Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Tapes (influence, general, 1920s, Washington)

[lentzr]

I understand that the FBI wiretapped and put 24/7 surveillance on MLK from 1963 until he was killed. I think that it was authorized by RFK, from allegations by Hoover, that MLK had communist sympathies. In 1977, a Federal Judge authorized that many details and transcripts are to remain classified until 2027. Is this still the case? Will we literally have to wait another 15 years for these details to come out? Why have they been classified for so long? Isn't almost 60 years following MLK's death a bit excessive? Has anything about this been leaked out? Or just rumors? Will it prove that MLK had extramarital affairs? Is that what this classification is all about? Debate.

[DiogenesofJackson]

I think that it's pretty common knowledge that King had extramarital affairs, so I don't think the sealing of these documents has much to do with that. David Garrow wrote extensively of King's trysts with women in different parts around the country.

As for RFK's involvement in the wiretapping of King, I believe Hoover did this on his own. When RFK threatened to shut it down, Hoover threatened to reveal damning information about the Kennedy's and so RFK acquiesced to the wiretapping.

It could be that one of the reasons that the tapes are sealed is that it might shed light on various other activities of the federal government, especially the FBI. As early as the 1960s, Hoover warned of a black "messiah" like figure who would, through his activism and popularity, jeopardize the stability of the federal government. Hoover believed in the early 1960s that King was him. Thus, the FBI under Hoover's leadership wiretapped him, but they also infiltrated various civil rights organizations and tried to foment dissent within its ranks. They did this quite effectively with many of the later "black power" organizations like the Black Panthers, The Guardians, the Invaders. the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Republic of New Africa, etc.

In other words, my guess is that the tapes could reveal exactly how the FBI tried to play the SCLC off of other orgs like CORE and the NAACP.

You know, if anyone really wants to look at the files, I'd suspect that some one with solid legal representation could get the files opened. This happened for sealed files of the Bureau of Investigation during the 19teens and 1920s. It was an Indiana professor who got access and he wrote extensively about how the forerunner to the FBI discredited African American protest organizations and labor unions. Theodore Kornweibel shows in his book, Seeing Red, that these unsealed documents that the original mission of the Bureau was to stymie movements for basic civil liberties, like freedom of speech/assembly, etc.

[russiaonline]

They were afraid that people would know the truth about socialism - and King was a leader of a socialist revolution. Soviet socialism is no longer a threat, but why declassify anything, if there is no demand.

[LibertyForever]

Gotta make sure the people are brainwashed enough to accept King as a great person instead of the womanizing,communist he was.If people knew the truth he would have never had a holiday for him..I celebrate every year by going to a Confederate Museum or some other Southern Historical place with my kids.

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by russiaonline

They were afraid that people would know the truth about socialism

What truths would those be?

Originally Posted by LibertyForever

I celebrate every year by going to a Confederate Museum or some other Southern Historical place with my kids.

So do you take them to the 4th Street Baptist Church, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Edward Pettus Bridge, the Old Slave Mart Museum or maybe the Civil Rights Memorial?


For some reason I doubt it.

[snofarmer]

We don't need any tape to " prove that MLK had extramarital affairs".
He was no saint. Sexually, MLK led one of the most astonishing double lives in history. And the galling hypocrisy of a man who had successfully staked his reputation on non-violent resistance punching out a jealous female lover for mouthing off would not have been lost on all but the most gullible of lefties.


Three relationships were more than one-night stands.

." King's attitude toward women was chauvinist and often exploitative. In his 1989 autobiography, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, King's close friend and fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy writes that on the night before he died, King gave a rousing speech, had dinner with a woman afterward and remained with her till 1 AM, then came back to his motel to spend the night with a second woman. In the early morning hours a third woman came looking for King and became angry when she found the bed in the room he shared with Abernathy unoccupied. When King reappeared, he argued with woman #3 and wound up knocking her across the bed. "

In his 1991 memoir, Breaking Barriers, journalist Carl Rowan writes that in 1964 congressman John Rooney told him that he and his congressional committee had heard J. Edgar Hoover play an audiotape of an apparent orgy held in King's Washington hotel suite. Over the sounds of a couple having intercourse in the background, according to Rooney, King could be heard saying to a man identified as Abernathy, "Come on over here, you big black mother****er, and let me suck your dick." Horrors, King was gay! (Rowan thinks this was just ribald repartee.) In The Straight Dope: Was Martin Luther King, Jr.*a plagiarist?

"He disclosed to her the one mistress who meant most to him since 1963"
Confidante Ralph David Abernathy's wife, Juanita, was furious that "King had picked Coretta's most vulnerable moment" to "ambush her sanctuary of willful, silent discretion."

A man once told me that a man who would cheat on his wife would do anything.

In one exchange with subordinates, King browbeats staffers of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference who disagreed with his decision to back a Memphis sanitation strike .

He saved his most scathing remarks for Jesse Jackson, the man who most prominently took up his mantle. "If you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead," King screamed at the young upstart. "But for God's sake, don't bother me."

Rev. King's affairs and his plagiarism on his academic work is part of the underground history of America.

PS, The available evidence suggests he was neither a communist nor unduly influenced by Marxist ideas.

[russiaonline]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

What truths would those be?

That it's a pro-people system.

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by snofarmer

Rev. King's affairs and his plagiarism on his academic work is part of the underground history of America.

Pretty much your entire post, probably with an exception to this alleged orgy, has been covered in most treatments of the Civil Rights Movement written by historians going on 35-40 years now and is in no way "underground history" except only in the extent that the vast majority of Americans do not read historical monographs despite their wide availability.

Just about every historian of the civil rights movement since Sitkoff and Carson have documented the divisions within and among the major civil rights organizations like SCLC, NAACP, CORE, SNCC, and the Urban League (not to mention the falling out with the so-called "black power" organizations) as well as the personality conflicts involving other leaders and King. Not only that, but Garrow, Carson, Tyson, Chappell, and quite a few others have noted King's plagiarist tendencies as well as his rampant adultery. Civil rights historians have quite adequately documented the sexism of the movement as well as SNCC's move to oust whites from participation in the movement. Moreover, Tim Tyson has put the whole historiography on its head, arguing quite persuasively that non-violence as a principle and tactic was more of an exception than the rule. in other words, most active African American proponents of civil rights reform favored armed resistance as opposed to "let's go out and be beaten again" to paraphrase Stokely Carmichael. Lastly, civil rights historians have noted the homosexuality of leaders within the movement, most particularly Aaron Henry of Mississippi and Bayard Rustin of the NAACP.

I could go on dissecting this pointless post of yours, but instead I'll just state that historians for the most part do not engage in hero worship as does the mainstream media. Rather, historians are skeptics. We look at a an American heroic figure of the past and wonder "how was this person human?" and then go from there (if we're working on a biography, but it's different type of inquiry if we're working on an historical problem). While the media focuses on the little white kids and black kids holding hands in the "I have a dream speech," historians are busy focusing on the more salient points of that oratory and how John Lewis's speech had to be edited because it pissed King off and would have likely turned a reluctant JFK into a movement-hating SOB.

Consequently, if you sit down and read some historical monographs written by practicing, professional historians, you might find that there are quite a few "heroes" in the past, whether American or not (whether white or not), who engaged in plagiarism, sexual misconduct, homosexuality, sexism, corruption, etc. Fact is, most people in leadership positions have some modicum of power and power tends to corrupt people, and some people who gain power were corrupt from the get-go. Historians generally speaking try to figure this stuff out and then document it.

Perhaps if you explored a few historical monographs about the civil rights movement then it would not seem quite so much like "underground history" and you'd realize that historians have accounted for King as a flawed individual like most of us.

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by russiaonline

They were afraid that people would know the truth about socialism - and King was a leader of a socialist revolution. Soviet socialism is no longer a threat, but why declassify anything, if there is no demand.

If King was a socialist, then it didn't come out until 1968 Poor People's Campaign and there's a broad base of literature on the subject that shows King only adopted some tenets of socialism in hopes of appealing to disaffected black youth turning to the so-called black power type organizations that advocated an overt socialism.

In short, King during the Montgomery (1955-56) wasn't a socialist.

Kind during Memphis (1968) was a practical socialist if he was one at all.

[LibertyForever]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

What truths would those be?



So do you take them to the 4th Street Baptist Church, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Edward Pettus Bridge, the Old Slave Mart Museum or maybe the Civil Rights Memorial?


For some reason I doubt it.

None. More like Confederate Museum's,Parades,things like that...don't want to rot their mind with that garbage you posted.