“Ain’t No Way” is what the late soul legend Aretha Franklin would say after discovering the FBI spied on her for nearly four decades, according to her son Kecalf Franklin.
Last month, a Freedom of Information Act request obtained by Rolling Stone revealed the FBI held a 270-page report on the Detroit native and singer under the suspicion that she supported and even helped galvanize “radical” black movements. However, the agency never discovered any evidence for its suspicions.
“I’m not really sure if my mother was aware that she was being targeted by the FBI and followed,” Franklin’s son told the outlet. “I do know that she had absolutely nothing to hide though.”
Aretha Franklin was tracked for 40 years by the FBI, which used false phone calls, surveillance, infiltration, and highly-placed sources in an attempt to tie her to “extremists” https://t.co/iOMVNgN8bf
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 2, 2022
One of the major reasons for the agency’s decision to track and surveil Franklin was her ties to the civil rights movement. The FBI even had suspicions that her performance at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral could cause an “emotional spark which could ignite racial disturbance.”
The federal agency was also aware of death threats against her family. The report shows her brother Cyril received at least two threatening phone calls from a person whose name was redacted in the October 1979 report.
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Franklin’s oversight by the FBI adds to the list of black music legends who have been watched by the FBI in its 114 years as a federal agency. Other notable figures to be surveilled include Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston, and Brooklyn rapper Notorious B.I.G., to name a few.
Read Franklin’s 270-page file here.
