The FBI's War on Black Marriage
Press Release
Date: September 21, 2026
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: PC Theater
Speaker: Dr. Traci Lynnea Parker-Lewis, UC Davis
Bio: Traci Parker is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California,
Davis. She is the author of Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights
from the 1930s to the 1980s (UNC Press, 2019) and co-editor of The New Civil Rights Movement Reader: Resistance, Resilience, and Justice (UMass Press, 2023). She is also the co-editor of I Was Called: The Activist Life of Coretta Scott King, which will be published by Yale University Press in April 2027 to commemorate Scott
King’s 100th birthday. Her forthcoming book, Revolutionary Love (Bloomsbury Publishing), explores the transformative power of romantic relationships
within the Black Freedom Movement. She is also co-editing a collection of essays on
marriage in twentieth-century America and writing a biography of Coretta Scott King.
Title: The FBI's War on Black Marriage
Description: This talk examines how the FBI targeted Black intimacy—attempting to fracture marriages,
sow distrust between partners, and destabilize the emotional foundations of political
leadership during the mid-twentieth-century Black Freedom Movement.
Disclaimer/Content Warning: Some discussion of sex, infidelity, and the FBI’s use of sexual surveillance and allegations
as a weapon against African American activists.
