Martin Luther King has become an American saint since his assassination in 1968. His birthday, celebrated the third Monday in January, is a national holiday. Moreover, some regard his “I Have a Dream Speech” as the greatest speech of the 20th century.

Yet on Thursday, the British magazine Standpoint will release an article based upon old FBI memos from the 1960’s that tarnish King’s saintly legacy. The stories it reveals are hair-raising, especially in this MeToo era. However, our mainstream American media are strangely quiet.

What’s even more curious is that the article’s author, historian David Garrow, is no right-winger. In fact, he’s a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Plus, he previously wrote a biography of Martin Luther King that won the 1987 Putlizer Prize for biography. So Rush Limbaugh he’s not.

Garrow’s work comes from 1960’s-era FBI memos that were released early in the year as part of a National Archives document dump. Under orders from FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI surveilled King from 1955 until his death in 1968. Hoover despised the civil rights leader and would stop at nothing to bring him down.

Credit: The Listening/Couleur/pixabay.

The FBI planted bugs in King’s hotel rooms that he used in the 1960’s; however, tape recordings from those buggings are sealed in the Archives until 2027. Garrow therefore had no access to the direct recordings, but wrote his article based upon the memos.

And those memos are scathing to Martin Luther King’s legacy.

For example, two bugs placed in lamps at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, indicate that King “looked on and laughed” while a friend raped a woman. Moreover, that friend was the pastor of a Baptist Church in Baltimore who died in 1991.

London’s The Times cited a memo in Garrow’s article:

“When one of the women protested that she did not approve, the Baptist minister immediately and forcibly raped her.”

However, the FBI did not intervene during the alleged rape.

Martin Luther King also held conversations with another man as to which “women among the parishioners would be suitable for natural and unnatural sex acts,” according to The Times. And according to the memos, Martin Luther King participated in sex orgies at the Willard Hotel.

The Times also quoted this from the memo in the Garrow article:

“When one of the women shied away from engaging in an unnatural act, King and several of the men discussed how she was to be taught and initiated in this respect. King told her that to perform such an act would ‘help your soul.'” 

And while rumors have long circulated about Martin Luther King’s many affairs, Garrow told The Times that numbers shocked him. He always suspected there were 10-12 women, but “not 40-45.”

Moreover, Garrow wrote that the newly released information:

“. . . poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.”

This is obviously third rail stuff that media don’t want to touch. In fact, if you Google this story, you’ll find it mainly in some UK press and other foreign media. A few American conservative sites have written about it, others have not. In fact, while Garrow has a track record with Atlantic magazine and the Washington Post, they flinched on the article. And in the UK, the leftwing Guardian rejected Garrow’s work with a kill fee.

Now if this were Donald Trump, you know the American media would be all over this. They wouldn’t even stop to examine the credibility of these memos. And the MeToo women! Where’s Alyssa Milano and her nonstop Tweets of Outrage?

You know the formula here. Martin Luther King is a hero to the left, so there’s nothing to see here.

Credit: giphy.

So what should we do about our national adulation of Martin Luther King? Should we follow the current trend and yank down his statue in Washington DC? Do we cancel his national holiday?

Absolutely not. All our American heroes have had foibles; they were all sinners. But despite their flaws, they’ve contributed to this nation in enormous ways. We should look at Martin Luther King and others with a balanced eye, realizing that despite some awful behavior, they’ve done some mighty fine things, too.

And as for the media — shame on them for choosing to look the other way when their hero has been shown to have feet of clay.

Featured image: King statue in Washington, DC/cropped/pixabay.