Despite the Trump administration’s effort to portray its release of voluminous files on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a “historic step,” the documents add precious little to what’s already known about the life and murder of the iconic civil rights leader.
That’s the take of several leading university scholars who’ve devoted their lives to studying the assassination of King, which took place on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dr. Lerone A. Martin
Martin said that while the documents are largely focused on the assassination and subsequent investigation, researchers at the institute have found “a few small details” here and there, such as an audio of an interview with the cellmate of convicted King shooter James Earl Ray prior to his escape from prison in Missouri in 1967 – prior to King’s death.
Martin offered one caveat for anyone who reads the newly-released files.
“These documents must be read with the knowledge that they derive from an FBI that was engaged in a no-holds barred counter-intelligence campaign against MLK and his legacy,” he said. “The program began officially in 1963, following the ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ at the March on Washington and continued long after MLK’s death.”
Dr. Brian Kwoba
Dr. Brian Kwoba, an associate professor of history director of African and African American Studies at the University of Memphis, said that there is already an extraordinary body of evidence about this case in the form of the transcript from the 1999 civil trial of the confessed co-conspirator in the assassination, Loyd Jowers.
“No serious student of Dr. King’s assassination can fail to ignore that trial and what came out of it,” said Kwoba. “The month-long trial heard testimony from some 70 witnesses and concluded with an explosive verdict: that Jowers did – as he himself admitted – join a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King, and that local, state, and federal agencies were the main actors.”
Dr. David J. Garrow, a former history professor and author of several books about King, including Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., told Diverse that 95 percent of what is in the newly released files is actually a “re-release” of documents first released back in the 1970s.
“Nobody except me who is working on this has any historical memory that goes back more than about 20 years,” Garrow said. “I’ve been doing this for 47 years now. I have really clear memories of what I saw in 1978, 1979.”
Both Garrow and Martin said that the more revelatory release of files could come in 2027, when purported surveillance records of MLK will be unsealed as per a court order. The release of the files has been met with both praise and skepticism.
In an announcement regarding the release on July 21, the U.S. Department of Justice quoted Dr. Alveda King – a niece of Dr. King who is also a longtime Trump supporter – said that she was “grateful” to President Trump and Attorney General Pamela Bondi for “delivering on their pledge of transparency in the release of these documents on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr..”
“My uncle lived boldly in pursuit of truth and justice, and his enduring legacy of faith continues to inspire Americans to this day,” Aveda King said. “While we continue to mourn his death, the declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth that the American people deserve.”
Dr. King’s two surviving children struck a decidedly different tone, and said that the release of the 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 (FBI),” Martin Luther King III and Dr. Bernice A. King said in a statement released through The King Center, an Atlanta-based nonprofit founded by their late mother, Coretta Scott King.
They said that the intent of the government’s COINTELPRO campaign was “not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement.”
“These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth – undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo,” the statement said.
They asked that those who engage with the MLK files “do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
Bernice King has also added her voice to the growing chorus of calls for the Trump administration to release more files on disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Now, do the Epstein Files,” she stated in a post on X.
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