J.Edgar Hoover, Literary Critic

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Measured more narrowly, nearly half—23 out of a total of 48—of the historically relevant writers featured in the classroom staple The Norton Anthology of African American Literature were first anthologized by the Bureau, where agents combed works of literature for signs of dissidence. The FBI, it turns out, may have been one of history’s most dedicated critics of African-American literature.

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the disclosed files reveal that the FBI prepared preventive arrests of most of the names dropped above, and altogether more than half of the black authors stalked in its archive. Twenty-seven of 51, accused of communism and related extremisms, were caught in the invisible dragnet of the agency’s “Custodial Detention” index and its successors—hot lists of pre-captives “whose presence at liberty in this country in time of war or national emergency,” Hoover resolved in 1939, “would be dangerous to the public peace and the safety of the United States Government.”https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/fbi-black-writers-117512