Descriptions:
Black Journal #408, “We, the Enemy” — aired April 9, 1974 on WNET/NET, hosted by Tony Brown with guests Dick Gregory and journalist Jack Anderson.
The core subject: government surveillance of Black Americans. Anderson lays out how he broke the story in May 1972 — a Secret Service “Black Nationalist File” with roughly 5,500 names, sitting inside a much larger protective-research database — and testified about it to the Congressional Black Caucus over a year before Nixon’s own White House enemies list became public. The FBI surveillance targets named (Panthers, SNCC, SCLC, Nation of Islam, CORE, NAACP, plus individual figures like MLK, Coretta Scott King, Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte) match what later Church Committee and COINTELPRO disclosures confirmed. Gregory adds his own experience being on Nixon’s list and under FBI/Air Force surveillance.
Midway through, Brown reads from an Anderson column describing laser-guided spy pigeons used to plant and retrieve bugs — the clip you pulled.
The back half opens to audience call-ins, ranging into affirmative action, the Mafia, CIA involvement in Chile, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and a cluster of assassination-adjacent claims from Gregory — RFK’s autopsy, the Wallace shooting, and his recurring story linking Malcolm X’s assassination to Pio Gama Pinto’s killing in Nairobi (a real connection, though Gregory’s “same day” framing is off by about three days).
Overall arc: a landmark case of investigative journalism intersecting with a Black-produced public affairs show, building toward a broader argument that the surveillance state was aimed disproportionately at Black political life.
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This video used in this post can be found here – https://youtu.be/-fu2OlHAqco?si=U2nU6mtK-lABuykX
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