When you’re trying to decide if an accusation is true, it’s often a good idea to ask who they came from. In the case of these allegations, the source is the FBI. And of course, the FBI had a motive to find incriminating information about King. They wanted to discredit him and the movement he was associated with. And since they did try to blackmail him into suicide, it seems like they didn’t really care how they did it. So, they obviously had a motive to embellish or make up these kinds of episodes. And of course, their sources for the rumors are very vague.
Part of the reason the FBI was so set on getting rid of King was that they thought he was a communist at a time when communism was seen as the greatest threat to the country. And the documents allege that King was closely tied to communist organizations. But we know now that those ties were made up completely. King himself was no fan of communist regimes. And he made efforts to say so publically but found that his advisors feared alienating supporters who might be communists. “There are things I wanted to say renouncing communism in theory, King said, “but they would not go along with it.”
More importantly, as far as the Government was concerned, King was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson’s administration was already concerned that the war was becoming unpopular, largely because it was, and they saw anyone who spoke out publically against it as a potential threat to the war effort. And anyone, like King, who spoke out against it was branded a communist. After all, why would anyone speak out against the war unless they were an ally of the communist North Vietnamese government? So, it didn’t take much to convince Hoover and the FBI that King was a communist. And Hoover put a lot of pressure on his agents to uncover proof of that.
If you take the FBI documents at face value, you’d assume King was a staunch supporter of communism, which he absolutely was not. And if that allegation in the documents is false, it changes the tone of the whole report. It makes it seem less like an objective effort to collect facts and more like an effort to discredit King with any rumor they could find. Ultimately, that’s probably all the report is, a collection of rumors meant to make King look bad.
That’s not to say that King didn’t have personal issues with sexual affairs. Many of King’s friends and associates have stated over the years that they knew he sometimes had emotional and possibly sexual attachments to women. Like all men, King wasn’t perfect. And like anyone, he made mistakes and did things that might challenge the image of him that has been built up over the years. But the more disturbing allegations in the documents are almost definitely exaggerated or even outright lies. And King’s personal issues don’t take away from his legacy as a champion of equality.