A newly released FBI report claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was involved in 'all-night sex orgies' and 'illicit love affairs'. Photo / Getty Images
A newly released FBI report claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was involved in 'all-night sex orgies' and 'illicit love affairs'. Photo / Getty Images
An FBI report has been declassified as part of the newly released John F. Kennedy assassination files, and claims Martin Luther King Jr had an "all-night sex orgy" at a training workshop.
The report released on Friday was written just weeks before the revered civil rights leader was assassinated in 1968, and details allegations about a workshop King held earlier that year in Miami.
The FBI's sex smears against King have been well known for years, but the newly released 20-page report offers new insight into the harsh portrait the Bureau attempted to paint of him as he campaigned for civil rights and economic reforms, reports Daily Mail.
It is not clear whether the FBI was able to confirm any of the salacious claims it included in the analysis, and they could not be independently verified.
The report, dated March 12, 1968, explains in the introduction that it had been prepared to offer officials insights into King's "views, goals, objectives, tactics and the reasons therefor". King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
"The course King chooses to follow at this critical time could have momentous impact on the future of race relations in the United States," the introduction said.
A section in the report titled "King's Personal Conduct" begins: "With funds that he had received from the Ford Foundation, King held the first of two workshops in Miami, Florida in February, 1968, to train Negro ministers in urban leadership."
"One Negro minister in attendance later expressed his disgust with the behind-the-scene drinking, fornication, and homosexuality that went on at the conference," the document reads.
"Several Negro and white prostitutes were brought in from the Miami area. An all night-sex orgy was held with these prostitutes and some of the delegates in attendance," it goes on.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivers his 'I Have a Dream' speech in Washington, D.C. Photo / Getty Images
The report claims that a large table at the event was filled with whiskey, and "two Negro prostitutes were paid $50.00 to put on a sex show for the entertainment of guests."
"A variety of sex acts deviating from the normal were observed," the report said, going on to claim this kind of activity was regular for King.
"As early as January, 1964, King engaged in another, two-day drunken sex orgy in Washington, D.C. Many of those present engaged in sexual acts, natural as well as unnatural, for the entertainment of onlookers," the report reads.
"When one of the females shied away from engaging in an unnatural act, King and other of the males present discussed how she was to be taught and initiated in this respect," the document reads.
Though no source for that allegation is mentioned, King is documented to have been in DC in January 1964, when he met with President Lyndon Johnson to support the legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act.
"Throughout the ensuing years and until this date King has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to the public view as a moral leader of religious conviction," the report reads.
According to the document, King had an ongoing affair with a married woman, and may have fathered a child with her. The report attributes that claim to "a prominent Negro who is related by law to King's mistress".
"It was learned in February, 1968, from a very responsible Los Angeles individual in a position to know, that King has been having an illicit love affair with the wife of a prominent Negro dentist in Los Angeles, California, since 1962.
"He believes King fathered a baby girl born to this woman inasmuch as her husband is allegedly sterile," the document reads.
"The child resembles King to a great degree and King contributes to the support of this child. He calls this woman every Wednesday and frequently meets her in various cities throughout the country."
"The prominent Negro who furnished the information said he was appalled that a man of King's low character could cause so much trouble for both Negroes and the Government," the document reads.
The report goes on to claim King had "illicit love affairs" with at least three other women, including the folk singer Joan Baez. A publicist for Baez did not immediately return a request for comment.
"As can be seen from above, it is a fact that King not only regularly indulges in adulterous acts but enjoys the abnormal by engaging in group sexual orgies," the FBI report continues.
Report / Federal Bureau of Investigation
Report / Federal Bureau of Investigation
The report concludes by reflecting on King's 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, noting that his public remarks seem 'incongruous' in contrast with the salacious allegations.
It is unclear how the report related to the investigation into Kennedy's 1963 assassination.
Markings on the document indicate that it was initially classified "Secret", and reviewed by the FBI/JFK Task Force in 1994, when it was marked for "total denial" of release to the public.
J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director from 1935 to 1972, was known to be hostile to King, seeing him as a potential Communist agitator.
In 1964, the FBI sent King a blackmail letter warning him "there is but one way out", which he believed to be encouraging him to commit suicide.
The 1968 report details King's close relationship with progressive lawyer Stanley Levinson, claiming Levinson operated as a Communist puppet-master for King.
The report alleges that Levinson told another advisor to King that the civil rights leader was a "slow thinker" and that "under no circumstances should King be permitted to say anything without their approving it".
J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director from 1935 to 1972, was known to be hostile to King, seeing him as a potential Communist agitator. Hoover once called King a 'notorious liar'. Photo / Getty Images
The report's analysis said that in the early 1960s, the Communist Party was trying to get a black labor coalition to further its goals in the United States.
It referenced a May 1961 issue of a communist newspaper that stated, "Communists will do their utmost to strengthen and unite the Negro movement and ring it to the backing of the working people."
The FBI said King and his organization were "made-to-order" to achieve these objectives. Other documents released by the National Archives on Friday include a May 1967 FBI report titled "Racial Violence Potential In The United States This Summer".
"All signs point toward recurrent racial convulsions throughout the country this summer--more than likely on an even wider scale than in previous years--marked by plundering, arson, destruction, and attacks on law enforcement officers," that report reads.
The summer of 1967 did see a large number of race-related rioting in American cities, to be eclipsed the following summer by the rioting in 125 US cities in response to King's assassination.
