U.S. Foreign Policy: January 2008 Archives

It is important to remember that, while universally praised and honored in America today, during his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a deeply controversial and divisive figure.
 

Fringe views that still exist today (which I won’t dignify with links) condemning King as a dangerous radical, a socialist, and a communist, were the views of much of the mainstream press during the 1960s.  King was viewed as such a disruptive force by the U.S. government that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy disgracefully authorized J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to wiretap King’s phone.  Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Hoover’s FBI worked to undermine and destabilize civil rights groups like King’s SCLC, all in the name of national security and American unity.