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Folk Singers & The Bureau (Bonus Episode)
Feat. Aaron J. Leonard | Still Spying Podcast
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Our Story: Frank Wilkinson, the FBI, and the Origins of Defending Rights & Dissent
Feat. Kit Gage | Still Spying Podcast
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The Bureaucratic Heart of McCarthyism
feat. Ellen Schrecker | Still Spying Podcast
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Spying on Muslim & Arab Americans
Feat. Abdeen Jabara | Still Spying Podcast
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The FBI vs. The Young Lords
Feat. Johanna Fernández | Still Spying Podcast
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The FBI's Man Inside the Klan
Feat. Mary Stanton | Still Spying Podcast
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Exposing FBI Spying Today
Feat. Alice Speri | Still Spying Podcast
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The War on Black Dissent Part III: The FBI vs. The Movement for Black Lives
Feat. Malkia Devich-Cyril | Still Spying Podcast
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The War on Black Dissent, Part II: COINTELPRO & The Assassination of Fred Hampton
Feat. Jeffrey Hass | Still Spying Podcast
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The War on Black Dissent, Part I: Black Lives, Red Scares
Feat. Prof. Gerald Horne | Still Spying Podcast
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Is All Policing Political?
Feat. Alex Vitale | Still Spying Podcast
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What Powers Does the FBI Have & How Do We Rein Them In
Feat. Prof. Emily Berman | Still Spying Podcast
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Legacy of Abuse From The Palmer Raids to Black Identity Extremism
Feat. Mike German | Still Spying Podcast
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Folk Singers & The Bureau
Still Spying Podcast
The FBI has long devoted its resources to stamping out dissent. As part of its ruthless war on the Communist Party, the Bureau set its sites on America’s folk singers. In his new book The Folk Singers and the Bureau: The FBI, the Folk Artists and the Suppression of the Communist Party, USA-1939-1956, historian and writer Aaron J. Leonard draws on an unprecedented array of declassified documents and never before released files to chronicle the FBI’s attacks on such folk musicians as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
Aaron J. Leonard is a writer and historian with a focus on the history of radicalism and state suppression. He is the author of Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists and A Threat of the First Magnitude–FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration: From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union. He is a contributor to the History News Network, Jacobin, and Truthout.
On September 16, 2020, the Still Spying Podcast hosted a livestreamed event with Leonard to discuss his new book and this is a lightly edited audio-only version of that event, moderated by Still Spying host Chip Gibbons.
In our final episode, we explore the Defending Rights & Dissent’s own origins. Frank Wilkinson was a public housing advocate who was working on an integrated public housing project in […]
