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FBI
Files Related to Coretta Scott King
Coretta
Scott was born in Heiberger, Alabama, in 1927. As
a young girl, she lived through the Great Depression,
attended Antioch College in Ohio and then the New
England Conservatory of Music. There she met and
married Martin Luther King Jr. who was studying
for a Ph.D. in Theology at Boston University. Together,
the Kings became leaders in the burgeoning Civil
Rights Movement. In 1968, Dr. King was assassinated,
but Mrs. King continued to advocate for diverse
civil rights concerns until her death in February
2007.
Linked
to this page is a PDF file of FBI records concerning
Mrs. King recently released under the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA). The file consists of 489
pages from four different files. Redactions were
made in this file to protect personal privacy, the
identity of informants, national security information,
and other types of information that should be withheld
under the FOIA.
A
brief description of each of these files follows
the link.
Link
to King FOIA Release
Brief Descriptions of Attached Files
9-55692
A
"9" class file concerns extortion investigations.
In this case, the FBI investigated a threat of violence
against Mrs. King, Senator Edward Kennedy, Jacqueline
Onassis, and an individual whose name was withheld
to protect personal privacy as they are presumed
to be alive. The investigation took place in March
and April of 1973.
The
file consists of 21 pages pp.2-22
of the linked file.
9-53308
This
is also an extortion investigation. In September,
1971, the FBI received a letter making violent threats
against Mrs. King. The FBI Lab and the Atlanta Division
investigated the letter, identified the letter writer,
who confessed to Bureau agents. The U.S. Attorneys
at Atlanta and Raleigh declined to prosecute the
case.
This
file consists of 25 pages pp.24-69
of the linked file.
9-61245
This
extortion investigation began in April 1976 when
Mrs. King received a letter made of newspaper cutouts
warning her not to speak at the University of Maryland.
It was signed "The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."
She received a similar letter soon afterward. With
the help of Maryland State Police, a suspect was
identified. He was later charged with several federal
crimes and pled guilty. The FBI's Atlanta Division,
Baltimore Division, and Laboratory were involved
in the investigation.
This
file consists of 109 pages pp.71-180
of the linked file.
62-108052
This
is the largest section of the release. It consists
of 3 sections, 308 pages pp.
182 to 490, ranging in date from 1962 to 1988.
A number of these documents have been permanently
withdrawn from FBI files and transferred to National
Archives under a court order that seals them from
public access until 2027 in order to protect the
privacy of persons mentioned in it. Other redactions
were made in this file to protect personal privacy,
the identity of informants, national security
information, and other types of information that
should be withheld under the FOIA."
62"
class files, like this one, were created to store
miscellaneous records related to "subversive"
and "non-subversive matters." It was,
in many ways, a catchall category for a number
of matters.
In
relation to Mrs. King, this file is not an investigation
into Mrs. King for a specific matter so much as
it is a collation of FBI information about Mrs.
King gathered through a number of other investigations.
It is also a record of the dissemination of this
information to other law enforcement and federal
agencies.
The
most detailed sections of file consist of correlation
summaries (summaries of mentions of Mrs. King
found within other FBI files) and Mrs. King's
sometimes contentious relations with the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference and other colleagues
of her husband following Dr. King's murder.
The
file concludes with Mrs. King's 1988 correspondence
with Director William Sessions about race relations
in the Bureau and Director Sessions' support for
Martin Luther King Jr. Federal holiday.
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