William Sullivan, an FBI agent, called Martin Luther King, Jr. evil six times in a letter that was only just released to the public in full, uncensored form.
Beverly Gage, a historian writing a biography of Hoover, discovered the original copy of the notorious note in the J. Edgar Hoover archives. Other copies of the note that were publicly available prior to this were all redacted heavily.
Sixty years ago, in 1964, Sullivan penned a letter of hatred to King, which he sent anonymously. King interpreted this letter as an attempt to get him to commit suicide. Sullivan was working under the J. Edgar Hoover administration. Today, Hoover is widely considered to have abused the power of the FBI. In 1964 he was on a mission to take down King, who he felt was a dangerous power. This was shortly after King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, when the public was very much in his favor.
In the FBI letter, Sullivan claimed to have extensive knowledge of "immoral acts" King committed, including sexual orgies and adulterous affairs. The letter urged King to do the "one thing left" for him to do, as the letter put it. King interpreted this line as urging him to commit suicide. The author of the letter urged him to do the unnamed act within 34 days, or to have his "immoral" behavior exposed to the public. The FBI discovered King's extramarital affairs by spying on him when J. Edgar Hoover began his mission to prove that King was a communist. The FBI could not find anything to prove that King was a communist, but they attempted to use knowledge of these affairs to intimidate him instead. The letter was sent along with a copy of a tape the FBI had made recording sessions of King's adulterous actions.
Although the letter itself was poorly written, and littered with typos, King was sure when he received the note that it was written by the FBI. The author of the letter also purports to be black, referring to "us Negroes."
The FBI tried to publicize the story of King's affairs, but at the time, no one in the media would publish a story about that. Instead, King only became more popular, winning the Nobel Peace Prize later in the year.
The New York Times published the letter in full on its website; it will appear in print in New York Times magazine on November 16.
