Who, in fact, did Martin Luther King Jr. assassinate? Secret documents about the dark chapter in US history have been made public
Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC, May 1957. Photo source: Keystone Pictures / Zuma Press / Profimedia
The United States Department of Justice published over 240,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of Martin King Jr., including FBI files, which supervised the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in a campaign to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize, reports Reuters.
The files were published on the website of the National Archives, which announced that other documents will be published.
King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, while turning more and more attention from a nonviolent campaign for equal rights for African-Americans to economic issues and peace calls. His death rocked the United States in a year that also brought racial revolts, demonstrations against the Vietnam war and the assassination of the candidate for Presidency Robert F. Kennedy.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump's administration published thousands of pages of digital documents related to the assassination of Robert Kennedy and former President John F. Kennedy, killed in 1963.
Trump promised in the election campaign that he would ensure more transparency about Kennedy's death. When taking over the mandate, he also ordered his advisers to present a plan to publish the documents regarding the assassination of Robert Kennedy and King.
The FBI kept files about King in the 1950s and 1960s – even records of its telephone calls – because of what the Bureau has falsely stated at that time, namely that it had links with communism during the US Cold War and the Soviet Union. In recent years, FBI has recognized this as an example of “abuse and excess” in its history.
The family of the leader for civil rights asked those who have access to files to “act with empathy, restraint and respect for the continuous pain of our family” and condemned “any attempt to abuse these documents”.
“Now more than ever, we must honor his sacrifice by committing us to realize his dream-a society based on compassion, unity and equality,” the family said in a statement.
“During our father's life, he was the target of an invasive, aggressive and deeply disturbing misinformation and surveillance campaign, orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Investigation Bureau,” the family said, including his two children in life, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62 years old, referring to the director of the FBI then.
James Earl Ray, a segregationist and vagabond, confessed that he killed King, but later retracted his testimony. He died in prison in 1998.
King's family said he had a civilian process for death in Tennessee in 1999, which led to the unanimous conclusion of the jury that “our father was the victim of a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers and anonymous accomplices, including government agents, as part of a larger plan.
The verdict also confirmed that someone other than James Earl Ray was the one who fired and that Ray was staged to be blamed. Our family considers this verdict a confirmation of our long -term beliefs. ”
Jowers, a former Memphis police officer, told the Prime Live ABC show that he participated in a plot for King's killing in 1993. A report of the justice department of 2023 qualified its statements as dubious.
