Abstract

Black resistance movements have always existed to push the envelope and fight to establish political agency and freedom against the state and surrounding institutions that work to dispose of and disenfranchise Black communities across the U.S. The contentious relationship between the U.S. government and leftist movements is a rich and developed ground of scholarship analyzing how repression emerges and evolves across time as a tool against social movements fighting for change. This scholarship however misses how state agencies work to undermine and racially flatten Black radical movements through crafting official, racialized narratives and images that reshape what these movements represent. In the context of the FBI’s counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) against Black Nationalists in the late 1960s, I analyze how the bureau discursively constructs Black activists as dangerous, immoral threats to society while activists themselves work to frame and establish themselves and what they stand for politically amid this period of repression. This project contributes to discussions of political repression on Black radical activism that has implications for scholars studying social movement repression by the state and for the wider public with the ongoing repression and counterinsurgency work enacted against Black movements today.

Committee Chair

David Cunningham

Committee Members

Kenneth Andrews, Adia Harvey Wingfield

Degree

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Author's Department

Sociology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Spring 5-2025

Language

English (en)

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Sociology Commons

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