J. Edgar Hoover’s top officials at the FBI first took personal notice of King only two weeks after the Kennedy inauguration, when The Nation magazine published an article by King titled “Equality Now.” Deep within a long list of recommendations for the incoming Administration was a parenthetical reference to the FBI: “If, for instance, the law-enforcement personnel in the FBI were integrated, many persons who now defy federal law might come under restraints from which they are presently free.” This one sentence rocketed up through that portion of the FBI bureaucracy keeping watch for the
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