Bureau of Investigation Surveils Black Press and Leaders as 'Radical Agitators'

The Bureau of Investigation began systematic surveillance of Black civil rights leaders, newspapers, and organizations during WWI, designating anti-lynching advocacy as potentially seditious. Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, and Cyril Briggs were monitored. The Justice Department's Radicalism and Sedition Among the Negroes investigation treated Black demands for civil rights as foreign-influenced radicalism, establishing the federal surveillance framework that would expand into COINTELPRO.