Just days after Martin Luther King Jr. was invited to speak at Springfield College’s commencement in 1964, the FBI tried to get the school to cancel speech, the Atlantic reports in an account detailing new questionable tactics against the civil rights icon.
At the time, King had been the subject of extraordinary wiretapping at his home, office and hotel rooms where he stayed. Agents used those wiretaps to urge the college to cancel King’s commencement address.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with discrediting King at the time.
In mid-June, King delivered his speech and spoke about segregation, pacifism and morality.
