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==Hoover and the Civil Rights Movement==
Hoover was deeply alarmed by the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, which sought equality for African-Americans. He suspected that many were communists and beginning in the mid-1950s he had the activities of many activists monitored and had their phones taped and homes bugged. Many organisations such as the Black Panthers and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were targeted by the FBI on the orders of Hoover <ref> Gentry, p 302 </ref>. It is recorded that Hoover slandered many leading members of the civil rights movement to successive Presidents. It seemed that the head of the Bureau did personally hate Martin Luther King. This is shown very well in the movie. In one scene, the viewers are shown Hoover writing an anonymous letter to the wife of Martin Luther King which gave graphic details of his extramarital affairs. With the letter is a tape with recordings of some of the civil rights leader’s infidelities. This is more or less an accurate account of what happened. It was later established that Hoover authorized the sending of the letter and the tape to Luther King’s wife and it was probably designed to prevent him from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
==How accurate is J. Edgar Hoover==Eastwood had set himself an almost impossible objective in trying to capture a complex and contradictory figure who was one of the most powerful men in America for almost 50 years. There are many things that ring true in this movie. The motion picture does show how Hoover transformed the FBI into the world’s premier law enforcement agency but also into a force that was used by him to pursue his private ambitions and his vendettas, such as his campaign against the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The motion picture also portrays how he abused his power and the fear that he inspired in even the most powerful. Eastwood managed to treat in a very sensitive manner the issue of the former head of the FBI’s sexuality. The work shows very accurately Hoover ’s rabid anti-communism. However, the biopic depicts Hoover as corrupted by power, by his excessive sense of patriotism, and hatred of extreme left-wing ideologies. This means that it downplays the insidious influence that he had on American public life. In general, when it comes to accuracy, the 2011 motion picture is largely reliable and gives viewers a good overview of the life of this very controversial figure.
==Further Reading==
Calder, James D., and George H. Nash. The origins and development of federal crime control policy: Herbert Hoover's initiatives (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).
