The request for SNCC and Black Panther membership lists may be coming
from a totally benign motivation, but maybe not. And even if the
request is for good, honest, and friendly reasons, it is a mistake to
assume that present-day COINTELPRO-type operations are dead, or that
the government no longer has any interest in or sponsorship of covert
ops against ongoing and emerging African American leadership. So such
lists can have a detrimental or even in some cases deadly effect on
key individuals, the African American community generally, and the
hopes that many still nurture for a better future. The government can
certainly obtain lists from well-intentioned researchers.
While raising this danger does argue against gathering such lists, and
therefore poses problems for legitimate historic researchers, it does
not preclude a different method of information-gathering: namely,
publicizing the nature of the information needed or research being
done, with its projected uses, and calling for those who participated
in the historic events to step forward voluntarily as subjects for the
research. This would be far preferable to involuntary inclusion in
such a project.
As for obtaining the information from the FBI, it would not only run
the risk of being flawed in its creation by incompetence or malicious
fabrication, but even accurate information thus gained would put you
at a potential subject's doorstep with the very difficult opening,
"Hi, I got your name from the FBI..."
Doug Norberg