RNS Breaking News: Trump Administration Releases FBI Records on MLK Jr. Despite His Family’s Opposition
Tonight, Religion News Service (RNS) is reporting that the Trump Administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.
Quoting the AP, RNS is reporting that the “release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.”
The report continues:
King’s family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure.
In a lengthy statement released Monday, the two living King children called their father’s case a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context.”
“As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met — an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,” they wrote. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10.
The RNS report is cognizant of the speculation — even suspicion — surrounding the release of the records at this particular time. True, as a candidate for the Office of President, Donald Trump promised to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When he took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy’s and King’s 1968 assassinations.
However, the RNS report notes that
…besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration’s handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump’s first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.
Meanwhile,
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King’s family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement.
For its part, the RNS report acknowledges that
It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover’s bureau wiretapped King’s telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him.
In their statement released today, the surviving King children stated that their late father “was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”
Their statement continued:
The intent of the government’s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement. These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.
Like the King children and the Southern Leadership Conference, I am wondering just what good will come out of the release of the records. Sure, I am aware that scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Still, I wonder: Why release the records at this particular moment when the public’s interest appears to be on the so-called Epstein Files?
Vaughn E. James