American History Tellers

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J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Citizens Resistance | 6 May 15, 2019

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On March 8, 1971, seven ordinary Americans broke into a poorly guarded FBI regional office in Media, Pennsylvania. They called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, and they had one purpose: to gather evidence that would prove the agency was engaged in a covert and illegal spying campaign against American citizens. For more than 30 years, Director J. Edgar Hoover had maintained an iron grip on the media, and with it, public perception of the Bureau. But as packages of stolen documents began appearing in newsroom mailboxes, followed soon after by front page stories, a very different narrative about the FBI’s activities began to emerge. It would forever shift the balance of public opinion against the Bureau, and signal the beginning of Hoover’s downfall.

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J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Black Bag Job | 5 May 08, 2019

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Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI carried out more than 2,000 top secret spying operations aimed at American citizens. Their target? The so-called Fifth Column, a network of undercover Soviet agents allegedly working to destroy the American government from within. The agency even had an internal code name for these operations: COINTELPRO. In the name of this mission, Hoover directed agents to infiltrate, penetrate, disorganize and disrupt their targets. But the FBI’s actions weren’t just aimed at taking down suspected Communists. They also targeted activists working across a broad spectrum of progressive causes, including civil rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion rights, and drug policy reforms.

But no target would draw more of the FBI’s scrutiny — or malice — than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Controlling the Message | 4 May 01, 2019

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The rise of fascism and World War II shifted the FBI’s focus in the 1940s from fighting midwestern outlaws to catching Communists. To Hoover and the FBI, nearly anyone on the political left was suspect, potentially part of a Soviet conspiracy to overthrow Western democracies. In reality, the American left was fragmented. But again and again, Hoover would use the threat of Communism to go after the Bureau’s enemies. He would resort to exhaustive surveillance, including wiretaps, bugging and prying into personal lives to keep in check outspoken journalists and any other critics who threatened Hoover’s ironclad control of the media.

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J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - The Bobby Sox Bandit Queen | 3 Apr 24, 2019

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During the mid-1930s, the FBI’s public relations department had effectively changed the image of its agents from accountants into action heroes; and its director, from a bureaucrat into an American icon. They pushed stories about heroic G-men facing off against violent foes, gunning them down in self-defense. And the press ate it up. But in April 1939, an FBI agent shot and killed a small town bank robber — in the back. The real story didn’t fit the FBI’s new heroic narrative. So Hoover changed it. Using his public relations machine, Hoover would twist the average story of a small-time midwestern criminal into one final, heroic, spellbinding triumph of the FBI.

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J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - Giant Among G-Men | 2 Apr 17, 2019

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J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI when he was just 29 years old. His orders? Clean up the Bureau. At first, he proved to be a brilliant and innovative leader, setting new standards for education, physical fitness, and training of federal agents.

But there was a dark side to his success. Hoover was also obsessed with tracking anyone he considered to be disloyal to the U.S. government. By the early 1930s, the Bureau was secretly compiling dossiers on tens of thousands of American citizens, in defiance of government orders. And Hoover understood that the best cover for his actions lay in bolstering the Bureau’s reputation as a beloved and virtuous American institution. All he needed was the help of an expert in an emerging but promising field: public relations.

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J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - The Department of Easy Virtues | 1 Apr 10, 2019

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By the turn of the century, radical anarchists were becoming a growing -- and volatile -- political movement. As shifting workplace conditions exploited and endangered American workers, anarchists increasingly turned to violence to spur everyday citizens to upend the capitalist system. The growth of these politically motivated shootings and bombings stoked fear among American citizens — fear of immigrants, outsiders, and anyone else whose ideas might be considered a threat. Soon President Woodrow Wilson was calling on his attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer to investigate, arrest and imprison any noncitizen suspected of spouting “disloyal” or “radical” ideologies.

The so-called Palmer Raids would move the little-known, poorly funded and notoriously corrupt Bureau of Investigation into the national spotlight. And it would eventually launch the career of an ambitious young civil servant named Edgar Hoover.

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America's Anthem | 7 Apr 03, 2019

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“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord.” That’s the opening line of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” written by Julie Ward Howe in 1861. Over the years, it’s become something of an unofficial national anthem for all manner of political causes in the United States. Historian Richard Gamble joins us to talk about the song, its meaning, and its history in everything from The Civil War to The Civil Rights Movement.

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The Great Depression - Justice and Infamy | 6 Mar 27, 2019

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As legal challenges to his New Deal programs mounted, President Roosevelt and his attorney general devised dramatic reforms to the Supreme Court’s structure. The proposed changes would open new rifts between the president and conservative members of his own party.

Other greater challenges loomed. A recession was threatening to unwind four years of economic recovery. The Senate launched a politicized investigation into purported un-American activities in federal work programs.

And on the other side of the world, a global crisis was building as war erupted in Asia and Europe. As the country re-armed and factories retooled to supply soon-to-be allies, the nationally finally pulled itself from the depths of Depression.

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The Great Depression - Progress and Pushback | 5 Mar 20, 2019

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After two of President Roosevelt’s closest advisors competed to create a new federal jobs program, the White House launched one of Roosevelt's keystone initiatives: the Works Progress Administration. Under this program, millions of Americans earned government salaries at a wide range of blue- and white-collar jobs — everything from building post offices and painting murals to delivering library books by horseback to rural communities.

However, the federal government’s increased reach worried FDR’s opponents, especially a wildly popular Catholic radio preacher. Father Charles Coughlin once helped FDR get elected, but as the president’s power increased, Coughlin turned up the volume on hateful and anti-Semitic undertones in his attacks.

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The Great Depression - Dust | 4 Mar 13, 2019

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The Great Depression wasn’t the only crisis facing the country when Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933. Following a decade-long drought that had shriveled crops, massive dust storms were pummeling huge swaths of the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Northwest. Years of poor harvest practices had worsened the crisis, pushing farmers already strained by the financial hit of the Great Depression off their land. Only when a lifelong soil scientist made a dramatic testimony before Congress did the government finally begin to develop a solution.

Many of those unmoored by environmental calamity searched for opportunity elsewhere — particularly in California. But when a controversial Los Angeles police chief sent armed officers to block access to the Golden State, he would launch a constitutional crisis and a showdown with a rural sheriff.

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