The U.S. government on Monday released thousands of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Historians welcome the transparency but state that there are, for the time being, few new revelations.
Civil rights activist and pastor King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 at the age of 39. The six thousand documents together account for almost a quarter of a million pages, writes The New York Times.
The documents can be found in the National Archives. They contain, among other things, leads followed by investigators, interviews with people who knew the suspected perpetrator – James Earl Ray – and details about communication with foreign intelligence agencies during the hunt for Ray. Also released is an audio file of part of the police interrogation with Ray’s family.
However, according to historians, there is little new information about King’s death in the documents. A large part of the pages are no longer readable, due to age or the digitization process. In addition, the report does not contain any FBI data; those will be kept secret until 2027.
Two months after the assassination, Ray was arrested in London. He confessed and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, but shortly afterward he retracted that confession. He was allegedly pressured. Ray always maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. There are doubts as to whether Ray was the perpetrator. There are also people, including family members, who think Ray did not act alone.
King was a champion of equal rights for the Black community in the United States. In the 1950s and 60s, he led several peaceful demonstrations and gave speeches. In his famous I have a dream speech in Washington in 1963, he called for equal rights for everyone.
As a presidential candidate, Trump promised last year to release files relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and King in 1968. The Kennedy documents, which were released in March, also contained little new information.