potential to lead the black population well. O'Reilly even suggests that the FBI would have liked to replace King with someone under their control in order to prevent the civil rights movement from reaching the potential it had under King's leadership.

Although it is clear that O'Reilly attempts to be objective in his assessment of the FBI's role in the civil rights movement, it is obvious that he is a supporter of the civil rights activists. Perhaps the strongest example of his lack of objectivity is found in the conclusion, where he states: "Hoover will always be remembered for standing against the Red menace, for fueling the periodic hysterias of the Red scare. He should also be remembered for standing against justice for blacks, for fueling the fears of a black scare in the time of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon." (p. 353) Aside from this bias, the rest of the book is excellent. The sources used are extensive, and are mostly primary sources from the FBI's files which were made public by the Freedom of Information Act. As opposed to other books that deal with the civil rights movement from the perspective of the participants, this book's perspective of those who wished to prevent their success adds to the historical knowledge of both the successes and failures of the civil rights movement.