F.B. eyes: how J. Edgar Hoover's ghostreaders framed African American literature

Part one/thesis one : The birth of the Bureau, coupled with the birth of J. Edgar Hoover, ensured the FBI's attention to African American literature

Part two/thesis two : The FBI's aggressive filing and long study of African American writers was tightly bound to the Agency's successful evolution under Hoover

Part three/thesis three : The FBI is perhaps the most dedicated and influential forgotten critic of African American literature

Part four/thesis four : The FBI helped to define the twentieth-century Black Atlantic, both blocking and forcing its flows

Part five/thesis five : Consciousness of FBI ghostreading fills a deep and characteristic vein of African American literature

Appendix : FOIA requests for FBI files on African American authors active from 1919 to 1972.