John Edgar Hoover Biography

John Edgar Hoover was born on New Years Day to parents Dickerson Naylor and Annie Marie Scheitlin. He had a brother, Dickerson Jnr., and a sister, Lilian, who were both over ten years older than him, as well as another sister, Sadie Marguerite, born five years before him but who later died of Diptheria.

Hoover supported his family after the early death of his father. After taking evening classes, he graduated with a degree in law in 1917, and joined the US Department of Justice.

Named Assistant to the Attorney General in November 1918, from 1919 to 1921, he worked on the Palmer Raids, a series of roundups in American cities, which resulted in the arrest of thousands of citizens and deportation of hundreds of immigrants. These individuals were alleged to be communists, socialists, anarchists and radicals, and were charged with attempting to overthrow the government by force and violence.

In 1924, he was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation, which was renamed the FBI in 1935, and Hoover reduced much of the inefficiency and corruption that existed within the agency.

He established centralised fingerprint and statistical files, began a crime laboratory and introduced a training academy. In the early 1930s, Hoover began a war on "public enemies" to capture organised crime leaders, such as "Pretty Boy" Floyd and "Baby Face" Nelson.

While he was unsuccessful in weakening organised crime, his campaign raised the profile of the FBI. During World War II, Hoover was in charge of protecting the United States from enemy agents.

As the Cold War developed, Hoover pursued the organisations and individuals, which he believed to be communist, with the vigour he had exhibited in the Palmer Raids.

Hoover was a controversial figure. He served under eight Presidents and secured a tremendous degree of personal power. His obsessive pursuit of left-wing, and other allegedly "dangerous", organisations caused many to accuse him of violating civil rights and prosecuting personal vendettas.

When J. Edgar Hoover died in his sleep on 2 May 1972, he had led the FBI for 48 years.