The Evolution of Domestic Spying Since MLK in Memphis

Last week, on April 4, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, thousands of people poured into the streets of Memphis, where King was killed, holding signs that read “I AM A MAN,” which were the signs held in protest by striking city sanitation workers that King had aligned with in 1968. The marchers from last week were commemorating the 1968 strikes even though the city of Memphis treated the workers, at the time, in the same way that a nation treats its enemies, by spying on them.

And it’s not just the kind of spying that the FBI was already conducting on King. There was a separate level of surveillance conducted by Memphis police on social justice activists back then, and many protestors still feel subject to surveillance in Memphis today. An agreement the city signed back in the 1970s to stop clandestine tracking of activists was supposed to put an end to such practices. Instead Memphis, and other cities, seem to have just come up with more stealth ways of watching its political dissenters.