FBI Letter Urged Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To Kill Himself, Offered Ultimatum

An anonymous letter sent to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by FBI agents in 1964 urged the civil rights leader to commit suicide.

A newly published and unedited version of the letter shows that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also referred to as “an evil, abnormal beast” in addition to other offensive names.

The disturbing note also provides intimate, detailed knowledge about Dr. King’s extramarital affairs. The New York Daily News reports that the letter was sent days before Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Price.

The letter offered Dr. King an ultimatum by promising to expose him to the general public as a womanizer if he did not kill himself within 34 days.

“You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

According to the New York Daily News, the letter also refers to a taped recording of adulterous incidents involving Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“No person can overcome facts, not even a fraud like yourself. Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time. I repeat – no person can argue successfully against facts. You are finished.”

Written under the guise of a civil rights supporter that was angered by Dr. King, the writer of the letter accuses the civil rights movement leader of not being a leader at all.

“King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader. You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile… King, I repeat you are done.”

From the very first line of the disturbing letter, the writer made it clear that they would not even dignify Dr. King’s name with a title when addressing him.

“In view of your low grade, abnormal personal [behavior] I will not dignify your name with either a Mr. or a Reverend or a Dr. And, your last name calls to mind only the type of King such as King Henry the VIII and his countless acts of adultery and immoral conduct lower than that of a beast.”

This letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been released before in the past, but it was heavily edited.

According to the New York Times, Yale professor Beverly Gage discovered the unedited version while conducting research on former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

From the very beginning, Dr. King suspected that the FBI was behind this letter. However, he did not allow it to stop him or slow him down. It wasn’t until a decade later (long after Hoover’s death and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), that the truth came out.

[Image Credit: New York Daily News & St. Louis Public Radio]