Daniel S. Chard is visiting assistant professor of history at Western Washington University and author of Nixon’s War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerrillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism (University of North Carolina Press, 2021).
A new podcast examines the life and times of the Weather Underground and several of its members. It’s a moving story. But an assessment of the New Left’s turn toward political violence, rooted in political weakness rather than strength, is missing.
An FBI scholar argues that recently unearthed surveillance documents aren’t proof of anything about Martin Luther King. They do, however, show how the bureau tried to destroy the Poor People’s Movement.