When J. Edgar Hoover Attempted to Drive Dr. King to Suicide With a Sex Tape

[McCamy Taylor]

From the New York Times 2014

The note is just a single sheet gone yellow with age, typewritten and tightly spaced. It’s rife with typos and misspellings and sprinkled with attempts at emending them. Clearly, some effort went into perfecting the tone, that of a disappointed admirer, appalled by the discovery of “hidious [sic] abnormalities” in someone he once viewed as “a man of character.”

The word “evil” makes six appearances in the text, beginning with an accusation: “You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that.” In the paragraphs that follow, the recipient’s alleged lovers get the worst of it. They are described as “filthy dirty evil companions” and “evil playmates,” all engaged in “dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk.” The effect is at once grotesque and hypnotic, an obsessive’s account of carnal rage and personal betrayal. “What incredible evilness,” the letter proclaims, listing off “sexual orgies,” “adulterous acts” and “immoral conduct.” Near the end, it circles back to its initial target, denouncing him as an “evil, abnormal beast.”

The unnamed author suggests intimate knowledge of his correspondent’s sex life, identifying one possible lover by name and claiming to have specific evidence about others. Another passage hints of an audiotape accompanying the letter, apparently a recording of “immoral conduct” in action. “Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure,” the letter demands. It concludes with a deadline of 34 days “before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

“There is only one thing left for you to do,” the author warns vaguely in the final paragraph. “You know what it is.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html

Would it surprise you to learn that Dr. King was correct when he told friends that he believed the anonymous letter came from then FBI czar J. Edgar Hoover? Or that King believed that the letter was meant to encourage him to commit suicide? Shocking, but not at all unbelievable for anyone who knows the history of J. Edgar Hoover, the man who did dirty tricks better than anyone, even Pat Buchanan and Tricky Dick.

Let's go back to the early 1960s. King was affiliated with a Known Communist. In the early 1960s (US still in Cold War with Russia) that was the political equivalent of touching a young person "down there. During the FBI's investigation, Hoover discovered what many in the Civil Rights movement already knew--Dr. King was a human being who had a sex life.

Bingo, thought Hoover. Spread the word that the Civil Right's Movement's most influential leader is a mere human being, and the Civil Rights Movement will fall apart.

I am bringing this up now, because Democrats face a moral dilemma. One of our own has been very, very bad. He posted a photo of himself in black face in his medical school yearbook in 1984--after Dr. King and the Civil Right's Movement of the 1950s-60s, meaning there was no excuse. At that time, everyone knew better.

At the same time, we are being confronted with proof that one of Nixon's dirty tricksters, Roger Stone, currently under indictment for being a traitor to his country set up the whole faux Al Franken scandal. Meaning that a great number of Democrats were duped into casting out one of their shining stars, a man who made the Mueller investigation possible--and painted a big Kick Me sign on his back in the process. Now, Democrats worry that the same process is starting again, and that by the time 2020 gets here, we will have no viable candidates because we will have already eaten all of then.

There is no solution to this moral quandary. There is no correct answer. Both "sides" are absolutely correct. And, whether they know it or not, both sides are actually on the same side--the side of justice and autonomy and the right of every individual to stand up and say I am citizen of this country entitled to the same rights and consideration as every other citizen.

William Blake wrote:

These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies: whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.

By religion, Blake did not mean the free religion of this country. He meant the state enforced mockery that passed for religion in most of Europe during his day, the divine mandate that said that the word of the king was the word of god--you, know, our modern Religious Right.

What are we at DU to do? We must speak our conscience.

Those who have been oppressed must speak out about their oppression. They must demand that the rest of us acknowledge their personal and family pain. They must demand that our party make a strong, bold statement of human affirmation.

Those who seek justice and a living wage and health care and decent education for all working class Americans can not allow their movement to be derailed. They must stand together. They must remain strong. But they must not deny a voice to anyone under the Democratic umbrella. It was this "Shut up and make the coffee" that lead the Women's Movement to split off from the mainstream anti-war, civil rights movement in 1970. And we do not need a bunch of little movements that can be divided and conquered, we need one strong movement.

To anyone who says "We can not do both at the same time," I encourage you to try. You would be amazed at what people can accomplish when they put their heads together.



Why the Edmund Pettis Bridge and not the March on Washington? Because the battle for human dignity is a hard fought one.


More on Hoover's attempts to create a schism between Dr. King and his followers here:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/federal-bureau-investigation-fbi

[still_one]

1. Hoover was a racist pig