DS, signed “J.E.H.,” four pages, 8 x 7, December 13, 1951. Official United States Government office memorandum from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General J. Howard McGrath, on the subject of "Dynamiting of Jewish Temples, Schools and Centers; Dynamiting of Carver Village, Miami, Florida, Civil Rights." Hoover attaches a two-page resolution adopted by Miami's City Council condemning the attacks as "vicious, inhuman, and un-American," urging the FBI to intervene in the investigation, and asking the state to adopt a permit policy for the purchase of explosives. Also stapled into the packet is a carbon copy of the memo. In fine condition.
Though no connection was ever found between the synagogue bombings and that of Carver Village—a black housing project that suffered three separate attacks between September and December—it was clear that ethnic minorities were being targeted in South Florida, and the FBI suspected Ku Klux Klan involvement. Although thousands of dollars of property damage had been done, there had not yet been any human casualties. The violence peaked on Christmas night—just twelve days after Hoover sent this memo—when a bomb went off at the home of NAACP official Harry T. Moore, killing him and his wife. Their murder was the first assassination of any activist to occur during the Civil Rights Movement. In spite of FBI involvement, no arrests were ever made in the case.
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