Martin Luther King<\/a> III and Dr Bernice A King in a statement. \u201cDuring our father\u2019s 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).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThey also repeated the family\u2019s long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed at the age of 39. Martin III was 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe intent of the government\u2019s COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle, and destroy Dr. King\u2019s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement,\u201d they continue. \u201cThese actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth \u2013 undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The murdered civil rights leader\u2019s children also write that they believe that their father was killed as part of a conspiracy that involved \u201cunnamed co-conspirators, including government agencies\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhile we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to any attacks on our father\u2019s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods,\u201d they add. \u201cWe strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father\u2019s legacy and the significant achievements of the movement. Those who promote the fruit of the FBI\u2019s surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some civil rights activists were not so supportive of the release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTrump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice,\u201d said the Rev Al Sharpton. \u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The King Center, founded by King\u2019s widow and now led by Bernice King, reacted separately from what Bernice said jointly with her brother. The King Center statement framed the release as a distraction \u2013 but from more than short-term political controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is unfortunate and ill-timed, given the myriad of pressing issues and injustices affecting the United States and the global society,\u201d said the King Center, linking those challenges to MLK\u2019s efforts. \u201cThis righteous work should be our collective response to renewed attention on the assassination of a great purveyor of true peace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to John F Kennedy\u2019s 1963 assassination. When the US president took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F Kennedy\u2019s and King\u2019s 1968 assassinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until justice department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents for new information about his assassination on 4 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ray pleaded guilty to King\u2019s murder. Ray later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Members of King\u2019s family, and others, have long questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. Coretta Scott King asked for the inquiry to be reopened, and in 1998, then attorney general Janet Reno directed the justice department\u2019s civil rights division to take a new look. Reno\u2019s department said it \u201cfound nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr King\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In their latest statement, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up. They pointed to a 1999 civil case, brought by the King family, in which a Memphis jury concluded that Martin Luther King Jr had been the target of a conspiracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we review these newly released files,\u201d the Kings said, \u201cwe will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About 200,000 pages of surveillance records released despite objection from slain civil rights leader\u2019s family The Trump administration has released records of the FBI\u2019s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate\u2019s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The release involves an estimated 200,000 pages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":45093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1152],"tags":[419,34044,3316,34043],"class_list":["post-45092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanrights","tag-fbi","tag-mlk-jr","tag-records","tag-trump-officials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45094,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45092\/revisions\/45094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}