Coretta Scott was born in Heiberger, Alabama, in 1927. As a young girl, she lived through the Great Depression, attended Antioch College in Ohio and then the New England Conservatory of Music. There she met and married Martin Luther King Jr. who was studying for a Ph.D. in Theology at Boston University. Together, the Kings became leaders in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. In 1968, Dr. King was assassinated, but Mrs. King continued to advocate for diverse civil rights concerns until her death in February 2007.
Linked to this page is a PDF file of FBI records concerning Mrs. King recently released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The file consists of 489 pages from four different files. Redactions were made in this file to protect personal privacy, the identity of informants, national security information, and other types of information that should be withheld under the FOIA.
A brief description of each of these files follows the link.
Link to King FOIA Release
Brief Descriptions of Attached Files
9-55692
A "9" class file concerns extortion investigations. In this case, the FBI investigated a threat of violence against Mrs. King, Senator Edward Kennedy, Jacqueline Onassis, and an individual whose name was withheld to protect personal privacy as they are presumed to be alive. The investigation took place in March and April of 1973.
The file consists of 21 pages pp.2-22 of the linked file.
9-53308
This is also an extortion investigation. In September, 1971, the FBI received a letter making violent threats against Mrs. King. The FBI Lab and the Atlanta Division investigated the letter, identified the letter writer, who confessed to Bureau agents. The U.S. Attorneys at Atlanta and Raleigh declined to prosecute the case.
This file consists of 25 pages pp.24-69 of the linked file.
9-61245
This extortion investigation began in April 1976 when Mrs. King received a letter made of newspaper cutouts warning her not to speak at the University of Maryland. It was signed "The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." She received a similar letter soon afterward. With the help of Maryland State Police, a suspect was identified. He was later charged with several federal crimes and pled guilty. The FBI's Atlanta Division, Baltimore Division, and Laboratory were involved in the investigation.
This file consists of 109 pages pp.71-180 of the linked file.
62-108052
This is the largest section of the release. It consists of 3 sections, 308 pages pp. 182 to 490, ranging in date from 1962 to 1988. A number of these documents have been permanently withdrawn from FBI files and transferred to National Archives under a court order that seals them from public access until 2027 in order to protect the privacy of persons mentioned in it. Other redactions were made in this file to protect personal privacy, the identity of informants, national security information, and other types of information that should be withheld under the FOIA."
62" class files, like this one, were created to store miscellaneous records related to "subversive" and "non-subversive matters." It was, in many ways, a catchall category for a number of matters.
In relation to Mrs. King, this file is not an investigation into Mrs. King for a specific matter so much as it is a collation of FBI information about Mrs. King gathered through a number of other investigations. It is also a record of the dissemination of this information to other law enforcement and federal agencies.
The most detailed sections of file consist of correlation summaries (summaries of mentions of Mrs. King found within other FBI files) and Mrs. King's sometimes contentious relations with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other colleagues of her husband following Dr. King's murder.
The file concludes with Mrs. King's 1988 correspondence with Director William Sessions about race relations in the Bureau and Director Sessions' support for Martin Luther King Jr. Federal holiday.
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