United States President Donald 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 assassination in 1968.
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, July 21, 2025, 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 emphasised 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 on Monday whether the documents would shed any new light on King’s life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder.
They wrote: “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.
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“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.
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 commended Trump for pushing the issue.
Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, AFP reported.
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 government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.
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