President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order mandating the release of files relating to the assassinations of civil rights icon Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, former President John F. Kennedy and former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
The files will reportedly not be released immediately. Plans for releasing the records relating to John F. Kennedy are expected within 15 days while plans for releasing the records relating to Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy are expected within 45 days.
As of now, 99% of the records available pertaining to the assassination of JFK in 1963 have already been publicly released. Last year, the National Archives issued and completed a formal review of the documents, making a majority of them publicly available. The remaining documents have been withheld by the CIA, Pentagon and State Department for the protection of sources that are or might still be alive.
The National Archives website also includes select information on the 1968 assassination of Dr. King.
In the hours after the executive order was signed, the King family, consisting of the surviving children of the civil rights leader, revealed that they found out about the executive order the day that it was signed.
“Today, our family has learned that President Trump has ordered the declassification of the remaining records pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and our father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years,” said the King family in a joint statement. “We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The leader was in the city to support sanitation workers on strike and was set to lead nonviolent protests alongside them. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination but later rescinded the plea and maintained that he was innocent until the day he died.
The assassination of Dr. King has been subject to a variety of theories ,particularly as FBI documents released throughout the decades revealed that he was being watched by the department.
The bureau reportedly wiretapped his telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to obtain information on the civil rights leader as part of a J. Edgar Hoover-led counterintelligence program.
Following his assassination, the FBI launched an investigation to find the killer. The investigation of allegations has continued as recently as the 1990s with searches launched into former Memphis tavern owner Loyd Jowers and former FBI agent Donald Wilson.
