The Trump administration has released the FBI surveillance documents on Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the Nobel Peace laureate’s family and the civil rights group he led until his assassination in 1968.
The released archives include over 240,000 pages of documents that were sealed by a court decision in 1977 when the FBI first collected them and handed them over to the National Archives and Records Administration, as reported by The Associated Press.
King’s family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were informed in advance of the publication and had their own teams examine the documents before they were publicly disclosed.
In a lengthy statement published on Monday, King’s two living children described their father’s case as „a public curiosity that has captivated for decades.” However, they emphasized the personal nature of the issue and insisted that „these files must be viewed in their complete historical context.”
„We ask those involved in the publication of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s ongoing pain,” the family representatives conveyed.
Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed, and Martin III was 10 years old.
### Trump Tries to Pacify Angry Supporters
President Donald Trump promised during the election campaign to release files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. When Trump took office in January, he signed a presidential decree to declassify the JFK files, along with those related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968.
The government declassified the JFK files in March and revealed some RFK files in April.
In addition to fulfilling the provisions of his January decree, the latest disclosure serves as another headline for Trump, who is trying to pacify his angry supporters over how his administration handled the files related to the sex trafficking investigation targeting Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who committed suicide in prison while awaiting trial in 2019 during Trump’s first term.
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Last Friday, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to release grand jury testimonies but did not disclose the entire case file.
The King files were initially meant to remain sealed until 2027, until Justice Department lawyers asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order before its expiration date.
Historians, history enthusiasts, and journalists are gearing up to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which King co-founded in 1957 during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, opposed the publication.
Together with King’s family, they argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights movement figures, recording their office conversations and phone calls in an effort to discredit them and their movement.