FBI spied on Martin Luther King's widow

Federal agents spied on the widow of Martin Luther King for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the slain civil rights icon’s footsteps.

In memos that reveal Coretta Scott King being closely followed by the government, the FBI noted concern that she might attempt “to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement.”

Four years after King’s death, the FBI closed its file on Coretta Scott King, saying, “No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements,” according to a memorandum dated November 30, 1972.

The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU in a story published today on its website. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 at the age of 78.

The Rev Joseph Lowery, who served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – which King co-founded in 1957 – said the documents illustrate the FBI’s pattern of “despicable and devious” behaviour against the organisation and those affiliated with it.

“The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned,” said Lowery, who said the agency had a member of the SCLC’s staff on its payroll.

“Since we had nothing to hide, it was no great problem for us. But we don’t put it past the FBI; J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for,” he said, referring to the FBI’s then director.

Andrew Young, a lieutenant of King’s during the civil rights movement, agreed. But he said he was surprised that the government would focus on Coretta Scott King.

“I didn’t know it and I don’t think she knew it,” Young said. “If ever there was a woman that had the makings of a saint, it was Coretta. I don’t know what they were looking for, I don’t know what they were expecting to find. I don’t know why they wasted the government’s money.”

One memo shows that the FBI even read and reviewed King’s 1969 book about her late husband, “My Life with Martin Luther King Jr.” The agent made a point to say that her “selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by ... (her) actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities.”

Also included in the documents:

:: An intercepted letter written by Coretta Scott King in 1971 to the National Peace Action Coalition, in which she say the Vietnam War has “ravaged our domestic programs.”

:: A memo to FBI headquarters, dated Nov. 30, 1972, in which the agency’s Atlanta bureau states it is closing the case on Coretta Scott King. It reads, in part, that “No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates the propensity for violence or affiliation with subversive elements.”

The files also focus on her relationship with Stanley Levison, who was a close adviser to Martin Luther King and a person the government long suspected was a communist.

There is also evidence that the Nixon administration and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were kept informed of the FBI’s nearly constant surveillance.

Martin Luther King activities were well-known to have been monitored by the federal government as he led the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Intelligence gathering on famous Americans and war critics became so infamous that rules to curtail domestic spying were put in place in the 1970s.

King was the most visible leader of the civil rights struggle in the southern US, leading boycotts, protests, and marches that climaxed with his “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered from the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington.

He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 on a visit to support black trash collectors’ demands for higher wages and fair treatment.

After Coretta Scott King died last year, she was the first woman and first black person to lie in honour at the Georgia state capitol, in what once was a seat of segregation.

King’s nephew, Isaac Newton Farris said that the surveillance of his aunt comes as no surprise.

“We knew she was surveilled,” said Farris, who is also chief executive officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-violent Social Change. “The only surprise is the intensity of the surveillance after his death. It appears it was as intense as the surveillance on my uncle.”

“This is a woman who basically was trying to raise four kids and honour her deceased husband,” Farris said.

“I don’t know how that was a threat to anybody’s national security. This is a good reminder of why it’s good that we now have congressional oversight over these intelligence agencies. These guys were pretty much left to their own devices.”