Samuel L. Jackson was pulled from the Black Power movement by the FBI
American actor Samuel L. Jackson is one of the world’s highest-grossing stars, celebrated worldwide for his multiple collaborations with filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee.
Born in 1948, Jackson was a teenager when the Civil Rights Movement gained traction. After attending the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr, Jackson began involving himself in marches and other forms of protests, such as holding the trustees at Morehouse College hostage while demanding reform.
Jackson surrounded himself with prominent figures from the Black Power movement, like Stokey Carmichael, although he once claimed he was never a member of the Black Panther Party.
Still, his association with significant members led the FBI to contact his mother, using threats to persuade her to get Jackson away from the Black Power movement.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Jackson discussed what happened: “They told my mother something bad was going to happen to me if she didn’t get me out of Atlanta in the summer of ’69. I’d already decided that I was going to be an actor at that point. I wasn’t out of the Revolution, but I wasn’t going to be the political animal that I had been.”
Jackson added: “I was ready to do something else. The FBI knocked on the door and talked to her face to face in Tennessee, so she came from Chattanooga to Atlanta, took me to lunch to talk to me, and then drove me to the airport, got me a ticket”.
He recalled how she said, stating: “‘Get on the plane. Do not get off the plane till you get to L.A., and I’ll tell you why.’ So, I did. And she told me why. And I went to L.A. and became something else.”
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