Source: Christian HIROU / Getty
Martin Luther King Jr. attracted the attention of not only his loyal group of supporters during the height of the Civil Rights Movement but also that of detractors hoping to defame him. While it has become common knowledge that the FBI took aim at the leader in hopes of destroying him, a new documentary from IFC Films takes a deeper look inside that nefarious plot.
MLK/FBI, now in theaters as well as at home on demand, highlights the FBI’s designed plan to tear down King by way of recently released documents, who was surging among not only Black Americans rallying behind his cause but also with liberal-minded whites as well.
As viewers learn while watching MLK/FBI, William C. Sullivan, the FBI’s director of domestic intelligence, wrote in an internal memo wors that would effectively signal a push for King’s demise in the eyes of the law enforcement agency.
“We must mark him now as the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation,” Sullivan wrote.
The documentary from Sam Pollard puts a necessary yet glaring spotlight on one of history’s most insidious acts carried out by a government agency. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, motivated by the anti-communist philosophy of McCarthyism and fueled by his own rampant paranoia, sicced his agents and operatives on King and others within the sprawling Civil Rights Movement ecosystem.
The documentary is based on the 1981 book The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.: From ‘Solo’ to Memphis by David Garrow. Garrow went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his 1986 biography, Bearing The Cross.
The trailer for MLK/FBI can be viewed below.
To learn more about the film, click here.
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Photo Getty
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