Historians who assess the newly released pile of documents warn those who disagree with the idea that it contains groundbreaking information.
Trump administration releases files related to the MLK assassination
More than 240,000 pages related to the assassination of Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. have been released despite opposition from some members of the King family.
Researchers say it is found in the mountains of documents that are included in a pack of newly released documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
But among the roughly five million pages released by the National Archives and the administration on July 21, nothing changes the story when Ray pleaded guilty to King’s murder in 1969, historians say.
“The idea that there is some sort of secret document that shows J. Edgar Hoover did this isn’t how this works. Part of the challenge is to make the American public understand that it’s close to an exciting place.”
“The government should definitely release all the documents they have and they should have done that 20 years ago,” Cohen said. “The question is what we can find out about.”
National Archives officials have released more than 6,000 documents in accordance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January. Officials have released documents relating to objections from members of the King Family.
The file can be read online on the National Archives website. Historians say it will take weeks to fully understand what they will reveal.
Trump’s January 23, 2025 executive order also called for the release of records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
The complete findings of the government’s investigation into the three killings have been hidden for decades, sparking widespread speculation and preventing a sense of closure among many Americans. All three men were national and international icons where assassination and theories swirling around it became like pages of books, films, controversy, and history itself.
What do you find in the King File?
The newly released records come from an investigation into the assassination of King King, recorded by a central intelligence agency relating to the assassination and files from the State Department regarding the extradition of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to murdering King in 1969.
David Barrett, historian at Villanova University, said the file is likely to contain new and interesting information. However, this material may not be groundbreaking, as in the case of the JFK file released in March.
Barrett, author of several books on the President and Intelligence Reporting Agency, said: “Unless they want to write about the research, I don’t know that this will affect the scholarship.”
What’s noteworthy about the file is details about how the FBI tied Ray to King, how they found him and handed him over to the US from the UK where he escaped, Barrett said.
“It takes a few weeks to go through these, so there may be some important revelation, but I doubt it,” the political science professor said. “That’s not what people wanted, and not what the king’s family feared.”
Many files are also indecipherable due to their age and digitization. Officials at Archives said the agency has worked with other federal partners to reveal records related to the King’s assassination, which will be added to the website on a rolling basis.
What do you find in the King File?
Among the newly released documents, there are no details of the FBI surveillance of King, which historians say is hoping that recording agency director J. Edgar Hoover would use it as a threat to Georgia preachers.
Experts say that tapping into Hoover’s Kings hotel room is believed to contain evidence of an affair, and it is likely that his family is afraid of public disclosure. The New York Times reported that recordings were sealed up in accordance with court orders until 2027.
However, UC Berkeley Professor Cohen said the document likely has not been revealed for multiple reasons.
“There is a claim that these are key government secrets, so what may be included in them is true and not,” Cohen said. “Large government investigations often include all sorts of false claims, no hearsay evidence, no truth, bureaucratic inertia as part of the reason they are withheld, and part of the need to confirm truth.”
What should the FBI hide?
According to Cohen, Hoover’s recordings may prove the FBI’s double-edged sword. “Do these files contain anything that will confuse the King’s family? Is that possible?”
According to researchers at Stanford University, FBI agents began surveillance of King in 1955. Hoover believes King is a communist, and after Georgia preachers criticized the agency’s activities deep south in 1964, the former FBI director began targeting King using the agency’s counter intelligence program Cointelpro, researchers at Stanford University said.
Cointelpro was a controversial program condemned by the 1975 US Senate investigation.
“Many of the technologies used would not bear it in a democratic society, even if all targets were involved in violent activities,” the Senate Selection Committee, which examines government activities regarding intelligence reporting, stated in its final report. “The Bureau has carried out a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed at preventing speech and the exercise of the association’s first amendment rights.”
The agency went to the point that the agent testified to send secretly made records to the king from his hotel room, intended to destroy the king’s marriage, according to a 1976 Senate investigation. The king interpreted the memo sent on tape as a threat to release the recording, unless the king committed suicide, the Senate report said.
MLK was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
The official story of how King died is that he was killed on April 4, 1968 on the balcony outside a motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.
He went outside and spoke to a colleague in the car park below, and was shot in the face by an assassin. James Earl Ray, 40, escaped the fugitive and later confessed his crimes and was sentenced to a 99-year sentence.
However, Ray later attempts to retract his confession and says that he was founded by a man named Raul. He claimed he did not kill the king until his death in 1998.
The FBI’s Shadowy Operations under J. Edgar Hoover sparked a wider conspiracy theory than those who truly killed the civil rights symbol.
King’s children say they don’t believe Ray is a archer and say they support the discovery of the 1999 illegal death lawsuit.
Justice Department officials argue that the findings of civil lawsuits are unreliable.
Please read the MLK file
Want to read your own MLK files? These can be found on the National Archives website here.
Most files are scans of documents, with some files becoming either blurry or slightly hard to read or hard to read in decades since King’s assassination. Photos and sound recordings are also available.
