The federal government has released over 240,000 pages of FBI surveillance records on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., decades after they were sealed under court order. The disclosure has drawn mixed reactions, especially from King’s family and civil rights advocates, who caution that the documents must be viewed with deep historical understanding.
King’s children, Martin Luther King III and Dr. Bernice King, both emphasized the deeply personal impact of their father’s death and the lasting pain their family has endured. “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 said in a joint statement. “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.”
The documents were released ahead of their originally scheduled 2027 unsealing, after a court lifted the restriction. Many of the files detail the FBI’s intense surveillance of King and provide leads gathered following his assassination in 1968. Some records also include the CIA’s growing interest in King during the years he began speaking out against poverty and war, expanding his advocacy beyond civil rights.
While the records may offer new insight into King’s activities and the events leading up to his assassination, it remains unclear if they significantly change the historical narrative. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded, opposed the release, echoing the family’s concerns about how the FBI’s surveillance was used to discredit and undermine the Civil Rights Movement.
“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,” the King children stated. “The intent … was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement. 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.”
Though they expressed support for transparency and historical accountability, the King family also condemned any use of the files to distort or harm Dr. King’s legacy. “We object to any attacks on our father’s legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods,” they said.
Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis while supporting striking sanitation workers. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the murder but later recanted and claimed innocence until his death in 1998. King’s children have long questioned the official version of events. They have consistently maintained that Ray did not act alone — if he acted at all — and pointed to a 1999 civil jury verdict that concluded King was the victim of a broader conspiracy.
“As we review these newly released files,” the family said, “we will assess whether they offer additional insights beyond the findings our family has already accepted.”
The King Center, now led by Dr. Bernice King, issued its own statement describing the timing of the release as “unfortunate and ill-timed,” especially given the social and political crises facing the nation and the world today. “This righteous work should be our collective response to renewed attention on the assassination of a great purveyor of true peace,” the statement read.
The newly public files offer researchers and historians a vast trove of material to examine, but also serve as a stark reminder of how state power was once — and in many ways continues to be — used to silence voices calling for justice, equality, and systemic change.