US President Donald Trump’s administration has released a trove of files of FBI surveillance linked to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., despite the opposition from his family and the civil rights group which the Nobel laureate led until his assassination in 1968.
After a court’s order in 1977, the records gathered by the FBI which totaled to more than 240,000 pages were blocked from public viewing and were in turn kept in the National Archives and Records Administration.
King’s family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were informed about the decision by the Trump administration to release the files and their own teams were reviewing the records. However, several members of the King’s family opposed the release of documents.
Today, after nearly 60 years of questions surrounding the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are releasing 230,000 MLK assassination files, available now at https://t.co/71P3p5jBgK. The documents include details about the FBI’s investigation into the assassination… pic.twitter.com/l96t9tgYmn
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) July 21, 2025
A statement from the two children condemned “any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy,” BBC reported. The pair called their father’s case a “captivating public curiosity for decades.” But the two children stressed upon the personal nature of the matter and urged that “these files must be viewed within their full historical context.”
King, a Baptist minister, was shot in Memphis on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39. A history sheeter James Earl Ray had confessed to killing King in a plea but later renounced his plea.
The statement released Martin III and Bernice further adds, “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.”
The children wrote “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.” Bernice was five years old and Martin III was 10 when his father Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
