Bureau of Investigation Surveils Ida B. Wells and Black Press as 'Radical Agitators'

The Bureau of Investigation (precursor to the FBI) began systematic surveillance of Black civil rights leaders, newspapers, and organizations during WWI, designating anti-lynching advocacy and demands for equal rights as potentially seditious. Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, and Cyril Briggs were monitored. The Justice Department's Radicalism and Sedition Among the Negroes investigation produced a 1919 report treating Black demands for civil rights as foreign-influenced radicalism. This established the federal surveillance framework that would expand into COINTELPRO.