Chapter Twelve - The Letter

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Letter

THIS IS NOT a dramatization.
This is not conspiracy.
This is not speculation.

This is the actual letter the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent — anonymously — to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964.

It was discovered later through the Church Committee hearings and released under the Freedom of Information Act.
It came straight from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
Its intent was clear:

Push Dr. King to suicide.
Destroy his credibility.
Assassinate his soul before the bullet ever arrived.

KING,

In view of your low grade, abnormal personal behavior I will not dignify your name with either a “Mr.” or a “Rev.” 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.

King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes.

White people in this country have enough frauds of their own, but I am sure they don’t have one at this time that is anywhere near your category.

You are no clergyman and you know it.

I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that.

You could not believe in God and act as you do.
Clearly you don’t believe in any personal moral principles.

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.

We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins a man of character and thank God we have others like him.

But you are done. You are finished.

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.

Let it settle in.

The FBI wrote this.
Typed it.
Mailed it.

A government agency — funded by taxpayer dollars — told a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the leader of the civil rights movement, to kill himself.

This wasn’t ancient history.
This was 1964.
While he was alive.
While they watched him.
While they wiretapped his phones, blackmailed his friends, and spread whispers behind his back.

They wanted him erased.
Not just from the streets —
from the story.

That’s what we’re dealing with here.
Not a rogue agent.
Not a glitch.
A system.

A filing cabinet with a badge.
A man with a grudge.
And a country that let it happen.

So when people say “that’s just a conspiracy,”
show them this chapter.

Because this ain’t fiction.

It’s America.
On letterhead.
With a signature soaked in shame.