Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked civilian and military students around the world to participate in our sixth annual student writing contest on the subject of strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present the Second Place winner from Ryan Reynolds, a student at Mississippi State University.

“God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!” In 1963, James Baldwin, a queer Black author from Harlem, closed his essay “Down at the Cross” with this passage, which sought to capture the increasing social strain in the United States during the 1960s. In his essay, Baldwin stressed that if Black Americans and their white allies failed to “end their racial nightmare” and “change the history of the world,” they risked fulfilling this allegorical prophecy.[1] Baldwin’s work and activism underscored the social and political methods of waging a revolution through subversion and civic mobilization strategies while at the same time not engaging in excessive violence. Literature reflects the cultural realities of those writing it, and Baldwin wielded his prose as a strategic tool to connect the seemingly unconnected and undermine the American social and political structure in pursuit of a cause. The subsequent reactions to Baldwin’s work from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice encapsulated the dynamic of Cold War-era fears around revolutionary warfare. Perceived domestic revolutionaries like James Baldwin within the civil rights movement and their ties, whether supposed or real, to the Communist Party were seen by law enforcement as a threat that necessitated the development and implementation of unconventional warfare strategies for use on American citizens.

While all wars are political in nature, revolutionary wars occur within a state rather than among rival states and center on either generating or preventing a political and social upheaval of the established order. Central to a revolutionary war is the notion of “the cause,” typically a set of political, economic, and social grievances which foster the belief that the established order is illegitimate or unjust. In the 20th century, revolutionary warfare most often occurred in states undergoing post-war decolonization, in societies with an oppressive political regime, or in those states and societies undergoing ideological shifts caused by religious or communist beliefs.[2] While the bloody revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Algeria, and Cuba are vivid in historical memory, revolutionary warfare does not have to devolve into a violent civil war. Revolutions can be violent and/or non-violent. In instances when open violence is not strategically viable or is ideologically opposed, revolutionaries must employ other means to accomplish their political objectives. For many civil rights activists in the United States, political mobilization and establishing a moral authority served as the most effective means of accomplishing their cause of equity and equality in Jim Crow America. Attaining these means was difficult and required that civil rights leaders construct a national strategy that established their moral high ground in the eyes of the American public and the world and emphasized the legal political processes of change available to citizens in the United States. 

James Baldwin assisted in cultivating a national strategy for the civil rights movement, and his abilities as an author and strategist embodied what the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz calls “genius.” In focusing on the concept of genius, Clausewitz sought to create a method of analysis that highlighted whether a leader possessed strength of mind, creativity, and a suitable temperament to manage the military and political objectives of a war. Genius underscored a commander’s creativity and resolve, consisting of “a harmonious combination of elements” that allowed leaders to control their passions and make reasoned decisions.[3] However, the importance of genius and other strategic concepts employed by military theorists extends beyond the battlefield; creative, reasoned decision-making is essential to strategic development in pursuit of any political objective. Warfare is shaped by political objectives, as Clausewitz noted when he penned, “If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character.”[4] Leaders in the American civil rights movement had to define the character of their struggle and confront the problem of how a group of revolutionaries would attain a political objective without an army. Baldwin provided an answer and employed his creativity and imagination to create pieces of literature that assisted in furthering the revolutionary political objectives of civil rights activists. His writing personified what Clausewitz and other military theorists call coup d’oeil. Baldwin’s ability to connect the ostensibly unconnected characterizes the definition of coup d’oeil outlined in Clausewitz’s On War, expressed as a profound intellect and a “quick recognition of a truth that the mind would ordinarily miss or perceive only after long study and reflection.”[5] Because strategic concepts are not limited to traditional interstate conflict, and due to the diverse nature of revolutionary movements, looking at the literature of James Baldwin through the lens of strategy reveals the qualities of genius and coup d’oeil present in his character. Baldwin’s words helped wage what Martin Luther King Jr. dubbed the “Negro Revolution” by emphasizing the righteousness of their cause and placing Black Americans in the global Cold War context of decolonization.[6]

Baldwin emphasized the importance of moral authority and political legitimacy over violence in his 1963 collection of essays, The Fire Next Time. Baldwin connected the Black experience in the United States with broader decolonization movements occurring overseas, stating that “the word ‘independence’ in Africa and the word ‘integration’ here are almost equally meaningless; that is, Europe has not yet left Africa, and black men here are not yet free.”[7] While Baldwin repeatedly used words like “freedom” and believed Americans were “living in an age of revolution,” he balked at direct violence or establishing an independent Black nation in North America.[8] Commenting on the Nation of Islam’s goals in 1962 regarding land acquisition as reparations for slave labor, specifically in the southern states, Baldwin believed the organization pursued a “fantasy.” The United States, argued the Harlem native, “would never surrender this territory” unless they “were to be reduced as a world power” in a manner similar to the decline of the British Empire. As it was, post-war American power had not declined, and Baldwin recognized that “white people of the United States and Canada” would not “maroon themselves” on a hostile continent facing an “aggressive” Black and Latin American South, a “non-white East,” and a “powerless” Western Europe. Furthermore, Baldwin understood that open violence only invited and legitimized the use of the American military and believed that any long-term armed struggle would fail due to the relatively small and fractured Black population. Instead, the author declared that Black activists should “not hesitate to utilize—or, indeed to exacerbate—the social and spiritual discontent that reigns” within the United States.[9]

When commenting on popular uprisings, Clausewitz remarked they should be “nebulous and elusive; its resistance should never materialize as a concrete body, otherwise the enemy can direct sufficient force at its core, crush it, and take many prisoners.” Instead, the uprising should focus on where the enemy is most “vulnerable to its strongest blows.” While Clausewitz was a Prussian officer reflecting on warfare in the nineteenth century, his writing and theories apply to twentieth-century forms of unconventional warfare and revolutionary movements. Indeed, Clausewitz observed that war is a psychological and social endeavor, and the political architecture of a state varies depending on the given time and place of the social and political environment.[10] While the strength of the U.S military rendered victory in open combat unlikely, the American state was susceptible to political and psychological warfare.

While giving a speech at the Tenth Annual Bill of Rights Dinner in New York City in December of 1963, Baldwin stated that the Freedom March in August represented 250,000 Americans who wanted a “redress of grievances.” Those Black Americans wanted to “tell the country of their troubles and tell the troubles of our country” to the world. Baldwin claimed he never feared Russia, China, or Cuba but was “terrified of this country.”[11] In The Fire Next Time, he wrote that because American power was predicated on fear, noting “they had the judges, the juries,” and “the shotguns,” it was a “criminal power to be feared but not respected, and to be outwitted in any way whatever.”[12] Though not realized through a simple process, the political and legal structure in the United States allowed for radical, even revolutionary, change through existing political mechanisms. Baldwin’s vision to utilize and exacerbate domestic discontent were forms of psychological and political subversion that sought to highlight Jim Crow America’s political illegitimacy and gain Black Americans the political power to bring about revolutionary change. Subversion is one of three interrelated fields of unconventional warfare outlined in FM 100-5, Field Service Regulations Operations. In 1963, the same year Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time was released, FM 100-5 defined unconventional warfare as military operations conducted by mainly local personnel within an enemy’s sphere of influence to further military, political, or economic objectives, often integrated with “economic, political, and psychological warfare.” The Army recognized the increased role of unconventional warfare during the Cold War and noted the ideological nature of the conflict necessitated making the “cold war struggle for influence over the minds” of people a “key element” of military operations.[13] The operational environment for unconventional activity is diverse and politically sensitive, with large-scale irregular mobilization and operations often originating from historical exploitation, desires for national independence, or political corruption.[14] Writing extensively on the global realities shaping American policy and the strategic uses of history, Baldwin demonstrated that he was fully aware of the American history of exploitation and the Cold War dynamic centered on winning minds.

Baldwin’s comprehension of the Cold War political climate allowed his writing to simultaneously help subvert the established order and mobilize a biracial political coalition. When writing on the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Baldwin remarked that most Black Americans did not believe the “immense concession would ever have been made if it had not been for the competition of the Cold War.” Regarding decolonization, Baldwin believed that “political reasons” drove Africans to interact with the “descendants of her former masters.” Had Brown and decolonization been a result of “justice or love,” they would have happened sooner. However, “were it not for the realities of power in this difficult era,” integration and independence “might very well not have occurred yet.”[15] Baldwin viewed the 1960s as a moment in time that provided an opportunity for Black Americans to gain their freedom in a manner that considered the peace and capitalized on global political realities. An armed uprising and guerrilla campaign would only ensure long-term violence and uncertainty. He argued that Americans need only look to Cuba or Vietnam to see that when oppressed people change their situation through violence, they are “menaced more than ever by the vacuum that succeeds all violent upheavals.” Baldwin wrote, “we should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution.”[16] While Baldwin hinted at and acknowledged the possibility of violence in public interviews and noted Black Americans hoarded weapons in the case of “unavoidable bloody conflict,” it was often designed to generate political leverage at home and abroad to encourage those stuck in the middle to act. He implored the U.S to solve the “social and moral chaos” surrounding the denial of Black freedom or face the possibility of armed resistance.[17] 

Understanding the power he wielded as an author, Baldwin told a crowd of people in Oakland, CA, “I’m a writer in a revolutionary situation. I do what I do. I know what I have.”[18] Baldwin used the political corruption of Jim Crow in addition to the contemporary and historical subjugation and exploitation of Black Americans in the United States as a psychological weapon. The author viewed many white Americans as “innocent” people “trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.” Baldwin sought to win the contest over the minds of Americans and “release” white people through his prose. In acknowledgment that support of civil rights placed white Americans “in danger” of losing their identity, Baldwin called them his brothers and “countrymen” and wrote, “if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”[19] At the 1963 Bill of Rights Dinner in New York, Baldwin told the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee members that “apathy allows thousands of people in the deep South to perish” and “not only negroes.” The “real victim is the poor white man who does these things because he was told generations ago to do them.”[20]

While Baldwin advocated on numerous occasions for national work stoppages and labor strikes as forms of economic warfare, he knew economic pressure did not equal political power. In 1964, Baldwin told the West German magazine, Der Spiegel, that only power could change Black living conditions. Moreover, while Black Americans possessed economic strength, which Baldwin called a “negative power,” true strength in America stemmed from the vote.[21] Baldwin’s rhetoric ran contrary to prominent leaders among the Black Muslim Movement in the early 1960s, including Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Baldwin felt that what made the Nation of Islam and the Muslim Movement popular among Black men was their ability to “articulate the suffering” in the Black community, a suffering “which has been in this country so long denied” by white Americans. Baldwin felt that Malcolm X’s authority stemmed from his “articulateness and ability to corroborate the reality of Black Americans and show them they really exist.” While Baldwin admittedly stated that he “was delighted” to see white policemen stand afraid of Black men for the first time during a Muslim speaking engagement in Harlem, he rejected the Black Muslim Movement as strategically unrealistic and criticized their constructed history and restrictive ideology.[22] In their placement of Black Americans above others in their beliefs, the Muslim Movement created a “false morale” that would “break down in a moment of crisis.”[23]

Baldwin understood how Black men who remained “trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being” could be drawn to such restrictive and vengeful thinking. He believed that articulating the history of oppression and violence felt by Black Americans, as equals, and in a language white people understood, better served the Black community.[24] Baldwin concluded that “no tyranny is blind to the hint of insurrection” and that a biracial coalition was critical to establishing a “moral authority” for equality, not superiority. Baldwin sought to employ the same articulateness that drew people to Malcolm X to create this coalition. Only moral authority and genuine political alliances would grant the Black community legitimate political power to enact change, while violence would invite military intervention the U.S. could portray as legitimate.[25]

Baldwin’s ability to articulate, give meaning to, and impart the suffering and anger of Black Americans inspired readers of all ethnic backgrounds to mobilize for civil rights. However, while Baldwin’s work inspired mobilization efforts among activists, his efforts produced a different response from law enforcement officials. The police response to James Baldwin underscored how deeply American law enforcement officers perceived the author as a strategic threat to American security interests during the 1960s. The FBI’s strategies of surveillance and counterintelligence paralleled Army doctrine concerning combating revolutionary movements and insurgents without applying overt military force. Indeed, on multiple occasions during the 1950s and 1960s, soldiers from Army intelligence worked with the FBI on possible civil disturbances centered around civil rights.[26] Strategically, the literature of James Baldwin and the operations conducted by COINTELPRO, the FBI’s counterintelligence program, represent how unequal powers engaged in irregular operations relative to their respective ends and means.    

The FBI, Department of Justice, and Secret Service labeled Baldwin a dissident and threat to American security and integrated him into increasingly militarized police operations. The Bureau’s approach to combating subversion paralleled the Army’s strategy on unconventional warfare outlined in FM 100-5, which stated that as an ideological struggle expands, commanders should place the strategic emphasis “on counterintelligence measures” and on “increasing the scope of psychological warfare operations.”[27] The emphasis on establishing moral authority and questioning the legal legitimacy of Jim Crow America made civil rights an ideological struggle. In that vein, the FBI expanded its domestic surveillance and intelligence operations in the 1960s to disrupt perceived revolutionary activity. The Bureau employed “counter-irreguler operations” outlined in Army doctrine that detailed the use of propaganda, fear tactics, covert surveillance and intelligence gathering.[28] Director J. Edgar Hoover’s 1967 report on Internal Security, distributed to twenty-two field offices across America, stressed that the objective of the Bureau’s intelligence program was to “expose, disrupt, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalists, groupings, and hate-type organizations.” Hoover’s report specifically separated purported Black nationalists from FBI investigations into the Communist Party of the United States, noting that activists like James Baldwin were “known perverts” and had a “propensity for violence and civil disorder.”[29] The focus on Black political movements paralleled Army doctrine, which stated that such strategies were most effective when limited force was necessary, and officers could target “selected portions of the enemy’s economy or specific political factions.”[30]

Surveillance on Baldwin began well before Hoover’s report in 1967. The FBI feared Baldwin’s writing could serve as a psychological, moral, and political weapon against American security interests. The dichotomy of understanding surrounding the political purpose of Baldwin’s literature is striking. While Baldwin viewed his work as a means of destroying a politically illegitimate system predicated on oppression, the FBI and Department of Justice saw only a threat to American internal security. Their justifications for surveillance and counterintelligence remained couched in anti-communist rhetoric and fears of communist revolution that permeated every level of American strategy during the Cold War. While the Army’s manual touched on the importance of cultural literacy as a form of specialized training for officers, the FBI and Department of Justice emphasized awareness of cultural productions.[31] In the Extremist Intelligence Section of the FBI’s Intelligence Division, Inspector G.C. Moore requested and read numerous books that he and others believed could threaten American interests well into the 1970s. Moore used the information gleaned from these books to help create an FBI catalog of texts similar to the House of Un-American Activities’ (HUAC) “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications.” Through their public outreach programs and relationships with media organizations, law enforcement distributed information on potential subversives to American citizens, supported by content from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Handbook for Americans.[32] These attempts to educate and influence the public are evident in programs like the FBI’s “AMERICA” campaign, which encouraged civilians that “patriotism was everybody’s job” and to:

Alert yourself—learn the true nature of communism.
Make civic programs for social improvement.
Exercise your right to vote; elect representatives of integrity.
Respect human dignity—communism and individual rights cannot coexist.
Inform yourself; know your country—it’s history, traditions, and heritage.
Combat public apathy toward communism—indifference can be fatal.
Attack bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear; justice for all is the bulwark of Democracy.[33]

In October of 1963, a memorandum created by Special Agent F.J. Baumgardner in the FBI’s New York Domestic Intelligence Program expressed severe concerns over Baldwin’s writings on power, revolution, and the calls for biracial cooperation in building a new American nation.[34] Baumgardner perceived Baldwin’s work as a call to arms for Black Americans, to, as he put it, “force whites to stop fleeing from reality” and change the living conditions for Black communities. In December of 1963, eleven months after the release of The Fire Next Time, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office sent a memo to Director Hoover naming Baldwin a “dangerous individual who could be expected to commit acts inimical to the national defense and public safety of the United States,” and recommended adding the author to the FBI Security Index.[35]

Soon after, the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division officially classified James Baldwin as a “native born communist.” Three years later, the Department of Justice followed suit and called Baldwin a “subversive communist” who expressed “strong anti-U.S. sentiment.” The Department of Justice supported this classification of Baldwin by suggesting he showed “evidence of emotional instability and irrationality” and noted the results of other investigations, stating the author was “believed by the FBI and the Secret Service to be a potentially violent threat.”[36] Though a guerrilla force never appeared in the United States during the 1960s, the fears on the part of law enforcement that one could manifest at any point remained, as did concern that authors like Baldwin could make armed guerrillas appear legitimate. In June of 1964, the FBI expressed concern that Baldwin’s paperback book sales were expected to be “5-10 times higher” than the hardcover versions that had sold over a million copies. The FBI’s concern was rooted in the belief that the less expensive paperback version would make his writing more accessible in stores and libraries across the country.[37] The FBI and Department of Justice repeatedly referenced Baldwin’s skills as an author and the boon his speeches and writings could be to furthering revolutionary movements and ideology. The Bureau’s Intelligence Division worked with the U.S. Information Agency and private media to edit or remove portions of Baldwin’s speeches prior to broadcast over the radio and television.[38]

The association between law enforcement and American media emphasized the importance of “the increasing effectiveness of mass media communication” in the unconventional warfare strategy outlined in FM 100-5.[39] Additionally, the Department of Justice and FBI encouraged American media outlets to mention and publish William F. Buckley Jr.’s intellectual counterattack. Buckley, an Ivy-League-trained intellectual and founder of the conservative National Review, portrayed Baldwin as a communist radical who “despised” God, sought the “absolute surrender” of white America, and for white Americans to “renounce their civilization” and “give their power to the negroes.”[40] Buckley’s rhetoric of surrender and loss of civilization emphasized the importance of psychological operations in an ideological war. In a nod to The Fire Next Time, Buckley accused Baldwin of throwing around “apocalyptic statements” and “threats” of fire whenever Americans disagreed with his “poetical locution” concerning “the delinquencies of white people in this country.” Buckley branded Baldwin and others like him “America haters” and likened them to socialist revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Buckley believed Baldwin was more of a threat to the “negroes in America than anything George Wallace ever said or did” and deserved to be “ghettoized in the corners of fanaticism.”[41] The two intellectuals debated each other at the University of Cambridge in 1965. Baldwin received a standing ovation after stating that by age six, he knew the flag to which he pledged allegiance every morning in school did not return the favor. He won the public debate, 540 to 160.[42] 

The efforts to connect Baldwin to America’s global war on communism granted the FBI the autonomy to engage in extralegal and illegal operations under the guise of national security. The New York field office engaged in extensive personal and home surveillance of Baldwin. Agents masquerading as salespeople and American Express employees broke into his apartment and harassed his neighbors. They detailed his reading habits, professional associations, friendships, sexual activity, and noted any direct or indirect connection with Communist Party members to justify continued surveillance. The Bureau reported to the Department of Justice when Baldwin’s work appeared in subversive publications like the China Daily News or Freedomways. The latter, published by New York-based Freedomways Associates Incorporated, was a “quarterly review of the Negro freedom movement” and identified by the HUAC as one of the subversive publications believed to have been established by the Communist Party of the United States.[43] After the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Act in 1964 and 1965 respectively, the FBI labeled Baldwin an “international agent” of the Black Panthers and used the Bureau’s international attachés to conduct surveillance on him while he traveled through Turkey, Italy, and France.[44]  In 1966, Baldwin spoke in Rome at an anti-war march and vigil. A Department of Justice report claimed the Italian Communist Party supported the vigil where Baldwin spoke to 15,000 Italians and informed the crowd that he was there to “tell them something only American Negroes know. Western interests were responsible for events in South Africa and the Cuban ‘aggression.’”[45] While in Paris, the attaché expressed concern about Baldwin’s connections with known communists in Europe, including the Cuban Ambassador to France and fellow celebrated author, Alejo Carpentier.[46]

At the 1968 World Council of Churches meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, organizers invited Baldwin to speak as a replacement for Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination. Baldwin spoke on the potential for church power to aid in amending “racial injustices” worldwide and defended Black Power leader and former Chairmen of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Stokeley Carmichael. Baldwin stated that black power meant nothing more or less than the “self-determination of peoples” and that Carmichael was “not nearly as dangerous as many of the people who govern in my poor country.”[47] An article published by the New York Daily News reported on Baldwin’s same speech. The article observed his support for black power and focused on the comments he made surrounding African decolonization, that he “trembles for all white children facing a time when the third world may settle a long and bloody bill.”[48] During an appearance on David Frost’s television program in 1970, Baldwin claimed that the U.S. government had killed “hundreds of young Black men” in recent years and that every American who stood idly by was complicit and should be “headed to the gas chamber.” An anonymous letter to the FBI from a viewer summarized the widespread reaction to Baldwin’s recent claims and noted a “distinction” between civil rights and having the “license” to say volatile things and attack innocent Americans.[49] With the rise of the Black Power and anti-war movements, coupled with the passage of civil rights legislation which many white Americans felt resolved the issues of racial discrimination, the widespread support for Baldwin began to wane.

While Baldwin’s words did him no favors in the court of public opinion, there was a cultural gap between white and Black Americans about legal equality and legitimate equity. Many white Americans did not comprehend the inequity the Black community felt. Nor did they place the Black experience within the broader transnational context of decolonization. When white Americans read and heard Baldwin’s words, it is not difficult to see how many felt threatened. Furthermore, much of the FBI and Department of Justice’s strategy revolved around controlling the narrative and winning the minds of the American public. After all, a “concrete program” of civil affairs and psychological warfare designed to “win popular support” of a local populace while “isolating the irregular elements from these sources of support” were critical to unconventional warfare strategies in the 1960s.[50] By 1970, the FBI and Department of Justice had operated a campaign designed to discredit Baldwin for seven years. Many white Americans began to see James Baldwin and civil rights organizations as increasingly militant and a public danger. In 1971 Baldwin penned an open letter of support to Angela Davis, a Black Panther member and activist whom Richard Nixon called a “dangerous terrorist” in 1970, following her perceived connection to an armed invasion of a California courthouse.[51] Baldwin’s public support of Black Power and his continued writings and media appearances that emphasized revolution confirmed to many white Americans what the FBI and Department of Justice had asserted all along. Baldwin was not only a threat, but he openly supported apparent terrorists like the Black Panthers and Angela Davis.

While the strategic uses of literature and cultural productions lay at the heart of this examination, the connection between James Baldwin and the militarization of American policing holds significant implications surrounding historical studies of domestic Cold War grand strategy. In American political and legal tradition, domestic threats to national security fall under the purview of law enforcement institutions. The Posse Comitatus Act, the Delimitations Agreement, and the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments limit using federal military forces as domestic police forces unless authorized by law or in open violation of the Insurrection Act. The civil rights movement was a national movement with transnational ties to decolonization and actively pursued legitimacy for its cause. In his 1972 novel No Name in the Street, Baldwin stressed the civil rights link to Africa and connected Black Americans with the bloody Algerian struggle for independence. Stating that he was a “member of the American colony” and the fact that he had never seen Algeria, nor had many Algerians seen Harlem, did not change the truth that they were both “victims of history.”[52] Observing civil rights activists through the lens of Cold War national security concerns makes the rise of a federal militarized police force in the United States appear logical, necessary, and socially acceptable. The United States, while engaged in a global ideological conflict with the Soviet Union, could ill afford any stains on its national reputation. America could not claim to stand for global democracy yet consistently deploy its military to suppress domestic civil unrest and constitutionally protected political movements. Nor could the federal government allow individual states to openly dismiss federal mandates or jeopardize American foreign policy objectives.[53] An expanded, integrated, and largely autonomous law enforcement network provided the federal government a mechanism to ensure domestic security and stability without the visible and consistent use of military force. By 1972, the FBI Academy at Quantico was the most extensive training facility for specialized law enforcement globally.[54] The Cold War emphasis on national security granted law enforcement the license to develop and implement unconventional warfare strategies into the types of extralegal methods of policing used on Americans like James Baldwin. These strategies evolved into future approaches recognizable in counter-terrorism operations, the War on Drugs, and the Global War on Terror.

Ryan Reynolds is a Ph.D. candidate at Mississippi State University’s Department of History. His research centers on grand strategy, irregular warfare, and American cultural and political movements. His dissertation focuses on domestic strategy during the Cold War and examines the militarization of American society and federal policing policies through the lens of popular culture in the 1960s.

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Header Image: Hands on Prison Bars (University of Georgia)

Notes:

[1] James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time: First Vintage International Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 105.

[2] John Shy and Thomas Collier, “Revolutionary War” found in Peter Paret, Gordon Alexander Craig, and Felix Gilbert eds. Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, (Princeton University Press, 1986), 817.

[3] Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 100-102.

[4] Ibid, 606.

[5] Ibid, 102.

[6] Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait, (New York: Signet Classics, 1964), 2.

[7] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 87-88.

[8] Ibid, 91.

[9] Ibid, 74-75.

[10] Clausewitz, On War, 5-6; 481.

[11] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum on Internal Security and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, File Number 100-384660, December 16, 1963.

[12] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 23.

[13] United States Army, FM 100-5 Field Service Regulations Operations, Department of the Army Field Manual, (Department of the Army: Washington D.C., 19 February 1962), 127.

[14] Ibid, 137.

[15] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 87.

[16] Ibid, 90.

[17] UPI, “Race War Foreseen by James Baldwin,” New York Times, July 28, 1964.

[18] Department of Justice, 1968 Annual Report on James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matters, File Number 100-146553.

[19] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 8-9.

[20] Excerpts from the speech are annotated in the FBI’s United States Government Memorandum on Internal Security and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, number 100-384660, December 16, 1963.

[21] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Memo from the Special Agent in Charge (SAC), New York to the Director of the FBI, titled James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matter, December 18, 1963; UPI, “Race War Foreseen by James Baldwin,” New York Times July 28, 1964.

[22] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 46-47.

[23] Television interview with Kenneth Clark in 1963; Also quoted in Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum, From M.A. Jones, Chief of Research in the FBI Crime Research Division to Deke Deloac,h the former Associate Director of the FBI, June 7, 1963.

[24] Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 73.

[25] “Race War Foreseen by James Baldwin;” FBI Crime Research Division Memo.

[26] Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945-1992, (Washington D.C., Center of Military Studies, United States Army, 2012), 123-124, 214.

[27] FM 100-5, 127-128.

[28] Ibid, 139.

[29] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Memorandum on Internal Security relating to COINTELPRO activities on Black Nationalist and Hate Groups, J. Edgar Hoover, File Number 100-448006, August 25, 1967; Hoover refers to Baldwin as a “known pervert” in a United States Memorandum titled To Mr. DeLoach from M.A. Jones, dated July 20, 1964.

[30] FM 100-5, 128

[31] Ibid, 145-146.

[32] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum on Internal Security and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, File Number 100-384660, December 16, 1963.

[33] J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI propaganda leaflet on AMERICA” attacked communism and called on common citizens to be alert and defend America. Located in Mississippi State University Special Collections. Also cited in the author’s previous work, “American Kolkhoz: Christian Socialism, Communal Farms, and the American South,” Southern Historian, (Fall 2021): 22-38.

[34] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Government Memorandum on The Fire Next Time sent to W.C Sullivan from F.J. Baumgardner, dated October 3, 1963.

[35] Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matter, Memorandum from the Special Agent in Charge (SAC), New York to the Director of the FBI, December 18, 1963.

[36] Department of Justice, United States Department of Justice File Regarding James Baldwin, constructed by Edward F. Uzzell, File Number, 100-146553, April 13, 1966.

[37] Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Memorandum, Information Concerning James Arthur Baldwin, to Mr. DeLoach from M.A. Jones, dated June 22, 1964.

[38] FBI and DOJ communications teletype, From the New York office to Director, September 19, 1963.

[39] FM 100-5, 128.

[40] William F. Buckley Jr, “Baldwins Call to Color Blindness,” New York Journal-American, June 14, 1963.

[41] William F. Buckley Jr, “ The Baldwin Syndrome,” The Washington Daily News, June 23, 1965.

[42] For more on Buckley and the National Review, see Nicole Hemmer’s Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Gabrielle Bellot, “The Famous Baldwin-Buckley Debate Still Matters Today,” The Atlantic published 12/2/2019. See also Nicholas Buccola’s The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America, (Princeton University Press, 2019).

[43] Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matter, confidential profile of James Baldwin created by Special Agent Robert E. Bowe of the New York Field Office for the Secret Service, file number 62-108763. The report notes that Freedomways self described themselves as the quarterly devoted to the freedom movement.

[44] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Report on James Baldwin’s Overseas Travel, submitted by the Bureau’s Legal Attache in Rome, File Number 62-108763, December 20, 1966.

[45] Department of Justice, United States Department of Justice file regarding James Baldwin, constructed by Edward F. Uzzell, File Number 100-146553, April 13, 1966.

[46] FBI Report on James Baldwin’s Overseas Travel, submitted by the Bureau’s Legal Attache in Rome, File Number 62-108763, December 20, 1966.

[47] Quote is pulled from an oral recording of Baldwin’s speech at Uppsala in a panel titled “White Racism or World Community,” stored at the Presbyterian Historical Society and can be accessed here https://www.history.pcusa.org/blog/2017/07/james-baldwin-uppsala.

[48] Associated Press, “Catholic Council Time Put in Future Tense,” New York Daily News, July 8, 1968; 1968 DOJ Report, 100-146553 titled James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matters.

[49] Department of Justice, 1971 Annual Report on James Arthur Baldwin, Security Matters, File Number 100-146553.

[50] FM 100-5, 139-140.

[51] Bettina Aptheker, The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis Second Edition, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), XI; Baldwin’s letter “For You, Sister Angela,” was quoted in the magazine Peoples World on February 22, 1971.

[52] James Baldwin, No Name in the Street (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 41.

[53] For more on the intersection of civil rights and American foreign policy see Mary Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

[54] “Crime and Corruption Across America, 1972-1988,” pulled from the FBI website, https://www.fbi.gov/history/brief-history/crime-and-corruption-across-america.