Tarquinius
Disregard my larping efforts. I can't change it.
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Preventing the rise of a 'messiah'
The US government's efforts to discredit Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders illustrate the lengths to which it will go to stifle left-wing movements
www.theguardian.com
The US government's efforts to discredit Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders illustrate the lengths to which it will go to stifle left-wing movements
Forty years ago today, a bullet severed the spine of a man whom many the world over thought of as a prince. We have all seen the picture of the hotel balcony where that prince stood, and fell, surrounded by his entourage, all pointing - presumably, in the direction from which the bullet came.
All but one.
One man was not standing, not pointing, but kneeling by Martin Luther King's body, presumably checking to see if - or that - he was dead. That man, Merrell McCullough, was an undercover police officer who had infiltrated King's circle. According to Time magazine, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, at least as far back as 1974.
What interest could an intelligence agency have in a man who plainly believed only in peace? In August 1967, four months after King called the US government the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," three months after 30 members of the Black Panther party marched, armed, into the California state capitol and onto the front pages of newspapers worldwide, J Edgar Hoover, the head of America's domestic law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, issued the following directive: "The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavour is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralise the activities of black-nationalist, hate-type organisations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters."
@lifefuel thots?By "hate-type organisations", Hoover explained that he meant "such groups as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, [King's] Southern Christian Leadership Conference ... the Congress of Racial Equality and the Nation of Islam", the group Malcolm X belonged to until shortly before his 1965 murder. In February 1968, there was a massive demonstration in support of the then-imprisoned leader of the Black Panthers, and Stokely Carmichael and H Rap Brown merged SNCC with the Panthers. Hoover issued another directive: "Prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a 'messiah'... . Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and [Nation of Islam leader] Elijah Muhammed [sic] all aspire to this position ... . King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed 'obedience' to 'white, liberal doctrines' (nonviolence)."