Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925 Paperback - 1999

First line

Modern America's political intelligence system-surveillance, investigation, and spying on individuals because of fear or dislike of their beliefs, resulting in harassment, intimidation, or prosecution-came of age during World War I and the Red Scare of 1919 to 1921, and it would thenceforth justify its existence by identifying a never-ending series of national security threats.

From the rear cover

""Seeing Red"" is a gripping, painstakingly documented account of a neglected chapter in the history of American political intelligence. From 1918 into the early 1920s, any African Americans who spoke out forcefully for their race -- editors, union organizers, civil rights advocates, radical political activists, and Pan-Africanists -- were likely to be investigated by a network of federal intelligence agencies. The ""crime"" that justified such surveillance was almost always the ideas they expressed. Agents of the federal government watched them, tapped their phones, rifled their offices, opened their mail, infiltrated their organizations, intimidated their audiences, and caused them to suffer the prospect of prosecutions, all because these agents disapproved of their beliefs.

A young J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that black militancy -- including the demand for civil rights -- was communist-inspired and a threat to both national security and white hegemony, views that would remain part of the FBI's gospel well into the 1970s.