The FBI’s Obsession with Aretha Franklin
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2025
⏱️ 3 minutes
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Summary
Our people love us some Aretha Franklin. We've been two-stepping to her greatest hits for generations. She was our beloved "Queen of Soul." So why the hell was the FBI surveilling her for years?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Our people love us some Aretha Franklin. |
| 0:07.8 | Hell, we've been two-stepping to her greatest hits for generations |
| 0:10.9 | because she's our beloved queen of soul. |
| 0:15.9 | So why the hell was the FBI surveilling her for years? |
| 0:20.4 | This is two-minute black history. What you didn't learn in school. What the hell was the FBI surveilling her for years? |
| 0:20.9 | This is Two-Minute Black History, What You Didn't Learn in School. |
| 0:36.9 | Aretha Franklin was a beloved figure in our community who still has a shouting, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, to this very day. |
| 0:44.3 | So why was the FBI on her so heavily? |
| 0:48.3 | Franklin was down for us, and they couldn't stand it. |
| 0:53.3 | Like people who think athletes should just shut up and |
| 0:57.3 | dribble, they didn't like her outwardly supporting the movement. She refused to be quiet |
| 1:04.4 | about our liberation struggle for white comfort. |
| 1:22.6 | A 270-page document is full of death threats, tapped phone calls, and extensive tracking of Aretha Franklin's relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis, whose bail Franklin offered to pay. |
| 1:30.3 | The document links her to several organizations, including the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. |
| 1:38.4 | They also linked Franklin to Roosevelt Bernard Douglas, who worked to unite black people globally and later became |
| 1:46.4 | Dominicus' prime minister. They called Douglas a black extremist of international note. The FBI still |
| 1:55.8 | tracks us, and in 2017, they began identifying today's activists as Black identity extremists. |
| 2:03.6 | They prioritized surveilling us, but not white supremacists who keep inflicting violence with mass shootings. |
| 2:12.6 | To white supremacy, anyone pro-Black is an extremist. They want us to keep quiet and be complicit in the |
| 2:21.8 | anti-black world they've built, but we can't stop and won't stop fighting. In order to move |
| 2:28.9 | towards the future, you've got to look to the past. This has been Two-Minute Black History, a podcast by Push Black. |
| 2:37.2 | Show your support by sharing this story on your social media |
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