Uncensored MLK ‘suicide letter’ from 1964 discovered and released
17th November 2014 · 0 Comments
The release of a newly discovered, uncensored 1964 letter from the FBI to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that in graphic language urged the civil rights leader to take his own life sparked a discussion about race relations and abuse of power 50 years later, The Christian Science Monitor reported last week.
The nation and world have long known about a heavily redacted version of the letter, sent to Dr. King by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover just days before he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and pressuring him to commit suicide in order to avoid being exposed as an unfaithful husband. But the full extent of the vitriolic and abusive language contained in the letter had been kept out of the public consciousness until recently. Yale University historian Beverly Gage discovered the note in the National Archives while researching a book on Hoover and The New York Times published it Wednesday.
“This is a good moment to see just how much things have changed since the 1960s,” historian Jerald Podair, who teaches courses on race relations at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., told The Christian Science Monitor. The note was authorized by then-director J. Edgar Hoover and clearly shows the animosity and abusive tactics the agency was willing to authorize to not just discredit but destroy the civil rights leader.
The letter was part of a comprehensive effort by the FBI titled the Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that was designed to weaken, undermine and destroy Black civil and human rights organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality, Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
The MLK “suicide letter” reads in part:
“Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time …. You will find on the record for all time your filthy, dirty, evil companions, male and females giving expression with you to your hidious [sic] abnormalities. It is all there on the record, your sexual orgies. Listen to yourself you filthy, abnormal animal. You are on the record.”
Historians say Hoover gathered evidence of King’s extramarital affairs by placing wiretaps in the leader’s home and hotel rooms. A cassette of the recordings from one such wiretap was included in the package when the suicide letter was sent to King’s home in Atlanta, GA in 1964, four years before his death.
Some in the academic community wonder what significance the newly released King letter has in 2014 as the nation continues to grapple with issues like racism, public safety and personal privacy.
“And so, with the FBI involved in the Ferguson case and all these other details about federal agencies collecting personal data on Americans, this is also a cautionary tale about what can go wrong,” Professor Podair told The Christian Science Monitor.
Podair said last week that the current FBI director, James Comey, keeps a copy of the FBI’s wiretap request against King on his desk as a personal reminder of mistakes that have been made.
The demeaning and offensive language used in the King letter also shows that, while some elements of the race dialogue in the U.S. have softened, in fundamentally important ways, they have not changed, says Neal Lester, a professor of English who also teaches courses on race relations at Arizona State University, said last week.. The note refers to King as a “beast,” he says.
Such animalizing of the African-American continues today, Professor Lester added. As recently as the 2012 presidential reelection campaign, some anti-Obama campaign paraphernalia included references to both the president and Michelle Obama as monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
“All of these narratives are part of the same reduction of the black body to an animal or subhuman status that has gone on since slavery days,” Lester said.
The King letter also draws a parallel between how the nation’s top law enforcement agency treated a nonviolent civil rights leader and how various law enforcement agencies treat Black men and boys across the U.S. today. The cases of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Mike Brown and others becomes easier to understand against the backdrop of the King suicide letter from J. Edgar Hoover.
For some, the publication of this letter with its unambiguous attack on a major historical figure reopens old wounds, says Mark Naison, professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University in New York.
“The letter is not only a shocking example of administrative overreach by an intelligence agency, it reflects an attempt to undermine the Civil Rights Movement on the part of the most powerful nonelected public official in the United States,” he says, via e-mail. It also prompts questions about how much the FBI actually did to protect civil rights leaders, he adds.
The appearance of this document now is, indeed, “a double-edged sword,” says Beverly Hills psychiatrist, Carole Lieberman.
On the positive side, she says via e-mail, “it wakes us up to the realities of not putting complete trust in our government, but on the negative side, it wakes us up to the realities of not putting complete trust in our government … at a time when our trust has already been shaken to the core.”
This article originally published in the November 17, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
