By Steve Neavling
Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat who wants to remove J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI headquarters, called the bureau’s first director a “maligned character” with a history of racism, misogyny and homophobia.
“He was a racist who went after Martin Luther King in extraordinary ways. He was a homophobe. He was a misogynist,” Connolly said in an interview on MSNBC’s Cross Connection on Saturday. “He was somebody who even denied the existence of the mafia for decades, allowing organized crime to get a toehold here in the United States. It’s time we renamed that building after somebody who deserves it.”
Connolly introduced a bill on Feb. 25 that calls for creating a renaming commission to provide recommendations based on “racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.”
MSNBC host Tiffany Cross agreed with Connolly and suggested the building should be named after Georgia’s voting rights activist Stacy Abrams.
“Changing the name of our premier law enforcement agency so it doesn’t honor a racist tyrant who trampled civil liberties, I don’t know, seems like a pretty logical step to me,” Cross said.
