Page 4 The Skanner January 11, 2017
Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The King Letter and Government Surveillance
By The Final Call
Special to the NNPA
T
he disclosure in
2014 that a re-
searcher found an
unedited copy of
an infamous FBI letter
sent to civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
may have taken some by
surprise and may have
left the mainstream me-
dia gasping in shock.
But these responses be-
tray a woeful ignorance
that exists among the
American public and the
media’s failure to prop-
“
is a reminder that the
citizenry of any country
needs to ardently watch
the watchers.
While FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover was acting
in the name of protecting
the vital security inter-
ests of the United States,
he was actually acting to
protect White suprem-
acy and to ensure the
survival of White pow-
er. While personnel has
changed and there are
even Black faces in high
places make no mistake
that systemic White su-
premacy still exists.
“King, there is only
one thing left for you to
do. You know what it is.
You have just 34 days in
which to do it (this exact
number has been select-
ed for a specific reason, it
has definite practical sig-
nificance). You are done.
There is but one way out
for you. You better take
it before your filthy, ab-
normal fraudulent self is
bared to the nation,” the
letter warned.
According to research-
er Beverly Gage, who
found the letter in the
personal papers of Mr.
While FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was act-
ing in the name of protecting the vital security
interests of the United States, he was actually
acting to protect White supremacy
erly and clearly address
government abuses and
the targeting of civil
rights and Black Power
movement leaders and
organizations.
This sordid and dis-
gusting episode in U.S.
intelligence activity isn’t
important for purely his-
torical reasons. With the
ever-expanding security
state inside America and
the continued erosion of
civil liberties, the letter
“No person can over-
come the facts, not even a
fraud like yourself. Lend
your sexually psychot-
ic ear to the enclosure.
You will find yourself
and in all your dirt, filth,
evil and moronic talk
exposed on the record
for all time. . . . Listen to
yourself, you filthy, ab-
normal animal. You are
on the record,” said letter
from the FBI to Dr. King
written in 1964.
Hoover, the FBI was
monitoring Dr. King and
planting listening devic-
es around him in 1963,
unhappy with his close-
ness to a White fundrais-
er and Communist and
criticism of FBI failures
to protect Black lives in
the South.
The letter was also de-
signed “to try to fracture
movements and pit lead-
ers against one another,”
she added.
After passage of 1964
civil rights legislation,
Ms. Gage noted in the
New York Times, Mr.
Hoover labeled Dr. King
“the most notorious liar
in the country.” Ms. Gage
believes a Hoover dep-
uty actually wrote and
had the letter sent to Dr.
King.
The “debate over how
much the government
should know about our
private lives has nev-
er been more heated:
Should
intelligence
agencies be able to sweep
our email, read our texts,
track our phone calls, lo-
cate us by GPS? Much of
the conversation swirls
around the possibility
that agencies like the
N.S.A. or the F.B.I. will
use such information not
to serve national securi-
ty but to carry out per-
sonal and political ven-
dettas. King’s experience
reminds us that these
are far from idle fears,
conjured in the fevered
minds of civil libertar-
ians. They are based in
the hard facts of history,”
Ms. Gage noted.
“Imagine
Facebook
chats, porn viewing his-
tory, emails, and more
made public to discredit
in 2014 that a researcher found an unedited copy of an infamous FBI
letter sent to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.,
a leader who threatens
the status quo, or used
to blackmail a reluctant
target into becoming an
FBI informant. These
are not far-fetched ideas.
They are the reality of
what happens when the
surveillance state is al-
lowed to grow out of
control, and the full King
letter, as well as current
intelligence community
practices illustrate that
reality richly,” added
the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, which seeks
to defend civil liberties
and combat government
secrecy.
But the targeting of
Dr. King was not an iso-
lated incident but part
of a concerted U.S. gov-
ernment effort to derail
the Black struggle and
demand for freedom, jus-
tice and equality.