“Character Assassins”: How the FBI Used the Issue of Homosexuality against the Black Freedom Struggle

Abstract

Abstract This article examines Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inquiries into and counterintelligence actions against gay and lesbian activists in the Black freedom struggle. Drawing on dozens of individual Freedom of Information Act requests and the files of the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO), this article argues that the FBI’s investigation and exposure of gay and lesbian activists in the Black freedom struggle served as a tactic typical of the FBI’s attempts to discredit and sow division within and among civil rights and Black Power groups. Prior to creating a formal counterintelligence program against the movement, the bureau focused its efforts on often ineffective attempts at outing individual activists. With the creation in 1967 of a formal COINTELPRO against so-called “Black Nationalist–Hate Groups” and “Black Extremists,” however, the bureau drew on this tactic to even greater effect. While other scholars have highlighted extreme tactics employed in COINTELPRO, like fomenting outright violence, this article finds little evidence of that. Instead, a more typical technique of the FBI was the use of poison-pen letters or leaflets that outed gays in the movement to fellow activists or reporters or raised the issue of homosexuality to sow division within the movement and between organizations. In the end, this article draws attention to a rarely discussed issue in Black freedom struggle historiography—the role of gay and lesbian activists and the added burdens they faced from opposition forces—while reexamining COINTELPRO to gain a better understanding of the actions that typified its efforts to discredit and divide the movement.