From the FBI file on Lloyd Louis Brown, who wrote the prison novel Iron City (1951), edited several Communist journals, and coauthored Paul Robeson’s autobiography, Here I Stand. The file was acquired by William Maxwell, whose book F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature was published by Princeton University Press in February. Maxwell recovered FBI files kept on fifty-one twentieth-century African-American writers.

On 2/20/62 in the vicinity of 43rd St. and Broadway, Lloyd Brown was approached by S.A.’s [redacted] and [redacted] for the purpose of conducting an interview. When approached, Brown acknowledged his identity, whereupon…