Rev. King’s Gallant Civic Rights Crusade Versus Troubling Private Life
How many people are aware that the during the 1960s the FBI tried to blackmail the crusading civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. into committing suicide? The intense spying on King was part and parcel of FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO project.
During a tumultuous eight years,1956 -1964, Rev. King was arrested no less than 29 times.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230223063347/https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/mlk-topic/martin-luther-king-jr-arrests
Evidently, King’s biggest nemesis was the FBI which was intent on silencing him by any means possible.
The blackmail scheme was revealed in an explosive expose in November 2014 in the British newspaper The Telegraph.
FBI to Rev. King: ‘You filthy abnormal animal.’
“The graphic contents of an anonymous letter in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation called Martin Luther King a “filthy abnormal animal” have been made public for the first time.
“Written in 1964 by a deputy of the feared FBI chief J Edgar Hoover posing as a disillusioned civil rights activist, the typewritten note appears to have been a heavy-handed attempt to blackmail King into taking his own life.”
The letter was sent to King together with a cassette recording of extramarital trysts which the FBI had obtained by nefariously wiretapping his homes and hotel rooms.
The blackmail letter was described as, “part of a personal vendetta Hoover held against King, after the latter accused the FBI of failing to protect black people in the Deep South.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11226618/You-filthy-abnormal-animal-graphic-contents-of-anonymous-letter-sent-by-FBI-to-Martin-Luther-King.html
In 1956 Stanley Levison, a New York attorney professionalized the fundraising to support the Montgomery bus boycott which King initiated. He also took on many other publicity tasks, in addition to serving as Dr. King’s literary agent.
But it was also in the early 1950s that the FBI considered Levison to be a major financial coordinator for the Communist Party USA and began to monitor his activities. Once Rev. King started to achieve a national following FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was concerned that Levison might influence King with Communist doctrine and in March 1962 he convinced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to authorize electronic surveillance of Levison, and King.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/levison-stanley-david
President Kennedy himself warned Dr. King in 1963 that he should dissociate himself from Levison to help protect the movement from allegations of Communist ties.
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/14/archives/stanley-levison-67-adviser-to-dr-king-new-york-lawyer-had-a-key.html
Although there was no evidence of Levison having further ties to communists, the FBI used his earlier communist history to justify wiretaps and bugs on his offices and the offices and hotel rooms of Martin Luther King. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had long associated the civil rights movement with communism, and he strongly expected that Levison would use or manipulate King to stimulate political unrest within the United States.
Nonetheless Hoover’s FBI not only failed to find a communist connection to King’s civil rights organizations but recorded Dr. King describing communism as “an alien philosophy contrary to us.”
In 1965, an FBI wiretap recorded King expressing frustration with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference exclaiming, “There are things I wanted to say renouncing Communism in theory, but they would not go along with it. We wanted to say that it was an alien philosophy contrary to us …”
https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-martin-luther-king-jr-surveillence-wiretap-report-j-edgar-hoover-780630
Although FBI’s extensive snooping and wiretapping could not turn up a shred of evidence that Rev. King was a communist it did reveal alarming cases of flagrantly adulterous behavior wantonly committed by Dr. King.
“Ultimately the recordings did not provide evidence of ‘communist influence’ on the civil rights movement. Instead, they recorded King’s extramarital affairs. FBI officials, who already planned to ‘neutralize’ King before they recorded his infidelities, shifted the rationale for their campaign [from concerns of ‘communist influence’] to ‘morality’ without missing a beat.”
https://theconversation.com/j-edgar-hoovers-revenge-information-the-fbi-once-hoped-could-destroy-rev-martin-luther-king-jr-has-been-declassified-118026
A recording of an alleged rape, that occurred inside the Washington DC Willard Hotel in January 1964, is disturbing.
Its typed summary reads: “The group met in his room and discussed which women among the parishioners would be suitable for natural or unnatural sex acts.
“When one of the women protested that she did not approve of this, the Baptist minister immediately and forcibly raped her.”
A handwritten memo, adds: “King looked on, laughed and offered advice.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/martin-luther-king-rape-fbi-tapes-video-mlk-laugh-files-a8932206.html
So here we have the FBI recording a rape in progress performed by fellow Baptist minister with Rev. King laughing and offering advice. All this just a few minutes walk from the White House.
King biographer David Garrow wrote, “I am deeply sympathetic to King – but at the same time rape is rape.”
A copy of the cassette recording together with the “You filthy abnormal animal” letter was anonymously sent to the King family. Evidently the copy provided was of poor quality. Nonetheless the King family immediately suspected that the FBI was the source if for no other reason then only the FBI could have bugged King’s hotel room.
The mere notion that FBI agents idly sat and listened while a helpless woman was maliciously raped in the company of Baptist ministers is even more unsettling. Or, at the very least, ask her the following day if she wanted to press charges which apparently never happened.
Litigation by Bernard Lee from King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference sought to destroy the recordings and transcripts. But the judge in the case, John Lewis Smith Jr., rejected the request, and instead ordered them sealed at the National Archives for 50 years until 2027.
https://theconversation.com/j-edgar-hoovers-revenge-information-the-fbi-once-hoped-could-destroy-rev-martin-luther-king-jr-has-been-declassified-118026
The FBI summarized the results of its snooping campaign against King in a 20-page report dated March 12, 1968—just weeks before King was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.
The dossier, titled “Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Current Analysis,” details other salacious conduct of the civil rights crusader including a description of a two-day workshop that King held in Miami in February 1968. One of the attendees, according to the report, apparently informed the FBI of “behind-the-scene drinking, fornication, and homosexuality that went on at the conference,” in addition to prostitution, and “an all-night sex orgy was held with these prostitutes.”
https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-martin-luther-king-jr-surveillence-wiretap-report-j-edgar-hoover-780630
The file concludes with:
As can be seen from above, it is a fact that King not only regularly indulges in adulterous acts but enjoys the abnormal by engaging in group sexual orgies.
The entire report can be found here: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10125-10133.pdf
For all of his faults Dr. King courageously stood up for civil rights even at the risk of great personal danger including 29 arrests. The fact that King accomplished his civil rights goals without inciting violence may be the greatest testament to his character.
Hoover’s surveillance was meant to uncover compromising information on King and use it to publicly discredit him. In the end, though, the FBI’s memos and recordings succeeded in embarrassing the bureau.
– Mark Adams National Security Commentator