On the day in which the United States honors the legacy and vision of Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI gave a master class in self-awareness, or a lack thereof.
In a Twitter post on Monday, the FBI wrote, “Today, the FBI honors the life and work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A quote from Dr. King is etched in stone at the FBI Academy’s reflection garden in Quantico as a reminder to all students and FBI employees: ‘The time is always right to do what is right.’ #MLKDay.”
Today, the FBI honors the life and work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A quote from Dr. King is etched in stone at the FBI Academy’s reflection garden in Quantico as a reminder to all students and FBI employees: “The time is always right to do what is right.” #MLKDay pic.twitter.com/UKMLAAZw5w
— FBI (@FBI) January 20, 2020
Sadly, the FBI didn’t do right when it came to King.
During the 1950s and ’60s, the FBI, with J. Edgar Hoover at the helm, used every tool from its fight against communism on the civil rights movement led by King and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or the SCLC.
Throughout Hoover’s 48-year tenure as director, beginning in 1924 until his death in 1972, the FBI’s power expanded dramatically, especially in the 1930s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to target “subversives” in the U.S. Among those “subversives” were communist groups, such as the Communist Party USA. “Subversives” were often the subject of FBI wiretapping and bugs to cement a strong case against them.
During the Montgomery bus boycott that occurred between December 1955 and December 1956, Stanley Levison, who, by that time, was considered by the FBI to be a major financier of the CPUSA, met King and was raising funds for the boycott. Levison continued to work closely with King, became King’s adviser, and was intimately involved in the SCLC.
Hoover believed that King’s association with Levison was justification for the FBI opening an investigation into the SCLC under the Communist Infiltration Program of the bureau’s domestic counterintelligence program, better known as COINTELPRO. According to Tim Weiner’s 2012 book Enemies: A History of the FBI, Hoover believed that Levison “indoctrinated King in Marxist thought and subversive strategies.”
Despite many years of FBI surveillance, there was no evidence to support the notion that King was a communist agent or a Soviet plant. However, the FBI used audio tapes of King’s sexual indiscretions to anonymously blackmail King in a November 1964 letter. King accurately suspected that the FBI was behind the letter and that it was advocating for him to commit suicide.
If this wasn’t enough, Hoover went on the record in a November 1964 press conference calling King the “most notorious liar in the country.”
This is not to say that the FBI should not try to right its wrongs. It should. However, its now fourth-annual online tribute to King lacks self-awareness and leaves the impression that the FBI is more concerned about rehabilitating its own image rather than relinquishing the very power it used to harm people such as King.
