US intelligence agencies surveilled Black expatriate writers in France

Evidence

Gayle, who has had access to heavily censored documents from the American State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency, reports that the CIA was “monitoring” talks by Wright as early as April 1951 (op. cit., pp. 219-21); that Wright’s “leadership of the Franco-American Fellowship angered agents of the military, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department” (p. 221); that within the Black expatriate group, made up of “writers, artists, students, ex-GI’s, composers, musicians, and representatives of various governmental agencies such as UNESCO and the United States Information Service … there were those, a growing number, who served as agents or informers for the CIA, the FBI, and the American Embassy” (p. 207); and that the agencies’ files indicated an increasing traffic of correspondence, reports, and surveillance on Wright from 1956 until his death in 1960 (pp. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2463

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing knowledge of state repression of the Black radical tradition — Robeson’s passport revocation, and FBI surveillance of civil rights leaders.