The family of Martin Luther King Jr has expressed concern over Donald Trump’s executive order to release records surrounding the civil rights leader’s assassination, saying the president’s mandate could revive efforts to discredit the revered activist with the public.
Speaking to Axios, a friend of the King family said: “We know J Edgar Hoover tried to destroy Dr King’s legacy, and the family doesn’t want that effort to prevail,” referring to the late former FBI director and his agency’s years-long surveillance of King as well his associates.
In addition to covert surveillance, the FBI threatened King in other ways – including by sending King’s wife, Coretta, a tape of King allegedly having an extramarital affair, as well as a note encouraging him to kill himself for the sake of the civil rights movement.
The latest remarks from the King family friend follow an executive order signed by Trump in January, the first month of his second presidency, that ordered the release of thousands of classified federal documents on King’s 1968 assassination.
He ordered a similar release of classified federal documents pertaining to the 1963 and 1968 assassinations of President John F Kennedy and Senator Robert F Kennedy.
Respectively, the Kennedy brothers were the uncle and father of Trump’s newly appointed health and human services director, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
“Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth,” Trump’s executive order said. “It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”
Trump in January boasted to reporters: “Everything will be revealed.”
After Trump’s order, King’s family released a statement, saying: “For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
However, according to a White House official speaking to Axios, the Trump administration refused that request from King’s family, though it claimed the refusal did not stem from “animus toward the family”.
Speaking to the outlet, a second source who spoke with one of King’s two surviving adult children said that “there are deep concerns” within the family over the ordered release.
“They know the right wing wants to smear Dr King, and one way to do it is by putting these smears in the public under the guise of transparency. If there are assassination records, release those. But smears are not assassination records,” the source told Axios.
King dedicated his life’s work to advancing civil rights across the United States before assassin James Earl Ray fatally shot him at the Lorraine motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on 4 April 1968.
A 2020 documentary by US film-maker Sam Pollard titled MLK/FBI explores the agency’s pursuit of King via state-sanctioned surveillance.
