According to Pitchfork, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently unearthed a file that they had kept on the late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin who passed away in 2018. Throughout the file, it is clear that the organization surveilled her involvement in the civil rights activism of the ‘60s and ‘70s, including tracking her association with racial justice groups such as the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army as well as her relationships with Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis.
The document spans over 270 pages and includes information about Franklin’s activities relating to the Civil Rights Movement, notable threats to her life and a copyright infringement case that never made it to trial. The file documents her performances at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which were attended by King in Georgia and Tennessee in 1967 and 1968. The concerts were labeled “communist infiltration” events. It also claims that the events would have caused “racial disturbance[s]” in the area.
They also noted a few credible death threats against Franklin in the form of a Cook County inmate who attempted to extort her for one million dollars while falsely posing as an FBI agent, a random stranger who had informed her that she was purportedly on a “hit list” and a person who threatened her with phone calls and letters in the mail. The file also detailed a copyright infringement case against the moderator of an Aretha Franklin fan site who was found to be allegedly selling pirated CDs and DVDs of her performances.
In August, it was revealed that the last surviving bandmember of The Monkees, Micky Dolenz, filed lawsuit against the FBI in order to gain access to a file on the band. A version of the file detailed the band’s leaning towards “left wing intervention of a political nature” specifically their anti-U.S. stance on the Vietnam War.
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