Trump To Authorize Release Of Government Docs Related To MLK Assassination
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If President Donald Trump does anything during his second term that Black people and other non-MAGA-fied groups might consider positive, it will be fulfilling plans he announced to release classified government documents on high-profile assassinations, including that of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
According to Newsweek, Trump announced earlier this week that, in the interest of government transparency, he will authorize the release of documents related to the circumstances around Dr. King’s death and the FBI surveillance and covert investigations conducted into MLK and his organization of civil rights activists.
From Newsweek:
These documents reveal how closely the prominent civil rights leader was monitored by the FBI, which saw him as a potential threat due to suspicions of communist ties and concerns over his influence in the civil rights movement.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover believed that individuals like Stanley Levison, a close advisor to King, had significant connections to the Communist Party USA. This led the FBI to initiate extensive surveillance of King, including wiretaps and covert operations, aiming to discredit him. The agency even sent an anonymous letter to King, which became known as the “suicide letter” due to its contents.
Two days after King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, William Sullivan, the FBI’s assistant director of intelligence, wrote: “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.”
So, we’ll learn that white conservatives have been labeling everything they don’t like “communism” for a very long time, that the U.S. government had a vested interest in crippling the Black liberation movement of the ’50s and ’60s, and that they had no qualms with using propaganda and weaponizing law enforcement and the government in order to do so. Nothing Black people didn’t already know.
In fact, a lot of people, especially Black people, are only wondering one thing: Who really shot MLK on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968? Was it James Earl Ray, the white supremacist who confessed to the assassination in 1969, but later claimed he was set up to take the fall for it, or is it what many have speculated — that the U.S. government directly murdered Dr. King?
More from Newsweek:
Ray later recanted, claiming he was a patsy in a broader conspiracy. He spent the rest of his life in prison, where he continued to advocate for his innocence. He died in 1998 at the age of 70 from complications related to kidney and liver disease.
Questions remain about whether Ray acted alone, the full extent of FBI surveillance, and possible government involvement. Evidence, such as witness statements and the ballistic trajectory of the bullet that struck King, has fueled speculation of a broader plot.
King’s family recently said in a statement: “The assassination of our father is a deeply personal loss we have endured for 56 years. We hope to review the files as a family before they are made public.”
They have long believed that his death was part of a broader plot, not the sole act of Ray.
So, now we wait to see if we learn anything new, or whether we get only get told what the government is willing to allow us to learn as usual. We shall see.
