By Mohammed Khaku
JEH is a stain on American History! Tear down his name from American History. His Name should be removed from FBI buildings.
“Being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”
Poet Amanda Gorman
February being the Black history month and with the rise of police brutality, I think it is an appropriate time for me to pin the below column.
After King publicly rebuked the Vietnam war on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church “silence is betrayal” Lyndon Johnson was furious, allowing JEH to accelerate his campaign to destroy Dr. King.
In 1960’s FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (JEH) conducted an extensive program called COINTEL PRO. This was the most abusive of all FBI programs in history.
He controlled the FBI with an iron fist and had secret dossiers on nearly every member of the congress and his enemies. It was personal vendetta against anyone who criticized him.
He was a notorious bigot with only one goal – to disrupt the civil rights movement and crusade to destroy MLK and the civil rights icons like his personal advisor – a Jewish lawyer named Stanley Levison.
JEH never supported the anti-lynching legislation nor supported the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt instead spread racist rumors that she was mixed race.
JEH use of sexual entrapment projects, leaking negative information about democrats to the media, spying on peace, and environment movements, and planting bugs in foreign embassies.
Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon wanted to fire JEH, but he let them know that he knew of their weaknesses, and deficiencies to seal his position as FBI director for over four decades.
The FBI conducted surveillance, wiretapping and harassment against Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK) with the permission of attorney general Robert Kennedy.
He prosecuted the Civil rights activists and Vietnam protesters, while delaying or abandoning the prosecution of KKK members.
JEH was personally hostile towards King, believing that the civil right leader was a Communist and a danger to the USA. JEH was obsessed with destroying the King because he was black.
With most of the material sealed by a federal judge until 2027, the 70,00 redacted pages obtained through Freedom of Information Act reveal that JEH kept secret files on MLK, Muhammad Ali & Malcolm X.
FBI agents bugged King’s home, hotel rooms, & offices to record the civil rights leader’s daily activities. The agents planted informants and collected salacious material to assassinate his character.
After relentless surveillance the FBI failed to reveal any communist affiliations or any violations of laws, except minor marital affairs.
The FBI uses this marital affair not only to discredit him as a civil right leader or pastor, but to blackmail. This caused a great distress to MLK that he was requested to visit psychiatric, the next day JEH had his entire medical file.
After collecting all the info, FBI sent an anonymous letter along with tapes, suggesting that he should commit suicide.
It was a poison pen hate letter sent to the media, churches and colleges to discredit King and restrict his speeches at the colleges and churches.
MLK preached actively against the ideology of communism, arguing that it was fundamentally contradictory with the tenets of Christianity.
JEH created the modern FBI and ran it for 48 years, until his death in 1972. He collected dirt on public officials, civil rights leaders and public citizens to blackmail or dare criticize the FBI.
The FBI is the most admired and professional law enforcement agency in the world, however, as documented in numerous op-ed columns, and books are not pretty, but damn ugly.
JEH was egoistic, corrupt, abusing power with deceit to hunt his enemies and destroy them. He was a consummate enemy of the civil right movement. He protected Klansmen who bombed black churches.
On Sept 15th 1963, four African American girls Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins and Denise McNair were murdered when a bomb ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Despite the FBI knowing the identities of the bombers, and yet it took 40 years to bring them to justice because JEH withheld the evidence in the case and refused to share the info with the prosecutors.
JEH has a legacy of violence, racial terror, undermining the rule of law and social justice movements. It is no conspiracy that JEH plotted to destroy Black America through wiretaps, forgery, rumors & blackmail.
JEH did not pull the trigger on Malcolm X or Dr. King, nonetheless he has blood on his hands. So, tear down his legacy for good.
Many historians, politicians, civil rights leaders and academicians have criticized JEH as a recognized racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and against the civil rights movement.
JEH had a troubled childhood at Kappa Alpha, George Washington University, his relationship with Clyde Tolson, and his formative time as a white supremacist.
JEH gave law enforcement a bad reputation. His name should not be inscribed on the FBI buildings, PERIOD!
JEH did not uphold the laws, standard of justice, nor the constitution, but abused his power to go after his enemies, and civil rights leaders.
He was a tyrant making his enemies into submission of guilt. He is stain on the US’s rule of law, human rights and civil liberties.
We should stop honoring this tainted legacy and rename the FBI building and remove all his symbols and pictures from the Federal building.
Looking through partially classified reports of clandestine work of JEH, it is time for removing JEH name and tearing down the statues from the FBI building.
In light of JEH’s past record of abuses towards civil right leaders, Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee introduced a bill in 2015 to remove the JEH name from the FBI buildings.
The bill of Rep. Cohen failed to pass as did a similar bill introduced two decades ago. The time is ripe with the 2024 presidential election to start the campaign to “tear down” JEH’s name.
We should make sure that any candidate running for the election should pledge to introduce a similar bill to remove the name of this dishonorable person – JEH from all FBI buildings.
FBI was devoting vast resources and voyeuristic surveillance to track Dr. King’s every move, how could they have failed to foil the assassination plot against Dr. King? Or Malcolm X?
Towards the end of Dr. King’s life, he initiated the project known as “poor people’s campaign” to address the economic inequality. Dr. King did not live to see the project come to fruition.
Let us all support the poor people campaign and tear down the legacy of JEH.
