Black American Spies and Why They Were The Best
Black spies used their invisibility in plain sight to carry out some of the nation’s most important war efforts.
circa 1925: Portrait of American-born singer and dancer Josephine Baker (1906 – 1975) lying on a tiger rug in a silk evening gown and diamond earrings. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
When most people think of history’s American spies, they imagine a sleuthy white man, tracking troop movements, planting bugs and obtaining secrets under the radar of the enemy. What’s rarely imagined, let alone taught, is the role Black Americans played in espionage from the Revolutionary War through modern times.
Enslaved and free Black men and women slipped into rooms they weren’t meant to enter, cozied up to marks who underestimated them and quietly ran intelligence networks that relied on invisibility in plain sight. Here are Black spies whose intelligence work shaped history.
Mary Elizabeth Bowser
Dubbed the “baddest bitch in history” by Comedy Central, Bowser became known as one of the Union’s most daring Civil War spies. Literate and underestimated, Bowser worked as an undercover agent from inside the Confederacy’s most vulnerable locations — Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s home, according to African American Registry.
Masking her intelligence by pretending to be bat sh*t crazy, “Crazy Bet,” as she was known, used a rumored photographic memory to collect important military information and pass it on to Ulysses S. Grant.
James Armistead Lafayette
James Armistead Lafayette was born enslaved but became a master of deception during the American Revolution. According to America’s Army Museum, he disguised himself as a runaway, infiltrated British camps, delivered key intelligence to the Marquis de Lafayette and fed false information to the enemy. His double agent work was crucial at Yorktown in 1781.
With Marquis de Lafayette’s support, he later won his freedom and dropped his enslaver’s name.
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was a known boundary-breaking dancer, singer and international icon, but few knew she was also a World War II spy for the French Resistance. Though she spied on behalf of France rather than the U.S., Baker belongs in this conversation about Black espionage.
At the height of her fame, Baker used her celebrity to move through elite European society and collect information on Nazi Germany and other Axis powers, according to History.com. Baker hid intelligence in invisible ink on sheet music and pinned notes inside her clothing, later explaining, “nobody would think I was a spy.”
Her bravery earned her France’s highest military honors.
Debra Evans Smith
While working in Records Management, Debra Evans Smith attended the FBI Academy after gaining nine pounds to meet the minimum weight requirement.
When only one percent of Black women were spies, Smith was drawn to counterintelligence. She volunteered for surveillance, learned Russian, and spent four years handling Russian counterintelligence in Los Angeles, conducting interviews and investigations in the language, according to the FBI. For her, the work was never about individual cases—it was about serving the country.
Abraham Gallaway
If you’ve never heard of Abraham Gallaway, that’s no accident. According to historian Dr. David Cecelski, Gallaway may have been the most important Southern war hero, but his legacy was erased when North Carolina rewrote its own history in the late 1800s, depicting enslaved people as “docile.” Gallaway’s story did not fit their narrative.
Born enslaved in 1837 near Wilmington, N.C., he escaped at 19. Gallaway became a “master spy” for the Union Army during the Civil War, providing military intelligence from within the South and establishing a spy network. He also became a state senator, according to 6 ABC. Today, his story is preserved at the North Carolina Museum of History.
Mary Louvestre
Mary Louvestre (sometimes spelled Touvestre) was a free Black woman who would not take no for an answer. Working as a seamstress in Virginia, she stole documents about troop movements and walked to deliver them to Union officials in Washington, D.C. When officers brushed her off, hesitating to meet with her, she kept going back until they listened.
Darrell M. Blocker
Darrell M. Blocker spent 32 years in U.S. intelligence, retiring in 2018 as the most senior Black officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and earning the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. A second-generation intelligence professional, Blocker’s work took him to dangerous territory in places like Iran and North Korea, according to the International Spy Museum.
Having lived in 10 foreign countries, he has held titles including Deputy Director of the Counterterrorism Center and managed the CIA’s Ebola response.
Recently, he flipped his knowledge into a role as Hollywood creative consultant.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman was more than the Underground Railroad’s “Moses.” She made power moves in the Union Army, using her reputation to recruit Black scouts. Tubman gathered intel no one else could. According to Brandeis University, she became the first woman to lead a U.S. military raid in 1863, which freed 750 people and sealed her acumen as a true strategist.
George E. Hocker, Jr.
George E. Hocker, Jr., a Washington, D.C. native, joined the CIA in 1957 while studying at Howard University. Working as a file clerk to fund his education, he stopped short of aspirations to work as a spy because CIA leaders told him Black people were not intelligent enough or able to “blend in.”
He believed them … until the 1963 March on Washington inspired him to pursue his dream despite racism. During the Cold War, Hocker gathered intelligence in Africa and later went to Latin America, risking his life on dangerous assignments. Hoker never lost sight of the fight at home, stating, “While I was fighting for my country’s interests abroad, my fellow Black Americans were facing war zones of their own at home,” as quoted in Newsweek.
Robert Smalls
Born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls rose to become a skilled pilot on the Confederate transport CSS Planter by his early twenties. In a bold act of courage in 1862, he seized the ship, picked up his family, and navigated past Confederate forts under the guise of a captain, delivering the vessel safely to Union forces. Smalls went on to become the first African American to command a U.S. naval vessel, and after the war, he purchased his former enslaver’s house, reclaiming a space that had once symbolized his bondage.
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