On an otherwise pleasant day in May 1957, my father received two unwelcome visitors at his tool-and-die factory. The agents intended to use that information as leverage to turn my father, too, into a snitch. Having grown up hearing family stories about my father’s lifelong radical politics, Aaron put through a Freedom of Information Act request for the F.B.I. That file is a reminder of what I inherited from him — not just his politics, but the convictions that they were built on. Dad would have been a logical enough target of scrutiny of J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I.

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Persons: Aaron, David Freedman, —, Carol, Ken, Paul Avrich, Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I Organizations: Communist Party Locations: Highland Park, N.J, Piscataway