
Jimmy Is Everywhere: On James Baldwin's FBI File - samclemens
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/james-baldwin-fbi-files/
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throwaway010718
"I am Not Your Negro" is a fantastic documentary about Baldwin.

In that documentary, filmed in 1960's, the same questions were asked that are
often asked today. William Buckley asks Baldwin, "Why are negros so upset ?
You are on TV commercials, movie leads, you hold positions in government.
Isn't racism in the past."

That was before I was born. But in my lifetime the Tuskegee medical
experiments were still being performed on black men. I witnessed a landlord
ask my parents to pretend they were taking an apartment so that the blacks in
the waiting area could be told it is no longer available. I had a young
detective in Chicago privately disclose to me that as a cop he would just
followed black people (if there were more than one in the car because the odds
one of them might have a warrant would be higher) in his cop car until they
committed a traffic violation. He used racial profiling so effectively that he
became one of youngest detectives of all time.

In my college years the US government was selling highly addictive and
destructive drugs in African American neighborhoods as a covert way to raise
funds. But when that story broke it was pushed off the headlines because the
Monica Lewinsky scandal was more important. The reporter who broke the story
was so disheartened he killed himself.

And in just the past years we have seen too many snuff films and needless
deaths.

Yet I still personally encounter people who claim African Americans haven't
experienced racism in 100 years. And what are they complaining about, "they
seem to be in most commercials these days and hold high positions in
government, so racism must be in the past". Because why bother learning what
the Black Lives Matter movement stood for when you can just snark "all lives
matter". But if you were snark "Pro-life ? You mean you are a vegetarian ?",
some of those same people would be so annoyed they would burn down an abortion
clinic. But black people burning something, that anger they can't understand.

Will the U.S. ever come to terms with our racist past ? Will our future
grandchildren be ruminating on these issues simply because many people keep
casually dismissing the suffering of others.

As a side note, I am conflicted if general interest stories like this should
be on HN as they are too emotionally charged.

~~~
raldi
_> The reporter who broke the story was so disheartened he killed himself._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Nothing suspicious sounding about that.

~~~
nugi
'Multiple gun shot suicide'

Indeed.

~~~
tc313
Dick Fuld shot himself twice in the heart and still wasn’t able to kill
himself.

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confounded
If anyone’s interested in buying it, I can attest that the book in question is
a fantastic coffee table tome.

It’s very striking, reading the file in 2018, how various things which are
basically political suppression and harassment are all lumped in under
“national security” by FBI men writing reports at type writers.

I have no idea why, but I assumed this kind of thing would at least have a
different euphemism!

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RedneckBob
One the most impactful statements on race that I've ever encountered. That led
me on a multi-day bender watching all of Baldwin's talks and speeches on
youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0L5fciA6AU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0L5fciA6AU)

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shove
I read Ta-Nehisi_Coates' "Between the World and Me" right after Baldwin's "The
Fire Next Time" and felt such shame that so little has changed in America
between the two.

I felt like I read the same book twice.

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cityofghosts
We are all Jimmy now.

~~~
lobf
>The new edition of Talking at the Gates contained an afterword which detailed
the contents of the file the FBI opened on Baldwin in 1961 and maintained
until 1974. In December 1963, his name was added to the Security Index, a list
of people to be sought and detained in the event of a state of emergency.

>Baldwin’s own telephone was never tapped, as far as the record shows, though
there are Bureau records of his conversations with people whose phones were.
In 1967 he was made the subject of an F#1 Stop Notice, or “lookout”, so that
his arrival at US airports was reported. In this instance, it was by means of
a telephone call as he collected his luggage from the carousel

>In the mid-1960s, Baldwin was semi-resident in Istanbul. The FBI tracked his
movements there, took note of his eviction from an apartment for “homosexual
activities”, and of his intention to form an artistic association with the
Turkish novelist Yashar Kemal and the actor Engin Cezzar. An interview from a
Turkish newspaper was translated and sent to Washington with two sentences
emphasized: “Baldwin had settled in Istanbul in March of 1966” and “After
finishing his book the author will return to America”. Statements he made in
the American press on Civil Rights affairs while in Turkey or in France were
clipped and filed.

>It includes scattered reports on Baldwin’s movements around the world,
records of “pretext phone calls” made by agents for the purposes of soliciting
information by deceit (posing as an “auto salesman” or a “member of a peace
organization”, among other things), snoopers’ accounts of public meetings and
private encounters, articles by and about Baldwin clipped from press sources,
as well as oddities such as letters of complaint about his books or media
statements, written to Hoover by concerned citizens.

Really? This is all of us now? Sounds to me like they really targeted this
guy.

~~~
jacobush
Maybe alluding to that "they" have much more intelligence on each and every
one of us by default, than they got from a targeted guy back then.

~~~
lobf
I understand that was the intention, but we aren't all being specifically
targeted by the FBI. If they can collect as much information on us without
specifically targeting us, imagine if they _did_ target you?

