FILE – Martin Luther King, Jr., close-up during a speech, circa the 1960s. ( Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON D.C. – The Trump administration released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., the Associated Press reports.
What we know:
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.
King’s family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams review the records ahead of the public disclosure. The family had requested that they see the files first in January.
What they’re saying:
In a lengthy statement released Monday, the two living King children called their father’s case a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context.”
“The release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context. 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,” the family’s statement read. “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.”
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The backstory:
President Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. When Trump 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 some RFK files in April.
The Source: Information in this article was originally reported by the Associated Press.
