US releases FBI files on Martin Luther King Jnr, despite family’s opposition
More than 240,000 pages of records, sealed since 1977, are now available, though their impact remains unclear
The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jnr, despite opposition from the assassinated Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 death.
The digital document dump includes 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.
In a lengthy statement released on Monday, King’s two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father’s assassination has been a “captivating public curiosity for decades”. But the pair emphasised the personal nature of the matter, urging that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context”.
The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. It was not immediately clear on Monday whether the documents would shed any new light on King’s life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder.
“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.”