Martin Luther King Jr family reacts to Trump executive order declassifying FBI files
Martin Luther King Jr’s family offered their response to President Donald Trump’s decision to release the secret FBI files on the civil rights icon’s assassination nearly 60 years ago — a “deeply personal family loss” that they are still feeling today.
On Thursday Trump signed an executive order to release the files connected to the deaths of King, former President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy.
“For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release,” the family said.
Trump said “everything will be revealed” while signing the executive order in the Oval Office.
The order called the release of the files “long overdue” and requires the Department of Justice and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to rapidly prepare for the release.
King was shot and killed by James Earl Ray on the evening of April 4, 1968, as he stood on a second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.
King’s family has continued to work towards a comprehensive investigation into the assassination, emphasizing the importance of uncovering the truth while also focusing on preserving the icon’s legacy, Fox Atlanta reported.
The fatal shooting came after the FBI worked to undermine the minister’s anti-racial discrimination advocacy.
An anonymous letter from the agency to King was believed to be an attempt to get the civil rights leader to commit suicide.
An analysis from the FBI 23 days before the assassination claimed King’s inner circle had an inordinate number of Communists.
The analysis noted that two of King’s former aides were Communist Party members, while eight others had communist affiliations.
The document claimed the party had attempted to form a black labor coalition to spread its goals across the US, arguing King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference were “made to order” for the communist mission.
A black minister had attended a minister training workshop hosted by King in February 1968 and “expressed his disgust with the behind-the-scene [sic] drinking, fornication and homosexuality that went on at the conference,” the analysis stated.
“Throughout the ensuing years and until this date,” the FBI analysis said, “King has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to public view as a moral leader of religious conviction.”
King was arrested several times throughout his career, with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover considering him a radical.
President Kennedy’s grandson reacted to the news of the executive order, claiming Trump was doing it for political reasons
“Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back,” Jack Schlossberg said. “There’s nothing heroic about it.”
