US President Donald Trump’s administration has released a trove of records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, including FBI surveillance files on the civil rights leader.
A court-imposed order had kept the FBI documents, totalling 230,000 pages, blocked from public view since 1977.
Many members of King’s family had opposed the release. A statement from his two living children condemned “any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy”.
King, a Baptist minister, was shot in Memphis on 4 April 1968, at age 39. James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to the killing, but later renounced his plea.
King Jr’s two living children, Martin III and Bernice, who were notified ahead of time about the release, said in a statement on Monday: “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 release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context.
“During our father’s lifetime, 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 (FBI).”
The statement said the government’s surveillance amounted to “invasions of privacy” and “intentional assaults on the truth” that denied King the “dignity and freedoms of private citizens”.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised Americans he would release files on the assassination of King and former President John F Kennedy.
He signed an executive order in January ordering that documents from both assassinations be declassified, along with the records in the assassination of Robert F Kennedy.