Thursday, March 28, 2024

FBI Surveilled Aretha Franklin’s Civil Rights Activism in the 60s and ’70s

Aretha Franklin

*According to recently declassified FBI files on Aretha Fraklin, the government spent years surveilling the late singer’s civil rights activism in the 1960s and ’70s.

The 270-page document shows that the agency monitored Franklin’s involvement with the civil rights movement, communism and the Black Power movement, NPR reports.

According to PEOPLE, journalist Jen Dize obtained the files and published them in the Substack newsletter Courage News. The docs detail how the FBI showed “repeated and disgusting suspicion” of Franklin, who died in 2018 at age 76.

The FBI monitored Franklin ahead of her performances and appearances for civil rights groups, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, per NPR.

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Aretha Franklin

Per PEOPLE, a document from 1968 reveals that the FBI thought performances by Franklin and several of her musical peers, including Sammy Davis Jr., Marlon Brando and The Supremes, at a Martin Luther King memorial “would provide emotional spark which could ignite racial disturbance [in] this area,” as the documents note that some of that group “have supported militant black power concept.”

The FBI documents also reveal that Frankin and her family received numerous death threats. Franklin’s late father, C.L. Franklin, was also surveilled by the agency. 

Franklin’s FBI file reportedly includes memos that show two informants acknowledging the lack of evidence linking her to any “radical movements.”

“In view of the fact there is no evidence of involvement by Miss Franklin in [Black Liberation Army] activities and in view of her fame as a singer, it is felt that it would not be in the best interests of the Bureau to attempt to interview her,” the memo said.

A majority of Franklin’s 270-page long FBI file reportedly involves her legal team’s efforts to pursue a copyright infringement case against the moderator of a Yahoo! message board group who sold bootleg Aretha Franklin DVDs and CDs. The FBI launched an investigation and noted in a 2007 report that Franklin suffered a “relatively low amount of economic damage.” The case was ultimately closed. 

Franklin was a longtime civil rights activist who explained in her memoir “Respect” that she was proud to be part of the moment. 

“It [reflected] the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher—everyone wanted respect,” Franklin wrote. “It was also one of the battle cries of the civil rights movement. The song took on monumental significance.”

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