Latest news with #CivilRightsMovement
NZ Herald
22-07-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
A researcher warned people to be sceptical of the FBI files as director Hoover ‘wanted dirt' on King
A lone audio file released yesterday includes part of a law enforcement interview with Jerry Ray, one of James Earl Ray's siblings. In a statement, officials said the published documents had 'never been digitised and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades'. Many of the pages have been rendered almost illegible by time and the digitising process. There were random and wide-ranging accounts of the investigation and search for Ray, including hundreds of news clippings, tips from the public, accounts of Ray's forays into dance classes and locksmith school, and his fondness for aliases drawn from James Bond novels. David Garrow, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning King biography as well as a book about the FBI's spying campaign on him, said his initial review led him to conclude that there was little of public interest in the files, much of which had already been disclosed. 'I saw nothing that struck me as new,' he said. In 2019, Garrow published an article that recounted claims he had found in FBI documents released in relation to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Those claims include accounts of King witnessing an alleged rape in 1964 in a Washington hotel room where he had been staying. It is unclear from the documents, which do not appear to be included in the current tranche, who is making those claims. Garrow was criticised by some historians for elevating incendiary assertions that were part of an FBI smear campaign, without corroborating evidence. The FBI wiretaps and other surveillance were part of an effort to uncover damaging material on King, which the agency hoped to leverage in its campaign to derail the Civil Rights Movement. Tapes and transcripts from that surveillance are part of what remains under seal, though summaries and other related material had been released previously. A federal judge last month denied a Justice Department request to unseal the surveillance records two years early. King had a well-documented history of extramarital relationships. Still, some experts and King's family have expressed doubts about the veracity of some of the contents of those previously released documents, particularly when it comes to the more provocative claims about aspects of King's romantic and sexual life. Those details, they said, could be more reflective of official efforts to undermine the civil rights leader's reputation than of reality. 'You've got to read this carefully and don't take it at face value,' said Larry Sabato, the director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia, who was reviewing the new documents yesterday with his own team of researchers. 'I'm sceptical of anything I read from FBI files about MLK,' he said, adding that he suspected that agents inflated or manufactured material to please J. Edgar Hoover, the agency's longtime director. 'He wanted dirt on MLK and his movements and his associates.' King's surviving children, Martin III and Bernice, argued in a statement yesterday that their father had been 'relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign'. The children beseeched researchers and the general public to view all of the material from the government's files in the context of their father's contributions to American society. '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,' they said. Trump Administration officials have been in contact with King's family, but it remains unclear if his relatives were given the right to request redactions of the newly released material. In a news release announcing the document upload, the Administration quoted Alveda King, King's niece and a high-profile supporter of Trump, who praised the Government for providing transparency. 'The declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth that the American people deserve,' she said. As a candidate last year, Trump vowed to release files related to Kennedy's 1963 assassination, and the 1968 murders of Robert F. Kennedy and King. The Kennedy documents, released in March, contained little new information about the assassination itself. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Rick Rojas and Glenn Thrush Photographs by: George Tames ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
New York Times
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Sunday Best' Review: Ed Sullivan's Really Big Impact
As the opening credits of the documentary 'Sunday Best' roll, Billy Preston in a killer chartreuse suit takes to 'The Ed Sullivan Show' stage. Ray Charles pounds the keyboards and brass players ready to enter a sped-up version of 'Agent Double-O-Soul.' From the get-go, Sacha Jenkins's film about the variety show trailblazer Ed Sullivan and his commitment to Black performers, entwined as it became with the Civil Rights Movement, keeps us hooked. It's not just the trove of archival performances — Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, James Brown — that persuade. It's observations from legends and friends; among them Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson and the Motown impresario Berry Gordy. A music journalist-turned-filmmaker, Jenkins had the hip-hop bona fides to guarantee 'Sunday Best' would not be a white savior tale. Instead, his film reveals the authentic amity and steadfast values of an ally. As a young sportswriter, Sullivan denounced N.Y.U.'s football program for benching a Black player when the University of Georgia came to town. 'My parents knew these things were wrong … it wasn't broad-minded, it was just sensible,' he tells the journalist David Frost in a 1969 television interview. Born in 1901 in a Harlem of Jewish and Irish immigrants, Sullivan furthered his mother and father's example. 'You can't do so-and-so because the South will not accept it,' Belafonte recalls execs and sponsors telling Sullivan. 'Ed pushed the envelope as far as an envelope could be pushed.' Illuminating and so entertaining, 'Sunday Best' nevertheless elicits a mournful pang. Sullivan died in 1974. Belafonte is gone. Jenkins died in May at the age of 53. And a once celebrated CBS, home to Sullivan for decades, seems to be begging for last rites. Sunday BestNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
Yomiuri Shimbun
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Trump Administration Releases Files on Martin Luther King Jr.'S Assassination
The Trump administration on Monday released more than 230,000 files related to the April 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who announced the move, said the files include 'discussion of potential leads, internal FBI memos detailing the progress of the case, information about James Earl Ray's former cellmate who stated he discussed with Ray an alleged assassination plot, and more.' She said the files released Monday had not previously been digitized and were shared with minimal redactions. King's son Martin Luther King III and daughter Bernice A. King wrote in a statement that they 'object to any attacks on our father's legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods' and warned against people sharing FBI surveillance of their father in the files. 'We strongly condemn any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father's legacy and the significant achievements of the movement,' they wrote. 'Those who promote the fruit of the FBI's surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement.' The King children said that the files 'must be viewed within their full historical context,' that their father 'was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by' then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The release of the King documents on Monday comes as Democrats and some members of Trump's base have demanded the release of a different trove of records, those related to the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. Trump on Thursday told the Justice Department to seek the release of 'all pertinent' grand jury testimony, following the administration's announcement earlier this month that it would not release the files from the case. On Monday, Bernice A. King said on X: 'Now, do the Epstein files.' King's niece Alveda King appeared to take a different view from King's son and daughter, saying in a statement that 'the declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth.' Ray was convicted of the assassination of King after fleeing the country and being captured abroad, and Gabbard said the documents include CIA records outlining 'overseas intelligence on the international hunt for the prime suspect.' But the King children reaffirmed that they believe someone else was the shooter and that Ray was set up to take the fall. 'As we review these newly released files, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted,' the Kings said. They asked for people engaging with the files to 'do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief.' Trump signed an executive order in January directing the release of the assassination records of King and President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy. Last month, a federal judge said it could be a 'long journey' toward releasing the King FBI surveillance records, and at the time, King's children and the King-founded civil rights organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference opposed the unconditional public release of information compiled by the FBI. In a 1977 lawsuit settlement, the government gave the National Archives tapes, transcripts, wiretap logs and other records of surveillance at King's home in Atlanta and other offices. They were to remain under seal for 50 years, until Jan. 31, 2027, according to the Justice Department filing. No surveillance-related records were immediately found in a review of the files released Monday. Coretta King received a letter in 1964 that also contained alleged tape recordings of her husband having sex with other women, a letter that the FBI later confirmed was directed by Hoover, though the wiretaps were approved by then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat. News reporters were offered the material at the time, but all refused to publish it. Later that year, King was given the Nobel Peace Prize. 'Hoover was so angry, he had hate in his heart,' Martin Luther King III told The Post in 2018. 'Certainly he hated Dad. He had a vehement hatred of folks of color.' As a result, the King family always felt the FBI was involved in the assassination, and more recently feared the bureau or the Trump administration would release such salacious material in an attempt to sully the civil rights leader's reputation. It could not immediately be determined whether any related items were in the massive release Monday. Numerous civil rights leaders told The Washington Post in 2018 that they did not believe Ray had killed King, and King's son Dexter King met with Ray in prison in 1997 to tell him the family believed in his innocence. Ray initially pleaded guilty, then tried to withdraw his plea days later. The move was rejected. The late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and the late Rev. James Lawson, one of King's mentors, all told The Post that they did not think Ray had shot King. 'I think there was a major conspiracy to remove Doctor King from the American scene,' Lewis said in 2018. 'I don't know what happened, but the truth of what happened to Dr. King should be made available for history's sake.' King's family hired a New York lawyer, William Pepper, who had been friendly with King since the early 1960s. Pepper filed a civil suit in Memphis on their behalf alleging a government conspiracy that also involved Loyd Jowers, who owned the bar on the first floor of the rooming house where Ray stayed. A jury in 1999 found Jowers liable in the killing. 'There is abundant evidence,' Coretta King said after the verdict, 'of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband.' She said the jury found the mafia and various government agencies 'were deeply involved in the assassination. … Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.' That led King's family to appeal to President Bill Clinton to reinvestigate the case, and then-Attorney General Janet Reno created a new probe led by assistant attorney general Barry Kowalski. Kowalski found that Jowers had changed his story repeatedly and told The Post that 'our thorough investigation, just like four official investigations before it, found no credible or reliable evidence that Doctor King was killed by conspirators who framed James Earl Ray.' Author James Douglass, who covered the 1999 trial and has written extensively about the assassinations of King and other American leaders, said Monday he had not reviewed the files, but 'frankly, I think we knew more than enough long ago to know that the United States government killed Dr. Martin Luther King.' No documents implicating government agents could be immediately found. Ray claimed that he had been manipulated by an unknown man whom he knew as 'Raul' to be in Memphis on April 4, 1968. But others have pointed out that Ray appeared to be stalking King in the weeks before the shooting, driving from Los Angeles to Atlanta, and he carried a map of Atlanta with the church and residence of King circled. Ray also bought a rifle on March 30, 1968, in Alabama, then returned to Atlanta. When news reports indicated that King would be heading to Memphis to participate in another march to support the sanitation workers' strike there, Ray drove to Memphis. The rifle and some binoculars were found in the doorway of a store near the boardinghouse where Ray stayed soon after the shooting, with Ray's fingerprints on them.
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Business Standard
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Business Standard
Trump admin releases FBI files on MLK Jr despite his family's objections
The Trump administration has released records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate's family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. In a lengthy statement released Monday, King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father's assassination has been a captivating public curiosity for decades. But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter, urging that these files must be viewed within their full historical context. The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. It was not immediately clear Monday whether the documents would shed any new light on King's life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder. As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met -- an absence our family has endured for over 57 years, they wrote. 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. They also repeated the family's long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all. Bernice King was 5-years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10. A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure unprecedented and said many of the records had been digitized for the first time to make it possible. She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue. Release is transparency' to some, a distraction' for others Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy's and King's 1968 assassinations. The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April. The announcement from Gabbard's office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King's children on various topics including the FBI files. Alveda King said she was grateful to President Trump for his transparency." Separately Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi's social media account featured a picture of the attorney general with Alveda King in her office. Besides fulfilling Trump's executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for the president as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration's handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump's first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III did not mention Trump in their statement Monday. Some civil rights activists were not so sparing. Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice, said the Rev. Al Sharpton. It's a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base. Records mean a new trove of research material The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date. Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King's family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement. It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover's bureau wiretapped King's telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him. 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), the King children said in their statement. The intent of the government's COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King's reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement," they continued. These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo. The Kings said they support transparency and historical accountability but object to any attacks on our father's legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods. Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat. King's children still don't accept the original explanation of assassination King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice. Ray plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. Members of King's family, and others, have long questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. Coretta Scott King asked for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King. In their latest statement, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III repeated their assertions that Ray was set up, pointing to a 1999 civil case in which a Memphis jury in a wrongful death case concluded that Martin Luther King Jr. had been the target of a conspiracy. As we review these newly released files," the Kings said, we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Daily Mirror
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Fury as Donald Trump releases records of FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr
The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977 - when the FBI first gathered the records The Trump administration has released records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr - despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate's family and the civil rights group which he led until his 1968 assassination. The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. In a lengthy statement released Monday, King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father's assassination has been a 'captivating public curiosity for decades.' But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter, urging that 'these files must be viewed within their full historical context.' The Kings got advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them. Those efforts continued even as the government granted public access. It was not immediately clear Monday whether the documents would shed any new light on King's life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder. 'As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met -- an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,' they wrote. '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.' They also repeated the family's long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating King, was not solely responsible, if at all. Bernice King was five-years old when her father was killed at the age of 39. Martin III was 10. A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure 'unprecedented' and said many of the records had been digitized for the first time. She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue. Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy's and MLK's 1968 assassinations. The announcement from Gabbard's office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from King's children on various topics — including the FBI files. Alveda King said she was 'grateful to President Trump' for his 'transparency." Separately, Attorney General Pam Bondi's social media account featured a picture of the attorney general with Alveda King. Besides fulfilling Trump's order, the latest release means another alternative headline for the president as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration's handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump's first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.
