
This loosely defined mission formed the heading under which the FBI began to investigate the civil rights movement. During World War II, the FBI was further authorized to investigate threats to national security.
Secret animosity definition series#
Roosevelt asked the FBI to research “subversives” in the United States, and Congress passed a series of laws increasing the types of federal crimes falling under the FBI’s jurisdiction.


Throughout the 1930s the FBI’s role expanded when President Franklin D. Hoover became FBI director in 1924 and served until his death in 1972. The FBI was created in 1909 as the Justice Department’s unit to investigate federal crimes. Under the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) King was subjected to various kinds of FBI surveillance that produced alleged evidence of extramarital affairs, though no evidence of Communist influence. This animosity increased after April 1964, when King called the FBI “completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South” (King, 23 April 1964). Edgar Hoover was personally hostile toward King, believing that the civil rights leader was influenced by Communists.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, and engaged in covert operations against him throughout the 1960s.
