President Trump signed an executive order to declassify any remaining documents related to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by James Earl Ray. The announcement came Thursday, Jan. 23, just days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
As he signed the order — which will also lead to the release of files pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as King — Mr. Trump called it “a big one,” and he said “a lot of people are waiting for this for a long — for years, for decades.”
The civil rights icon was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, as he stood on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel. King, who was 39 years old, was rushed to a hospital, where he died of a bullet wound to the neck, as CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite reported that day.
Why is Trump releasing the MLK Jr. assassination files?
Mr. Trump said at a rally in Washington, D.C., on the eve of his inauguration that he would make the files public to signal a restoration of “transparency and accountability to government.”
He said his administration would “reverse the overclassification of government documents, and in the coming days, we are going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and other topics of great public interest.”
What is known about the MLK Jr. assassination?
Ray, a repeat offender who had served time in prison for robbery convictions, had been on the run for 11 months, having escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary, where he had been serving a 20-year sentence.
On the afternoon of April 4, 1968, Ray rented a room under an assumed name at a Memphis rooming house near the Lorraine Motel. In early May, he was indicted, and an international manhunt ensued. Ray was captured on June 8, 1968, at Heathrow Airport, in London. He was extradited and returned to the U.S. the following month and pleaded guilty, receiving a sentence of 99 years.
Charles Kelly / AP
There were allegations that the FBI was complicit in King’s assassination, too, however, so a select committee conducted its own investigation. The National Archives noted that the committee “recognized that FBI files were potentially tainted,” but it never uncovered evidence to show any complicity by the bureau. However, the committee “did note major deficiencies in the scope and method of the FBI’s postassassination investigation,” the archives said.
The FBI conducted surveillance of King for years, targeting him with a counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO. The archives noted that a Senate select committee investigated and published a report exposing the “full scope of the attempt by the FBI to discredit Dr. King.”
The Justice Department launched a task force to probe the FBI’s harassment and investigations of King, as well as his assassination and the criminal investigation. It was also assigned to determine whether those FBI efforts might have had an effect on King’s assassination. The task force ultimately concluded that Ray acted along but also found that the FBI’s actions involving COINTELPRO’s efforts to undermine King should not have been continued and were “very probably…felonious.”
What MLK Jr. assassination files have already been released?
The National Archives website houses information from the select committee’s investigation of King’s assassination, encompassing its handling of Ray and the FBI’s surveillance of King, as well as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy.
Which MLK Jr. assassination files will Trump release?
White House officials have not yet specified which assassination files will be released.
When will the MLK Jr. assassination files be released?
The timing of the release or releases has also not yet been announced. It is not yet clear whether all of the material can be released, in particular the FBI’s transcripts and tapes of its wiretaps of King. In 1977, a federal judge ordered the FBI to turn the material over to the archives and ordered it sealed for 50 years. The documents are not to be made public until February 2027. The judge prohibited the disclosure of these files except by an order from a court.
