Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Files - Volume 1: FBI Headquarters Main Files

19,000 pages of FBI files covering Martin Luther King Jr. copied from King's Main File maintained by the FBI. The files date from 1962 to 1977. The FBI began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, and lasted until and beyond his death.

The FBI gathered information about Dr. King's plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau's disposal in order to obtain information about the "private activities of Dr. King and his advisors" to use to "completely discredit" them,  so states a February 4, 1964 memorandum from Baumgardner to Sullivan.

These files contain hundreds of substantive documents that have been characterized as an essential source for the study of Dr. King and his role in the civil rights movement.
 

Part 1

Part 1 contains memos, telegrams, correspondences and reports. The files include details of heavy surveillance that the Justice Department and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI directed against King throughout the 1960's. As a result of the surveillance Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were kept informed of Dr. King's strategies and political plans.

An unintentional result of the surveillance is that today's reader of the material is able to follow the development of King's ascent and civil rights activities in a unique way; through the Bureau's historical record of his day-to-day thoughts and endeavors. Thoughts and events that may have not been put on paper by King or his associates have been noted by the FBI.

In the fall of 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy expanded the surveillance of King to the use of wiretaps on his office and home telephones.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover consistently referred to his belief that King was either a communist or a communist stooge. The conflict between the two escalated to personal animosity. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was personally hostile towards King, believing that the civil rights leader was influenced by Communists. This animosity increased after April 1964, when King called the FBI ‘‘completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South.’’ At a press conference in November 1964, Hoover said that King was the “most notorious liar in the country. ” Under the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) King was subjected to various kinds of FBI surveillance that produced alleged evidence of extramarital affairs, though no evidence of Communist membership.  

The FBI wiretapped King's own home and office phones.  FBI officials began plotting ways in which they might harm King's public reputation and destroy his political influence. A 1977 federal court order sought to limit the after-effects on the privacy of those involved by removing from the FBI's files all of the "fruits" of the electronic surveillance and by sealing these items in the National Archives until 2027. The remaining documents widely details the FBI's surveillance of King.

Topic in the files include:

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Infiltration of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Hunter Pitts O'Dell (Jack O'Dell)

Stanley Levison

Committee to Aid the Southern Freedom Struggle

Hosea Herman Hudson, Sr

Ghandi Society for Human Rights 

Racial Situations Across the Country

Clarence B. Jones

Voter Registration Project

Highlander Folk School

Nation of Islam

James R. Hoffa

Communist Party of the United States of America

Death Threats

Rooney Committee

Hermine Popper

Demonstrations

Lee Calvin White

Malcolm X Little

Watts Riot

Andrew Young

Judge L.E. Warren

Communist Influence

Fay Wells

Attorney General Katzenbach  

CORE  

American Nazi Party  

Voting Discrimination

Protesting U.S. Intervention in Vietnam

March from Selma to Montgomery

Threats Against the President

Boycott of Alabama

KKK 

Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy

Position on the War in Vietnam  

Senator Strom Thurmond, R-S.C.

Blackmail by Public Disturbance

C.T. Vivian  

Elijah Muhammad  

European Trip  

White House Meeting—"To Fulfill These Rights"  

Chicago Freedom Movement (CFM)

Alleged $1 Million Bank Account

The Citizen's Report

"Trusteeship of Slum Building."

Chicago School Boycott

"Freedom Day" Rally  

James Meredith

"March to Jackson"  

Stokely Carmichael  

"Civilian Resistance Command"  

Meeting with Jimmy Hoffa  

"The Nation Institute."

Coordinating Council for Black Power

Dr. Benjamin Spock   

"Washington Spring Project"  

Democratic Convention  

Freedomways Associates, Inc

Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam

American Mau Mau

Washington Spring Project

Assassination of Martin Luther King  Reactions 

Funeral  

Coretta King  

Hoover and the "Liar" Incident  

Approval of Wiretaps 

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Cassius M. Clay (Mohamed Ali)  

Martin Luther King Holiday Committees  

Marches Commemorating Birthday

Anniversary of King's Death  

Black Panther Party  

Post-Mortem Slander

"Black United Front"  

Allegations Made by a Former Special Agent

The Washington Post

Hoover's Personal Files

FOIA Requests

Senate Select Committee on Assassinations

Reviews of Indices and Files

Department of Justice Task Force (DJ-Task Force)

Departmental Review
 

Part 2

"June Mail" Folders

"June Mail" was a general FBI term for electronic surveillance. These files contain technical and administrative content regarding electronic surveillance.

 
Part 3

The third part contains newspaper clippings, wire service stories, and other public source materials concerning King that FBI headquarters officials collected, and sometimes annotated, over the course of their investigation.