MLK/FBI
It’s not a secret that the United States Government is a shady mofo. The rise of and national intelligence community, which has blossomed into a free-range spying network both within, and outside, of the country, is one of the most troubling aspects of the past century. So when things get declassified, it is a big deal, and it’s as much a glimpse into the way the intelligence community goes about its business, as much as it is fodder for conspiracy theorists. When the FBI tapes associated with Martin Luther King Jr. are released in 2027, I would imagine they will be treated in much the same way.
“MLK/FBI” is a fascinating study in the way systemic racism morphed during the Civil Rights Movement, partially because of the rise of the intelligence community, and how the Cold War helped shape that morphing. By this point, I would imagine most adult Americans have a pretty good idea of how they feel about both Dr. King and J. Edgar Hoover, who was the Director of the FBI from 1924 to his death in 1972. I would also imagine “MLK/FBI” isn’t going to move the needle for anyone in one direction or another about those feelings. So why make it? Because it gives us a clearer picture on not just the way the government did business at the height of both the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement, but also because it might show us more of why Dr. King was a threat to conservatives and the establishment beyond the color of his skin.
The most compelling aspect of this film is not just that we hear from people who’ve worked in the FBI about the way they approached Dr. King, but about how the FBI tied the Cold War into the Civil Rights Movement. I’m not saying it was the first place where patriotism became politicized, but if you want to understand the roots about how the process was escalated, the ’50s and ’60s in the Cold War are a good place to start. This isn’t to say that communism is an ideology we should strive for as a country, but the paranoia of it coming to the United States is a great place to start when studying the still-continuing debates about saying the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in school and even kneeling during the National Anthem at sporting events. You had Elia Kazan “naming names” at Congressional hearings and McCarthyism and the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this national conversation, you had a young minister from Atlanta starting to lead a peaceful protest to make sure all men were truly treated equally in the eyes of the law. Did you know he had a Jewish colleague with ties (albeit past ties) to Communism? Apart from playing into another popular form of American racism- that being antisemitism- the FBI could use King’s ties to a (former) communist to paint the Civil Rights Movement as a communist plot to radically change America for the worst; it’s bad enough that long-standing racist sentiments were in the way of Dr. King and the other protesters, but being painted with the US’s biggest ideological enemy at the time would add to the difficulties, although, as we learn, phone taps and wires showed that MLK was anything but a communist, even if he wasn’t entirely honest about his associations with former communists. His later dissent against the Vietnam War added flames to the communist fire, but really, it’s in keeping with his philosophy of non-violence, and how the priorities of this country have long been skewed.
One of the things director Sam Pollard does so well is show the ways that American culture has fed into the notion of the FBI as a just entity of the government not unlike the police force, and this happening all the while as Hoover was utilizing it to stoke fears and anxiety about things like the Civil Rights Movement, and trying to get dirt to expose against Dr. King, in hopes that they could de-legitimize the Movement by going after their leadership. Some of the things we hear about that could be on those tapes, including affairs and an alleged rape, could be damning to Dr. King, especially the rape…until you think about the fact that federal agents were (allegedly) listening to it happen, and chose not to do anything, because it was more important for them to get this as something they could use against King rather than help a potential rape victim. If this actually happened, the inaction on the FBI’s part could be seen as a through line straight to when it took bold action on victim’s parts to hold powerful people like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein accountable while law enforcement turned a blind eye. While if it did happen, it would certainly be a dent in Dr. King’s legacy, it’s not quite the win for the FBI they think it is if they could have stopped it.
American history is a tangled web of contradictions that will take several generations to unravel. “MLK/FBI” is an enlightening, and infuriating, step in the direction of untangling those contradictions, or at least, getting to the ugly truths those contradictions. It’s worth checking out.
