Voyeurism, Baldwin and the FBI
In The Devil Finds Work (1976) Baldwin recollects being accosted by two agents in 1945, although there is no corresponding record in his files. Noting that his color had already made him “conspicuous,” Baldwin concludes that the FBI “frightened me and they humiliated me—it was like being spat on, or pissed on, or gang-raped.”[13] Baldwin recollects that encounter with the Bureau as a metaphorical sexual violation, associated with his racial identity. This surveillance was orchestrated by, as Baldwin described him, “J. Edgar Hoover, history’s most highly paid (and most utterly useless) voyeur.” Baldwin’s words reduce the Bureau’s monitoring of its subjects to little more than a prurient gaze. Baldwin suggests that Hoover’s surveillance serves no purpose other than to expose his subjects’ racial or sexual identities for sinister reasons.[14] In Baldwin’s recollection from 1945, Hoover, as emblem of the FBI, is transformed from prurient voyeur to sinister perpetrator, underscoring, as Maurice Wallace has noted, “the spectacular conditions of historical black masculine identity and the chronic effort to ‘frame’ the black male body, criminally and visually, for the visual pleasures of whites.”[15] As Maria Balshaw and Liam Kennedy note, the themes of vision and power reverberate in African American literature because they operate “in the intersubjectivity of looking relations, the sexualising and racialising of vision, the sighting of the body as spectacle, the production of surveillance, and the authorisation of images.”[16]

"Homosexual Parties"

While Baldwin's description of being accosted by the FBI underscores the ways in which he felt violated and sexualised by the (presumably) white male agents, his openness about his own sexuality and his readiness to address the topic openly in his fiction seemed to disarm the FBI, who had no leverage to blackmail a writer who was already openly homosexual.[17] While information about Baldwin's "homosexual parties" in Istanbul underscores the Bureau's international monitoring of its targets--and gives credence to William MaxWell's claim that the FBI became "a pioneering archivist of black internationalism..." the scant information reveals little that wasn't publicly known about the author.[18] One FBI file reports that a female informant reported that during the summer of 1966, "Baldwin rented an apartment in the Babek Section of Istanbul. She found out later that BALDWIN was evicted by the landlord for having homosexual parties." [See FBI file 651]

OutHistory is grateful to Douglas Field for volunteering this original essay, and to Matthew Brim for his assistance.

Notes

1. Baldwin’s FBI files can be requested under the United States Freedom of Information Act by writing to the Bureau. Unlike many authors, including Richard Wright, Baldwin’s files are not available online. The FBI files are paginated but are not chronological. Baldwin’s files are divided into three sections: part 1: 1-559; part 2: 560-943; part 3: 944-1884. The FBI file’s pagination of Baldwin’s files will be referenced parenthetically in the essay. For information about how to request Baldwin’s FBI files, see: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-james-baldwin-9724/
2. James Campbell, “‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine:’ James Baldwin and the FBI,” in Syncopations: Beats, New Yorkers, and Writers in the Dark (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2008), p. 78.
3. Campbell, “‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” Syncopations, p. 100.
4. Baldwin originally took the surname of his mother, Emma Berdis Jones as his father’s identity was unknown. He changed his surname after his mother married David Baldwin in 1927.
5. The titles of Baldwin’s books were of course Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) and Another Country (1962).
6. Natalie Robins, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War on the Freedom of Expression (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 50.
7. For a study that focuses on the FBI’s harassment of musicians, see John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders: US Intelligence’s Murderous Targeting of Tupac, MLK, Malcolm, Panthers, Hendrix, Rappers & Linked Ethnic Leftists. Foreword by Pam Africa with Mumia Abu-Jamal; afterword by Fred Hampton, Jr. (New York: Progressive Left Press, 2010; 5^th ed.). Potash argues that “evidence supports that US Intelligence murderously targeted political and cultural leftist leaders, including Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Black Panthers, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and activist rappers,” 1. There is a brief discussion of Richard Wright (177) but no mention of Baldwin.
8. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), p. 331.
9. Laymond Robinson, “Robert Kennedy Consults Negroes Here About North,” New York Times (25 May, 1963), p. 1, col. 6.
10. Campbell, “‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” Syncopations, p. 77.
11. Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time,” in Toni Morrison (ed.), James Baldwin: Collected Essays (New York: Library of America, 1998), p. 294; Campbell, “‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” Syncopations, p. 77.
12. Eve Auchinloss and Nanc Lynch, “Disturber of the Peace: James Baldwin—An Interview,” in Standley and Pratt (eds.), Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 101.
13. Baldwin, “The Devil Finds Work,” Collected Essays, p. 547.
14. Ibid., p. 544.
15. Maurice Wallace, “‘I’m not Entirely What I Look Like:’ Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and the Hegemony of Vision; or, Jimmy’s FBEye Blues” in Dwight A. McBride (ed.), James Baldwin Now (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), 300.
16. Balshaw, Maria and Liam Kennedy. Eds. Urban Space and Representation (London: Pluto, 2000), 8.
17. See, for example, Joseph J. Firebaugh, “The Vocabulary of ‘Time’ Magazine,” American Speech 15, 3 (October 1940): 232-242.
18. William Maxwell, “African-American Modernism and State Surveillance,” in Gene Jarrett (ed.), A Companion to African American Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), Maxwell, 255.
19. ]Natalie Robins, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War on Freedom of Expression (New York: Rutgers University Press, 1993), p. 347.
20. See David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).  Johnson points out that during the “Lavender Scare” many homosexual men and women were targeted as security risks on account of their sexuality.
21. See, for example, Joseph J. Firebaugh, “The Vocabulary of ‘Time’ Magazine,” American Speech 153 (October 1940): 232-242.
22. “Races: Freedom—Now,” Time 81, no. 20 (May 17 1963): 26; see also Jean François Gounard, The Racial Problem in the Works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, trans. Joseph J. Rodgers, Jr., foreword by Jean F. Béranger (London & Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992), who notes that Baldwin’s upbringing gave him “an unpredictable temperament. It made him a sensitive and nervous person. Thus the slightest event could have surprising effects on him” (149-50); see also Calvin C. Hernton, White Papers For White Americans (New York: Doubleday, 1966), who writes that it “is immensely revealing that the first Negro to get his face on a full page of the very feminine Harper’s Bazaar (April 1963) is James Baldwin” (120).
23. James Baldwin, “The Discovery of What it Means to be an American,” Collected Essays, p. 142.
24. Baldwin, “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood,” Collected Essays, p. 828.