By Steve Neavling
The Trump administration has released nearly 200,000 pages of FBI records on Martin Luther King Jr., prompting backlash from his family and civil rights advocates who say the surveillance was part of a government campaign to destroy the civil rights leader and his movement.
The documents, which had been under court seal since 1977, were posted online this week despite opposition from King’s surviving children and the Atlanta-based King Center, the Guardian reports.
“The release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context,” Martin Luther King III and Dr. Bernice A. King said in a joint 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 urged the public to approach the records “with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
The family reiterated their belief that James Earl Ray, the man convicted in King’s 1968 assassination, did not act alone — if at all — and accused government agencies of being involved in a conspiracy to kill him. A Memphis jury in a 1999 civil case brought by the King family found that King had been the victim of a conspiracy.
“As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted,” the statement said.
The King children also condemned any attempt to use the FBI’s surveillance files to undermine their father’s legacy.
“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,” they wrote.
Bernice King was five when her father was killed at age 39. Martin III was 10.
The King Center, founded by Coretta Scott King and now led by Bernice King, called the timing of the release “unfortunate and ill-timed” and said the public should focus on “the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society.”
Rev. Al Sharpton was more blunt.
“Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,” he said. “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 documents’ release follows Trump’s campaign promise to declassify records related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and MLK. The JFK files were released in March, and some RFK files followed in April.
The MLK files were originally slated to remain sealed until 2027, but the Justice Department recently asked a federal judge to unseal them early.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, where he had joined striking sanitation workers. Ray later pleaded guilty, then recanted and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.
