This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) main headquarters file on its counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) against "black nationalist hate groups," as the FBI called them. The file begins in 1967 and ends in 1971, and consists of 26 sections of documents organized in roughly chronological order.

The COINTELPRO's purpose, described by the FBI in an August 25, 1967 letter to 23 field offices, was "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and their groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder." Initial targets of the COINTELPRO included "the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Nation of Islam." The FBI also instructed its agents to place "particular emphasis" on "Stokely Carmichael, H. 'Rap' Brown, Elijah Muhammad, and Max Stanford." The COINTELPRO expanded to 41 field offices in March of 1968, and also increasingly targeted the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

The documents in this file may also be found on the FBI's web site: http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists

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