Rare recording of MLK talking about JFK

[Octafish]

Source: CNN

(CNN) -- A previously unheard recording of Martin Luther King Jr. discussing John F. Kennedy will be played Monday in the place where the civil rights leader was assassinated.

King's comments are on a 53-year-old reel-to-reel tape discovered in a Tennessee attic several years ago. But the last several minutes are only now being made public.

The civil rights leader is heard discussing Kennedy's role in securing his release from a Georgia prison after he was sentenced to four months of hard labor for a traffic violation two weeks before the election that sent Kennedy to the White House.

Then-Sen. Kennedy placed a call to Coretta Scott King against the advice of close advisers, expressing his concern to King's wife. His brother, Robert Kennedy also called the Georgia judge who had sentenced King to the chain gang and denied him bond. King was freed the next day.

CONTINUED...

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/us/mlk-kennedy-recording/

[louis-t]

1. Never heard this story before.

4 months at hard labor for a traffic violation?

[Octafish]

2. Yah. Dr. King was railroaded. JFK made a phone call...

At the suggestion of Sargent Shriver:

Jack Kennedy called Mrs. King. (Richard Nixon did not.)

[Tom Ripley]

3. I thought this recording was going to be from J Edgar Hoover's archive of King recordings

[Octafish]

4. The article turned up when I GOOGLED to learn when Hoover's MLK surveillance started.

I was concerned to read so many writers have named then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy as the man responsible for bugging Dr. King and uncovering his extramarital affairs. While it is true, RFK and his brother JFK (and even Jacqueline Kennedy) knew about the affairs, apparently having been informed by J Edgar Hoover, the FBI surveillance had begun in 1958, several years before President Kennedy's administration. Details on the file:

Martin Luther King, Jr. FBI File

EXCERPT...

The FBI File consists of 17,000 pages of materials about Martin Luther King, Jr. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted surveillance of Rev. King from 1958 until his death. Documents have been censored and many pages include blacked-out sections. Due to a court order any information about or from FBI wiretaps have been removed and will not be released until 2027. Because of the surveillance, this file constitutes an extensive record of Rev. King's day-to-day activities.

While the Kennedy brothers evidently knew of Hoover's spying, they were not privy to Hoover's disgusting COINTELPRO efforts to drvie Dr. King to suicide. That effort, according to the filesreviewed by HuffPost's Danielle Cadet, began in 1964.

[bananas]

5. k&r nt