"Racial Matters"--As they were designated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation - preoccupied the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, from the outset. In postwar America, however, as the Bureau's director became increasingly more obsessed with the so-called "Communist threat," in the mind of the FBI racial matters became linked more and more to national security matters. From the Black Muslims in the thirties to the Black Panthers three decades...

From Kennedy to Nixon, the FBI unwillingly found itself at the center of the struggle for racial equality and justice. Kenneth O'Reilly tells the shocking story of how political loyalties, priorities, and prejudices turned a government agency into an adversary, instead of a protector, of civil rights.