J Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) was born in Washington DC in a religious family. Devout since boyhood, he loved being a Sunday School teacher and prided himself on his Scriptural knowledge. Before his father was ill, and it became necessary for him to choose higher-paying employment, young Hoover had intended on becoming a Christian minister. Instead he studied law and worked in the Dept of Justice.
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The Washington Post (Sept 1920) described the Wall St bombing as exemplifying the extent to which the alien scum from the sewers of the Old World had polluted the clear spring of American democracy. The Dept of Justice launched raids, rounding up thousands of leftists and deporting many out of the US. The D.O.J charged young Hoover with investigating the attack, along with the N.Y Police Department. The nasty repression of immigrants led to the civil liberties movement; American Civil Liberties Union was formed in 1920 to address this government crackdown on free speech & political activism
In 1924 at 29, Hoover was appointed as FBI Director. As America’s top cop, he turned the FBI into a blend of a Sunday School, private-members club and white supremacist clique. He demoted all non-white special agents, as well as most Jews, and made Christianity part of FBI training and social events. In contrast to the anti-Catholic sentiment in US society, Hoover respected Catholicism for its theological rigour. He welcomed Catholicism to the FBI, instigating an annual FBI mass.
Hoover believed the U.S was God’s chosen nation. Director from 1924-72, Hoover thought the Bureau’s mission was to defeat the godless forces of liberalism, women’s rights, civil rights, radical clergy, students, anti-war protestors and particularly gay men. To overcome these foes, America had to yield to his preferred Christianity i.e unerringly conservative, patriotic and white.
Dr Lerone Martin is Director of the Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute and Prof of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Martin’s book Gospel of J Edgar Hoover (2023) showed how the FBI director, infamous for persecuting Martin Luther King, worked systematically to champion his own religion. Using newly declassified FBI documents, Martin described how Hoover bent the culture of the FBI, and collaborated with famous evangelicals and Catholics to try to establish his Christian America. Together they fuelled the political rise of white Christian nationalism, with vast consequences for electoral politics, views of national security and role of race and religion in US identity.
Hoover had an fanatic hatred of Albert Einstein because he was Jewish, foreign and left wing. Einstein got to the USA in 1933 and involved himself with racial justice, was against lynching and for quality black educational institutions. Einstein befriended Paul Robeson, Hoover’s MOST despised human being. Hoover wanted to have Einstein deported!
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After WW2, Hoover launched a public relations campaign outside the Bureau eg his popular essays in the conservative magazine Christianity Today dealt with theological and patriotic concerns. Pre-eminent Catholic evangelists Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham praised FBI!
Martin reported that during 1956-71 Hoover sanctioned 2,000+ illegal direct actions targeting domestic civic organisations he'd hated. Some of his religious operations were both unconstitutional and bizarre eg when he investigated one word in a new Bible translation. This communist plot undermined U.S Christianity, Hoover said!
Regarding Hoover’s flagrant abuse of the Separation of Church and State, the details Martin published were based on the exhaustive use of archives. But the FBI were still unsympathetic to Martin’s project in 2020, so he had to sue the Bureau for not responding to a Freedom of Information request. Even then, Martin wrote, the Bureau did not admit to breaking any law.
Some of Hoover’s later issues
The Nobel Prize Committee cited philosopher Albert Camus’ persistent efforts to illuminate the problem of human conscience! It was largely as a champion of philosophical moral truth that Camus was honoured in 1957 and is still admired today. Hoover was furious that he couldn’t stop Camus receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Re John Lennon, Hoover wrote to HR Haldemann, Pres Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff indicating the high priority the Lennon case had for Nixon; Lennon had been interested in extreme British left-wing activities and was a sympathiser of communists there. It’s telling that Hoover died in May 1972 and a memo was sent from the FBI’s Acting Director Patrick Gray saying the FBI was ending its surveillance of Lennon. In any case Nixon was easily re-elected in Nov, and the Immigration Service and FBI succeeded in pressuring Lennon to withdraw from anti-war activity. How strange then that Lennon still received Immigration and Naturalisation Service deportation notices. So immigration lawyer Leon Wildes sued Att Gen John Mitchell and others for their conspiratorial attempts to throw Lennon out of the country. Their investigation turned up documents from Hoover to HR Haldeman, informing him of the FBI’s progress.
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In May 1970 chaos at Kent State Ohio shocked Uni officials who believed outside agitators were responsible. Kent's mayor declared a state of emergency, appealing to Ohio Governor James Rhodes to send in the Ohio National Guard. How was Edgar Hoover involved?
J Edgar Hoover, 1932
History Today
In 1919 young Hoover worked in the Justice Dept's Radical Division, gathering data on radical political organisations. His surveillance system came by creating a database of all American radicals. After the 1920 Wall St bomb, anarchists and communists were located via Hoover’s system and questioned, since Hoover believed that the bombing was directed by Russian forces.
The Washington Post (Sept 1920) described the Wall St bombing as exemplifying the extent to which the alien scum from the sewers of the Old World had polluted the clear spring of American democracy. The Dept of Justice launched raids, rounding up thousands of leftists and deporting many out of the US. The D.O.J charged young Hoover with investigating the attack, along with the N.Y Police Department. The nasty repression of immigrants led to the civil liberties movement; American Civil Liberties Union was formed in 1920 to address this government crackdown on free speech & political activism
In 1924 at 29, Hoover was appointed as FBI Director. As America’s top cop, he turned the FBI into a blend of a Sunday School, private-members club and white supremacist clique. He demoted all non-white special agents, as well as most Jews, and made Christianity part of FBI training and social events. In contrast to the anti-Catholic sentiment in US society, Hoover respected Catholicism for its theological rigour. He welcomed Catholicism to the FBI, instigating an annual FBI mass.
Hoover believed the U.S was God’s chosen nation. Director from 1924-72, Hoover thought the Bureau’s mission was to defeat the godless forces of liberalism, women’s rights, civil rights, radical clergy, students, anti-war protestors and particularly gay men. To overcome these foes, America had to yield to his preferred Christianity i.e unerringly conservative, patriotic and white.
Dr Lerone Martin is Director of the Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute and Prof of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Martin’s book Gospel of J Edgar Hoover (2023) showed how the FBI director, infamous for persecuting Martin Luther King, worked systematically to champion his own religion. Using newly declassified FBI documents, Martin described how Hoover bent the culture of the FBI, and collaborated with famous evangelicals and Catholics to try to establish his Christian America. Together they fuelled the political rise of white Christian nationalism, with vast consequences for electoral politics, views of national security and role of race and religion in US identity.
Hoover had an fanatic hatred of Albert Einstein because he was Jewish, foreign and left wing. Einstein got to the USA in 1933 and involved himself with racial justice, was against lynching and for quality black educational institutions. Einstein befriended Paul Robeson, Hoover’s MOST despised human being. Hoover wanted to have Einstein deported!
Einstein and actor Paul Robeson (right)
Washington Post
After WW2, Hoover launched a public relations campaign outside the Bureau eg his popular essays in the conservative magazine Christianity Today dealt with theological and patriotic concerns. Pre-eminent Catholic evangelists Fulton Sheen and Billy Graham praised FBI!
Martin reported that during 1956-71 Hoover sanctioned 2,000+ illegal direct actions targeting domestic civic organisations he'd hated. Some of his religious operations were both unconstitutional and bizarre eg when he investigated one word in a new Bible translation. This communist plot undermined U.S Christianity, Hoover said!
Regarding Hoover’s flagrant abuse of the Separation of Church and State, the details Martin published were based on the exhaustive use of archives. But the FBI were still unsympathetic to Martin’s project in 2020, so he had to sue the Bureau for not responding to a Freedom of Information request. Even then, Martin wrote, the Bureau did not admit to breaking any law.
Some of Hoover’s later issues
The Nobel Prize Committee cited philosopher Albert Camus’ persistent efforts to illuminate the problem of human conscience! It was largely as a champion of philosophical moral truth that Camus was honoured in 1957 and is still admired today. Hoover was furious that he couldn’t stop Camus receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Re John Lennon, Hoover wrote to HR Haldemann, Pres Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff indicating the high priority the Lennon case had for Nixon; Lennon had been interested in extreme British left-wing activities and was a sympathiser of communists there. It’s telling that Hoover died in May 1972 and a memo was sent from the FBI’s Acting Director Patrick Gray saying the FBI was ending its surveillance of Lennon. In any case Nixon was easily re-elected in Nov, and the Immigration Service and FBI succeeded in pressuring Lennon to withdraw from anti-war activity. How strange then that Lennon still received Immigration and Naturalisation Service deportation notices. So immigration lawyer Leon Wildes sued Att Gen John Mitchell and others for their conspiratorial attempts to throw Lennon out of the country. Their investigation turned up documents from Hoover to HR Haldeman, informing him of the FBI’s progress.
When politicians advocated for stricter gun laws
J Edgar Hoover tests a gun, opposing gun controls
The Nation
Conclusion
Hoover’s influence on the FBI remained. The Bureau had been too slow to combat the security threat posed by white Christian nationalists, a group concerned with violent, terrorist attacks, including the 6th Jan 2021 killings. White Christian nationalism and the FBI’s inertia were part of Hoover’s legacy, from a man who believed he and his religion were above the law. Hoover was working for God, not for the Constitution or Americans.
"Top Cop, Bad Cop" by Daniel Rey, History Today July 2023; "Ringleader" by Adam Hochschild The Nation , March 2023; and "Hoover's War on Gays" by Douglas M. Charles, UP Kansas 2015 are well worth reading.
Hoover’s influence on the FBI remained. The Bureau had been too slow to combat the security threat posed by white Christian nationalists, a group concerned with violent, terrorist attacks, including the 6th Jan 2021 killings. White Christian nationalism and the FBI’s inertia were part of Hoover’s legacy, from a man who believed he and his religion were above the law. Hoover was working for God, not for the Constitution or Americans.