New Delhi: Amid the escalating pressure for the release of the Epstein files, the Trump administration has released over 6,000 documents comprising more than 240,000 pages of records pertaining to the assassination of American civil rights icon Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr.
The comprehensive archive, posted on the National Archives website, encompasses the breadth of King’s life trajectory, with particular emphasis on the circumstances surrounding his assassination in 1968. It includes “internal FBI memos” and “never-before-seen CIA records” on both the assassin and the assassinated, National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard said.
A purported audio recording, said to be part of the recently disclosed trove, contains excerpts from a law enforcement interview with Jerry Ray, the brother of MLK’s killer James Earl Ray. In the recording, Jerry is reported to have responded to a query regarding his belief in his brother’s culpability, stating, “I don’t think he did it, and nobody else does.”
The Trump administration’s unprecedented release of records has divided people across the internet. While some see it as a step toward uncovering King’s assassination, others, including members of his family, warn against potential misinterpretations of his legacy and distraction from current controversies snowballing over the Trump administration.
The heavily redacted documents reveal nothing new about King’s assassination, leaving questions over withheld audio files, political intent and timing, and the true circumstances behind one of America’s most high-profile assassinations.
In a joint statement, MLK’s children Martin Luther King III and Bernice King urged the public to approach the files with sensitivity and reverence for their father’s legacy.
“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),” they said. “We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint and respect for our family’s continuing grief.”
Hours after the files went live, Bernice posted a pointed social media post featuring her father’s photograph with the succinct caption: “Now, do the Epstein files.”
Now, do the Epstein files. pic.twitter.com/rzlub3WucQ
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) July 21, 2025
Civil rights leader Al Sharpton, too, claimed that the file’s release was a “desperate attempt to distract” and accused the White House of using the files “to draw attention away from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unravelling of his credibility.”
However, some like MLK’s niece Alveda King expressed gratitude toward President Donald Trump for “delivering on their pledge of transparency”.
From this year onwards, the Trump administration has embarked on its systemic mission to declassify the files of the dead which were “collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades.”
The declassification of files pertaining to MLK marks the latest release in a series of high-profile disclosures. This follows the earlier unveiling of documents related to former president John F. Kennedy and his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, whose files were made public in March and April, respectively.
The prelude
The FBI became suspicious of King’s activities following his pivotal role in establishing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a coalition he co-founded alongside Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other fellow activists.
The organisation’s fundamental mission centred on utilising the moral authority and organising power of black churches to orchestrate nonviolent protests across the states. But the FBI saw it through a lens of profound suspicion considering it a potential carrier of communism within American society.
King also served as the president of the Gandhi Society for Human Rights organisation. In 1962, the social activist, in collaboration with the society, drafted a seminal document urging the then-President John F. Kennedy to issue an executive order which was envisioned as a transformative strike for civil rights.
The Kennedy administration, however, didn’t pay much heed to the legislative order. He advised King to discontinue his ties, which were not met with the same riposte, compelling Robert Kennedy to issue a written directive that sanctioned the FBI’s wiretapping operations targeting King and other prominent SCLC leadership in the fall of 1963.
Although the written approval was for limited wiretapping “on a trial basis, for a month or so”, the FBI took leverage of the growing suspicion on Stanley Levinson, a New York-based lawyer who was involved with the Communist Party of the USA, to look for evidence in any areas of King’s life they deemed ‘worthy’.
When no evidence emerged to support the SCLC’s alleged connections to communist elements within the US, the FBI turned to incidental details recorded on electronic tapes over the next 5 years as part of its COINTELPRO programme.
In 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover went as far as listing the SCLC as a black nationalist hate group, with the instructions: “No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups … to ensure the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited.”
For his part, King denied having any connections to communism. In a 1965 interview, he stated that “there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida.” He argued that Hoover was “following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South” and that his concern for communist infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to “aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements.”
Hoover termed King as “the most notorious liar in the country”. After his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech in 1963, the FBI described King as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country”.
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The Vietnam War
King was also a staunch critic of American military engagement and excesses in the Vietnam War, but he deliberately sidestepped this issue to avoid potential obstacles in his civil rights goals.
But the Nobel Peace prize winner couldn’t resist speaking on the excesses of war too long. Inspired by cultural icon Muhammad Ali for outspokenness on Vietnam War, he began articulating vociferous opposition to American intervention. King condemned the presence in Vietnam as an attempt “to occupy it as an American colony” and denounced the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”.
King’s stance on Vietnam galvanised prominent political figures, including Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas who, with substantial support from anti-war Democrats, endeavored to persuade King to run against President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1968 presidential election.
King initially contemplated but decided against this as he felt himself unsuitable with politics reserving his best for civil activism. The culmination of all of this resulted in a major upheaval for the American republic, one which the public remained unprepared for.
End of the ‘Dream’
On 4 April 1968, at his second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, King was shot dead at the age of 39. His assassination was preceded by a bomb threat which delayed his flight to Memphis.
According to biographer Taylor Branch, King’s autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he “had the heart of a 60-year-old”, which Branch attributed to stress.
All eyes and suspicion, which continues till date, grew up big on one small man. James Earl Ray, a small-time criminal, became the object of a two-month manhunt before he was apprehended at London while trying to reach white-ruled Rhodesia on a false Canadian passport. Ray, on the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, pleaded guilty on 10 March, 1969, to his crime of the highest order and was subsequently sentenced to a 99-year prison term.
‘MLK Files’ were seemingly looking closed as the assassin was detained, lodged behind the bars until Ray recanted his plea, claiming he had been framed by the conspirators. He spent the remainder of his life in an unsuccessful attempt, to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had. Ray died at the age of 70 in 1998.
The Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, found that “from December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the FBI to ‘neutralise’ him as an effective civil rights leader.”
The assassination triggered widespread race riots across America, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and dozens of others. President Johnson reached out to civil rights leaders, mayors and governors and cautioned political officials to instruct the police against employing unwarranted force.
In a candid assessment to his advisers, the President confided, “I’m not getting through. They’re all holing up like generals in a dugout getting ready to watch a war”.
Johnson declared 7 April a National Day of Mourning for King, possibly with an aim to calm the troubled waters.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended King’s funeral on behalf of the President, as there were fears that Johnson’s presence might incite protests.
Subsequently, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing-related transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin. This legislation was seen as a fulfilment of King’s long cherished ‘dream’ and a satisfying reward of his relentless struggle in his final years to combat residential discrimination.
(Edited by Tony Rai)