REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Former FBI Director James Comey had glowing words for his old organization when he testified regarding President Donald Trump’s meddling in the bureau’s Russia investigation Thursday.
“The FBI is honest, the FBI is strong and the FBI is and always will be independent,” Comey said to the members of Congress, media and observers assembled on Capitol Hill.
But for many black Americans, the history of the FBI is defined largely by its suppression of civil rights groups during the late-20th century. Black Twitter users wasted no time in pointing this out:
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872821898052333568
COMEY: “The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong and the FBI is and always will be independent.”
Every Black person in America: pic.twitter.com/Pn1PDzK2bE
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872823185049366530
Black folks listening to Comey say the FBI Is “honest and good” pic.twitter.com/5pzuOPhrPX
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872822966542880768
“The FBI is honest….” – Comey
Black people: pic.twitter.com/HFclIBKYz9
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872849667666694144
The FBI was never honest and a friend of black America. I wish Dr. King and brother Malcolm can answer that from their grave… pic.twitter.com/5DLBmZH13P
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872822468830007302
Comey: FBI is Honest!
Malcom X and MLK in heaven: #ComeyTestimony pic.twitter.com/dsjKzhVWDe
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872833560000024578
Trying to remember when the FBI has ever been a trustworthy, honest, and fully credible organization… pic.twitter.com/njJVg4p5j5
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/872821778799874048
James Comey said the FBI is “honest.” #ComeyDay pic.twitter.com/6A60aj613M
In the 1960s, the FBI famously initiated COINTELPRO, a years-long counterintelligence campaign aimed at discrediting and dismantling the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement and other civil rights organizations.
In 1964, FBI agents mailed an anonymous letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. written in the guise of a disgruntled black follower. The letter calls King “a complete fraud”; “a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile”; and a “sexual psychotic,” then urges King to kill himself.
“There is but one way out for you,” the letter reads. “You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
Comey and the FBI have attained a sort of minor outlaw status among liberals recently, ever since Trump abruptly fired him in an apparent attempt to manipulate the outcome of an investigation into his campaign’s connections with the Russian government.
But if the social media response is any indicator, many Americans know better. The FBI is an organization that has fought civil rights progress for black people, Natives, Muslims and others for decades. Not even Comey’s mini-feud with Trump can erase that.
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