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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.
The release involves an estimated 200,000 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 documents on the murder of the civil rights leader were posted on a government website as critics and supporters of Donald Trump continue to call for him to honor a different campaign promise: the release of files from federal investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender Trump socialized with for more than 15 years.
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 in advance of the public disclosure. Two of his children have appealed to the public to engage with the documents “with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief”.
“The release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context,” wrote Martin Luther King III and Dr Bernice A King in a statement. “During our father’s lifetime, he 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).”
They also repeated the family’s long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.
Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed at the age of 39. Martin III was 10.
“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,” they continue. “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.”
The murdered civil rights leader’s children also write that they believe that their father was killed as part of a conspiracy that involved “unnamed co-conspirators, including government agencies”.
“While we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods,” they add. “We strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy and the significant achievements of the movement. Those who promote the fruit of the FBI’s surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement.”
Some civil rights activists were not so supportive of the release.
“Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,” said the Rev Al Sharpton. “It’s a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the Maga base.”
The King Center, founded by King’s widow and now led by Bernice King, reacted separately from what Bernice said jointly with her brother. The King Center statement framed the release as a distraction – but from more than short-term political controversy.
“It is unfortunate and ill-timed, given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society,” said the King Center, linking those challenges to MLK’s efforts. “This righteous work should be our collective response to renewed attention on the assassination of a great purveyor of true peace.”
Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to John F Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When the US president 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.
The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.
The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until justice department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order early.
Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents for new information about his assassination on 4 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice.
Ray pleaded guilty to King’s murder. Ray later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.
Members of King’s family, and others, have long questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. Coretta Scott King asked for the inquiry to be reopened, and in 1998, then attorney general Janet Reno directed the justice department’s civil rights division to take a new look. Reno’s department said it “found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr King”.
In their latest statement, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up. They pointed to a 1999 civil case, brought by the King family, in which a Memphis jury concluded that Martin Luther King Jr had been the target of a conspiracy.
“As we review these newly released files,” the Kings said, “we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted.”
