This year marks 4 decades since the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was approved as a federal holiday, but celebration was not how the federal government responded to the work of Dr. King during his lifetime.  

Beginning in 1955 until his death, King was targeted by repeated, invasive, covert surveillance operations by the FBI. According to internal FBI documents the goal of these operations was to quote “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” Dr. King and others in the movement for Black Liberation. 

Wiretapping was the primary technology of surveillance in the 1950s and 60s. Today, those technologies of surveillance are everywhere. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly present in our daily lives, so do the racial biases embedded in AI.

We talked with Tawana Petty, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Algorithmic Justice League, about the racialized legacies that inform today’s AI-powered surveillance and the pathway forward to equitable AI use.