Bayard Rustin formally demanded that the FBI release its extensive files on him under the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, acknowledging decades of government surveillance. The FBI responded with procedural delays, claiming his request was “incomplete” and requiring personal details the Bureau already possessed—revealing its continued resistance to accountability.
Bayard Rustin's "The Transformation of Eldridge Cleaver": Analyzing the Making of a Revolutionary Myth
Eldridge Cleaver's "Why I Left the U.S. and Why I Am Returning": A Revolutionary's Reckoning with Democracy
Cleaver’s essay recounts how seven years in exile shattered his faith in authoritarian revolutionary ideals and led him to recognize the imperfect but real accountability mechanisms within American democracy. His experiences abroad, combined with Watergate and the Church Committee revelations, convinced him that the U.S. still allowed forms of dissent, scrutiny, and self-correction absent in the regimes he had fled.
