African American Studies Commons^™

Seeing Shadows: Fbi Surveillance, Gender, And Black Women Activists, Kiara Sample

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

This project, “Seeing Shadows: The Gendered Surveillance of Black Women,” explores the ways gender and race influenced the FBI’s surveillance of Black women activists. Previous scholarship has covered the role of surveillance in repressing revolutionary movements and neutralizing radical organizations. Male leaders such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Huey Newton have been the overwhelming focus of surveillance research in social movements. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the ways the FBI monitored the lives of Black women. Historically, within many social movements, Black women have been marginalized, silenced, or reduced to only their gender because of …