[h=1]'You filthy, abnormal animal': Full graphic content of anonymous letter sent by FBI to Martin Luther King FINALLY revealed 50 years after it was sent[/h]
A Yale University historian has unearthed an unredacted copy of the FBI's infamous 'suicide letter' sent to Dr. King
The letter was an attempt by J Edgar Hoover to unsettle the civil rights leader just days before he received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize
The letter threatened to expose King's extramarital affairs and urged him to kill himself
'There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation,' reads the letter
King left for Norway before the letter arrived and it was left to his wife Coretta to open it
An anonymous letter sent to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in which he is called a ‘filthy abnormal animal’ and urged to kill himself has been made public for the first time in its unredacted form. The letter, written in 1964 by an FBI deputy posing as a disillusioned civil rights activist, was an attempt by J Edgar Hoover to unsettle the civil rights leader just days before he received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. A heavily censored version of the ‘suicide letter’ has been published before, but a Yale University historian recently unearthed an unredacted copy. Beverly Gage was researching a book about Hoover in the National Archive when she accidentally came across the letter. ‘I was surprised to find a full, uncensored version of the letter tucked away in a reprocessed set of his official and confidential files at the National Archives,’ she told the New York Times. Former FBI director Hoover feared King so much that he had classified him as 'the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country'. With his agents desperately searching for something they could use to destroy King, the only thing they could find was about his extramarital affairs. When Hoover learned that King would be the recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he stepped up his attack, instructing his agents to send King the anonymous note in which they threatened to divulge details about his affairs if he didn't take his own life.
An anonymous letter sent to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in which he is called a ‘filthy abnormal animal’ and urged to kill himself has been made public for the first time in its unredacted form
Former FBI director Hoover , feared King so much that he had classified him as 'the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country', while the original letter was recently uncovered by Yale University historian Beverly Gage
The typewritten note, featuring misspellings and deliberately poor grammar, was written by an agent called William Sullivan. It was accompanied by a cassette recording containing evidence of King’s now well documented extramarital liaisons, which the FBI had obtained by wiretapping his homes and hotel rooms. 'King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes,' the nasty note reads. [h=2][/h]
In a previously redacted part of the letter, Sullivan is especially vicious in his criticism of Dr. King. 'Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. 'You will find yourself in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time …
+6
Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December 1964
'You will find on the record for all time your filthy, dirty, evil companions, male and females giving expression with you to your hidious [sic] abnormalities. 'It is all there on the record, your sexual orgies. Listen to yourself you filthy, abnormal animal. 'You are on the record. You have been on the record – all your adulterous acts, your sexual orgies extending far into the past. This one is but a tiny sample. 'You will understand this. Yes, from your various evil playmates on the east coast to [name redacted] and others on the west coast and outside the country, you are on the record. King you are done.' It concludes by urging King to take his own life within 34 days – thought to be a reference to a date on which he was due to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Sweden.
King left for Norway before the letter arrived and it was left to his wife Coretta, center, to open it
'There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.' King left for Norway before the letter arrived and it was left to his wife Coretta to open it. When King showed the letter to his advisers, they agreed that it was clearly the work of the FBI and a blatant attempt to blackmail him into taking his own life. 'One oddity of Hoover’s campaign against King is that it mostly flopped, and the FBI never succeeded in seriously damaging King’s public image,' write Gage in the Times. 'Half a century later, we look upon King as a model of moral courage and human dignity. Hoover, by contrast, has become almost universally reviled. 'In this context, perhaps the most surprising aspect of their story is not what the FBI attempted, but what it failed to do.'
.
A heavily censored version of the ‘suicide letter’ has been published before, but Yale University historian Beverly Gage recently unearthed this unredacted copy
