Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that are currently shaping our world.

I am Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show

on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126.

Do you guys remember in Donald Trump's first term when Black Lives Matter as an organization

was declared to be a group of black

identity extremists. This was during a time when the FBI was targeting this new generation

of activists and organizers and essentially put its investigative power to use that, quite frankly,

is nefarious and scary when you think about it.

Now, keep in mind, this was not the first time that the federal government had used its

spying tools to spy on black organizations.

Historically, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has always viewed activism when

black people engage in it as a security threat, a national security threat.

And for those of you who have never heard the phrase coin tell pro before, trust and believe

this is not some hyperbolic, weird, science, scary sort of dream. This is factual history.

Back in October of 1919, J. Edgar Hoover, who was the director of the Bureau of Investigation's

General Intelligence Division, put his sights on Marcus Garvey. The so-called Black Moses,

who was organizing and committing the crime of organizing while Black, was basically placed

under investigation, subjected to a lot of harassment because he was allegedly associating with,-unquote radical elements that were agitated in the Negro movement.

Basically, Marcus Garvey committed the crime of being a thinking black person at the same time that thinking and being black were not supposed to be synonymous or happening within the same body.

Even though Jay Edgar Hoover knew that Marcus Garvey

had not violated any federal laws, like literally knew it and acknowledged it and there wasn't

even allegation of it necessarily, the Bureau, which was the organization that came before the FBI,

...