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  • What is even more crazy is that people believe we are now more "civilized" than this. That nobody would do such a thing in our time.
    by nromiun
  • Sometime around 2010-2020 there were tons of spam messages arriving to gmail of type "I know and have recordings of what you were doing there you immoral filthy pervert!". Nowadays they only want to give away million dollars.
    by lifestyleguru
  • As much as I actually really love MLK's speeches, sermons, movement. I am afraid there appears to be some unfortunate truths about the man. None are perfect except God. That doesn't make the positives he did any less great, it just reminds us of the nature of humanity.

    And that's not to detract from how gross it is that government abused it's power to attempt to get someone to commit suicide. Reminds me of Aaron Swartz case too.

    by maerF0x0
  • What's crazy is that most of the accusations against his moral character are true. He caused a great change to take place in the nation, but he was not an upstanding individual outside of that.

    Good thing the FBI doesn't do this anymore hahaha yes we are certainly safe and they are definitely not infiltrating groups and people's minds in order to discredit and trick them into failure.....

    by Magicrafter13
  • That letter reads almost identical to internet hate comments. Wild. I guess the tactics have always been the same then.

    At least now we have LLMs that can produce this kind of stuff at human-overwhelming rates, so that is progress.

    by hypfer
  • Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_letter
    by andrewla
  • Back then the establishment used the CIA/FBI to prevent a multi-coalition, working class movement across ethnicity, unions, and religions that would have made the US a better democracy.

    The battle of the present (ICE abuse, Social media speech suppression, ..) to win the government back by the people and for the people can still be won - but it hinges all on this November.

    by mentalgear
  • One of the things I have of my father is an envelope which has some brass bits in it (I believe for a scale) which was mailed to my great uncle, addressed by hand, with only the county and state for an address in 1957 from Washington, D.C. with a postmark "Pray for peace" and in a box on the left of the envelope is written:

    -------------------------------------------

    House of Representatives, U.S.

    Part of Congressional Record --- Free

    FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND NAACP IN COLLUSION TO FORCE SCHOOL INTEGRATION IN VIRGINIA

    Address by Honorable Harry Flood Byrd before the Richmond Kiwanis Club, Richmond, Va

    Extension of remarks of HON. WATKINS M. ABBITT of Virginia IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wednesday, April 3, 1957

    -------------------------------------------

    U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

    Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

    I was taught to gut a squirrel by the son of a freed slave who lived behind the home in Virginia where my family retired to, he had worked alongside my grandfather as a sharecropper on my paternal grandmother's father's farm.

    and it's worth noting that that county was one of the last to integrate in Virginia, facilitated by student teachers from a college in a nearby town whose post office is named for Watkins M. Abbitt.

    by WillAdams

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