November 18, 2014
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The single sheet of paper is typewritten, tightly spaced and riddled with typographical errors and misspellings. The letter, which many in history had long accredited to Hoover, appears to be written by a disappointed anonymous admirer of Dr. King who says he is appalled by the discovery of “hidious [sic] abnormalities” in someone he once viewed as “a man of character.”
“You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that,” the letter states. It goes on to describe King’s cadre of female lovers as “filthy dirty evil companions” and “evil playmates,” who’ve all engaged in “dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk.” The letter speaks of “sexual orgies,” “adulterous acts” and “immoral conduct,” then returns to its original theme of denouncing King as an “evil, abnormal beast.”
The note concludes by telling King there was only thing left for him to do and that he knew was that was (suicide). The letter said King had “only one way out” and just 34 days “before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
When Dr. King received the letter nearly 50 years ago, he secretly informed friends that someone was pressing him to kill himself and he believed he knew who that someone was. Dr. King was certain the letter had come directly from J. Edgar Hoover. Interestingly, the Senate’s Church Committee on Intelligence Overreach confirmed King’s suspicions to be true only a decade later.
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Dr. King was a great man. As the architect of the civil rights movement, his place in history is unmatched and was deservedly earned. However, despite his “larger than life” charisma and persona, Dr. King was also a human being. Rumors of his infidelity and raucous sex life during his civil rights travels were confirmed by his then right-hand man, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, among others. Is that enough to make you rethink Dr. King’s place in history?
True or false, the letter was clearly designed to discredit Dr. King and to deflate his reputation. So, what do you think of the letter and its charges? Should Dr. King’s rumored personal shortcomings taint his overall reputation? Or does any of this really matter 50 years after Dr. King laid his life on the line for the sake of racial equality?
