Hoovers war on gays
An article just published by the U.K.-based Standpoint Magazine alleges that civil rights icon Martin Luther King witnessed and even celebrated a woman’s rape.
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow, one of King’s biographers, the claim relies upon recently declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents that summarize tape recordings of King’s extramarital affairs.
The allegation that King witnessed a rape and did not end it is a serious one. Its impact on how we understand and tell U.S. history, and King’s role in it, is likely to be debated for years.
It’s important to reevaluate King’s legacy in light of this new communication.
But as an historian who has done substantial explore in FBI files on the dark freedom movement, I believe that it’s also important to understand how this information came to be public.
Targeting black activism
As director of the FBI from 1924-72, J. Edgar Hoover had an outsized shape on the corporation. The FBI operated within the Department of Justice and was tasked with investigating violations of federal law and developing intelligence on foreign agents operating on U.S. soil.
At various points in the
The Essay
Introduction
Hoover’s War on Gays was, among my three books, my largest, most laborious, yet, without a doubt, the most enjoyable and satisfying research proposal of my academic career. It was not only a subject deserving comprehensive treatment, it was also a subject of great personal interest.
I started researching it in 2003, a few months after completing my dissertation. It was a slow process, as I was concurrently busy converting my doctoral thesis into my first book.
The easiest and most obvious starting point was collecting the extant FBI files I knew existed — such as relevant parts of Hoover’s classified office files, and those on Sumner Welles, David Walsh, and other unusual targets — and compiling everything I knew was written on the subject.
In the process of reading everything in any way comparable to the topic, I began to identify subjects for Freedom of Data Act requests. Researching the FBI is necessarily based on FOIA requests, a time consuming, often expensive, and sometimes frustrating process.
Obscene File
Besides the obvious FOIA requests on lgbtq+ rights activists and groups, I decided the FBI’s Obscene File must consist of gay-related
Summary
"Based on extensive research of first sources and relentless FOIA requests, Charles provides the first comprehensive history of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI's systematic (some would say obsessive) targeting, enquiry, and harassment of homosexuals for the half century that began in the1930s. One of Charles's signal achievements is to piece together the procedures, purposes, and contents of Hoover's "Sex Deviate File" encompassing an estimated 99 cubic feet, or more than 330,000 pages, but which was destroyed by the FBI in the late 1970s"-- Provided by publisher.
"At the FBI, the "Sex Deviates" program covered a lot of ground, literally; at its peak, J. Edgar Hoover's notorious "Sex Deviates" file encompassed nearly 99 cubic feet or more than 330,000 pages of communication. In 1977-1978 these files were destroyed--and it would seem that four decades of the FBI's dirty secrets went up in smoke. But in a striking feat of investigative research, synthesis, and scholarly detective work, Douglas M. Charles manages to occupy in the yawning blanks in the bureau's history of systematic (some would say obsessive) interest in the lives of queer and lesbian Americans in the twent
Hoover's War on Gays: Displaying the FBI's "Sex Deviates" Program
Synopsis
At the FBI, the “Sex Deviates” program covered a lot of earth, literally; at its summit, J. Edgar Hoover's notorious “Sex Deviates” file encompassed nearly 99 cubic feet or more than 330,000 pages of information. In 1977–1978 these files were destroyed—and it would look that four decades of the FBI's dirty secrets went up in smoke. But in a extraordinary feat of investigative analyze, synthesis, and scholarly detective work, Douglas M. Charles manages to fill in the yawning blanks in the bureau's history of systematic (some would state obsessive) interest in the lives of gay and lesbian Americans in the twentieth century. His publication, Hoover’s War on Gays, is the first to fully expose the remarkable invasion of US citizens' privacy perpetrated on a historic scale by an institution tasked with protecting American life.
For much of the twentieth century, when exposure might mean nothing short of ruin, male lover American men and women had much to be afraid of from law enforcement of every kind—but none so much as the FBI, with its inexhaustible federal resources, con