FBI) undertook a
long-term and highly classified counter-intelligence
operation, against the CPUSA. The FBI persuaded a former
member of the National Committee of the CPUSA and former
editor of the Daily Worker, the Party newspaper, to
become active again within the Party leadership and to
report on Party activities to the FBI. This man's name
was Morris Childs, and his brother, Jack Childs, also a
Communist, agreed to act as an informant as well. The
FBI operation was known as SOLO, and for nearly 30 years
it provided reliable and highly sensitive information
about the CPUSA, its activities within the United
States, and its relations with the Soviet Union to the
highest authorities in the U.S. government. At least
three U.S. Presidents were aware of SOLO, and Morris
Childs may have briefed President Nixon prior to his
trip to Moscow in 1972. In 1980 SOLO was brought to an
end. Jack Childs died on August 12, 1980, and the
operation was publicly disclosed and thus terminated by
historian David J Garrow in a book published the
following year.
Among the most important facts
learned from SOLO was that the CPUSA was dependent on a
direct financial subsidy paid by the Soviet Union. About
one million dollars a year in Soviet funds was paid to a
member of the CPUSA, usually Jack Childs himself, in New
York City. Although this subsidy was illegal, the FB!
allowed it to continue for a number of
reasons-prosecution would have exposed SOLO and
necessarily brought it to an end, and the operation was
of continuing value; and the dependence of the Party on
Soviet funds meant that it did not seek to increase its
membership and importance within the United States.
In 1953 Jack Childs reported to the
FBI that an individual named Stanley David Levison
(1912-1979), a New York lawyer and businessman, was
deeply involved in acquiring and disposing of the funds
of the Soviet subsidy to the CPUSA. Levison may have
been involved as a financial benefactor to the Party as
early as 1945 and may have established legitimate
business enterprises in the United States and Latin
America in order to launder Soviet funds to the Party.
In this connection Levison was said to have worked with
Isidore G. Needleman, the representative of the Soviet
trading corporation AMTORG.
Childs also reported to the FBI
that Levison assisted CPUSA leaders to acquire and
manage the Party's secret funds and that he directed
about $50,000 a year into the Party's treasury. After
the death of Party treasurer William Weiner in 1954,
Levison's financial role became increasingly important,
and Levison, according to Childs, became "the interim
chief administrator of the party's most secret funds."2
The FBI maintained close
surveillance of Levison, but in mid to late 1955,
Levison's financial role began to decline. The FBI
decreased its surveillance, although Levison was
believed to have occasional contacts with CPUSA leaders.
The Bureau eventually terminated surveillance of Levison,
probably sometime in 1957. Some indications that CPUSA
leaders were disgruntled with Levison led the FBI to
interview him on February 9 and March 4, 1960. It is not
clear what Levison told the FBI at these interviews, but
he definitely rejected the request of the FBI that he
become an informant within the Communist Party.
In the summer of 1956
Bayard Rustin, himself a former member of the Young
Communist League, the youth arm of the CPUSA, introduced
Levison to Martin Luther King, Jr. in New York City.
Levison and King soon became close friends, and Levison
provided important financial, organizational, and public
relations services for King and the SCLC. The FBI was
not aware of their relationship until very late 1961 or
early 1962, and it was the discovery of their
relationship that led to the protracted and intensive
FBI-DOJ surveillance of King for the remainder of his
life. The FBI believed that Levison was still a
Communist and that King's relationship with him
represented an opportunity for the Communist Party to
infiltrate and manipulate King and the civil rights
movement.
Of King's dependence on Levison
there can be no doubt. A DOJ Task Force investigating
the FBI surveillance of King discussed this dependence
in its report of 1977:
The advisor's [Levison's]
relationship to King and the SCLC is amply evidenced in
the files and the task force concludes that he was a
most trusted advisor. The files are replete with
instances of his counseling King and his organization on
matters pertaining to organization, finances, political
strategy and speech writing. Some examples follow:
The
advisor organized, in King's name, a fund raising
society .... This organization and the SCLC were in
large measure financed by concerts arranged by this
person .... He also lent counsel to King and the SCLC on
the tax consequences of charitable gifts.
On
political strategy, he suggested King make a public
statement calling for the appointment of a black to the
Supreme Court .... This person advised against accepting
a movie offer from a movie director and against
approaching Attorney General Kennedy on behalf of a
labor leader ....In each instance his advice was
accepted.
King's speech before the AFL-CIO
National Convention was written by this advisor .... He
also prepared King's May 1962 speech before the United
Packing House Workers Convention .... In 1965 he
prepared responses to press questions directed to Dr.
King from a Los Angeles radio station regarding the Los
Angeles racial riots and from the "New York Times"
regarding the Vietnam War.3
After King's death, Coretta Scott
King described Levison's role: "Always working in the
background, his contribution has been indispensable,"
and she wrote of an obituary of King written by Levison
and
Harry Belafonte, "two of his most devoted and
trusted friends," as "the one which best describes
the meaning of my husband's life and death."4
It may be noted that this obituary began with a
description of America as "a nation tenaciously
racist .... sick with violence .... [and] corrosive with
alienation." According to Garrow, Levison also
assisted King in the writing and publication of Stride
Toward Freedom, the administration of contributions to
SCLC, and the recruitment of employees of SCLC. King
offered to pay Levison for all this help, but Levison
consistently refused, writing that "the liberation
struggle [i.e., the civil rights movement] is the most
positive and rewarding area of work anyone could
experience."5
There seem to have been few if any
agents and administrators in the FBI who knew of
Levison's background of involvement in handling the
secret and illegal Soviet funds of the CPUSA who doubted
that Levison remained a Communist or under Party control
at the time he was working with King, and some FBI
personnel have suggested that Levison may actually have
held rank in the Soviet intelligence service. Garrow
himself does not seriously question the accuracy of
Childs's reports of Levison's earlier role in the Party,
but he appears to be skeptical that Levison continued to
be a Communist at the time he worked with King and that
he was motivated in this work by any factor other than
friendship for King and belief in the civil rights
movement.
Garrow's conclusion in this respect
is open to question. He is decidedly favorable to King,
as opposed to J. Edgar Hoover and other anti-Communists
of the time. It is not clear why Garrow came to this
conclusion, since he does not appear to have had access
to all FBI materials on Levison or derived from SOLO and
since he appears to be largely ignorant of the nature of
CPUSA activities in racial relations through front
groups and surrogates and of the discipline of the Party
over its members.
A number of factors support the
belief that Levison continued to be a Communist or to
act under CPUSA control during his association with
King:
(1) There is no evidence that
Levison broke with the CPUSA; the termination of his
financial activities on behalf of the Party prior to his
work with King means nothing as far as his affiliation
with or loyalty to the Party or the Communist movement
is concerned.
(2) Levison had been involved not
as a rank-and-file member but as an operative involved
with clandestine and illegal funding of the CPUSA by a
hostile foreign power. He had had access to the highest
leaders of the Party and to the inmost secrets of the
Party. It is not likely that such tasks would be given
to one who was not fully trusted by both the CPUSA
leadership and by the Soviets themselves. Even if
Levison had changed his mind about Communism, his
activities would have constituted grounds for blackmail
by the Party.
(3) Several years after the
apparent end of his financial activities for the CPUSA,
Levison rejected an opportunity to act as an FBI
informant against the Party. Details of his discussions
with the FBI are not available, but apparently they were
not friendly.
(4) Levison testified under
subpoena at an executive session of the Senate
Subcommittee on Internal Security on April 30, 1962.
This testimony is still classified. His attorney at this
time was William Kunstler, who became notorious for his
far left activities in the 1960s and 1970s; Kunstler had
been recommended to Levison by the latter's friend,
Arthur Kinoy, also a far left activist. Although Levison
in his opening statement before the Subcommittee denied
that he was or ever had been a member of the Communist
Party, he refused to answer any questions during this
hearing dealing with his relations with the Party or his
alleged financial role in it; he pled the Fifth
Amendment throughout the hearing.
(5) Levison's known policy and
personnel recommendations to King exhibit a leftist
orientation. He was instrumental in persuading and
influencing King to oppose the Vietnam war and in hiring
at least one other individual with known Communist
affiliations to work in SCLC.
(6) Prior to his work in a New
York-based civil rights group called "In Friendship" in
1955, Levison had never displayed any interest in civil
rights activities. The sudden development of his
interest in civil rights and his extensive,
time-consuming, and costly assistance to King may have
been motivated by a spontaneous and enduring dedication
to this cause, but there is little reason to think so.
His own description of the civil rights movement as a
"liberation struggle" suggests a Marxist
perspective.
(7) After King was urged by DOJ to
disassociate himself from Levison and was subject to
surveillance and distrust by the FBI and the Kennedy
Administration, there was no effort on Levison's part to
try to explain his past or to persuade appropriate
authorities (in the FBI, DOJ, or the White House) that
he had been innocent of Communist connections or that
his relationship with King was not connected to his
Communist affiliation. Had he been able to do so, King
and the civil rights movement would have been much more
favorably received by the Kennedy Administration and
King himself would probably have been spared several
years of surveillance and harassment by the FBI.
Instead, Levison and King entered into a secret and
deceptive relationship by which Levison continued to
influence King through an intermediary, himself of far
left orientation and background.
In short, Levison consistently
behaved in a manner that lent itself to a sinister
interpretation, and his behavior lends further credence
to the firm belief of FBI agents involved that Levison
remained a Communist or under Communist control. That
Levison remained under Communist control was and remains
a reasonable explanation of his activities in lieu of
any evidence to the contrary or any known behavior on
his part that would contradict this explanation.
The FBI informed Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy of the close relationship between
Levison and King and of Levison's Communist background
on January 8, 1962. The Attorney General decided to warn
King of Levison's background and to urge him to
disassociate himself from Levison in order to spare
himself, the civil rights movement, and the Kennedy
Administration any future embarrassment. Both Burke
Marshall, Assistant Attorney General, acting through
Harris Wofford, White House civil rights advisor,
and
John Seigenthaler, Administrative Assistant to the
Attorney General, informed King that persons close to
him were Communists or had Communist backgrounds. King
expressed skepticism and made no commitment to inquire
further or to take any action. Marshall brought the
matter to King's attention again in subsequent meetings.
On June 22, 1963, King met separately in Washington with
Marshall, Robert Kennedy, and President Kennedy. All
three men again warned l~King about the Communist
affiliations of Levison and Jack O'Dell, an official of
SCLC who had been promoted by Levison [and who had been
(and may still have been) a member of the National
Committee of the CPUSA. President Kennedy, in a private
conversation with King in the White House Rose Garden,
compared the situation with the
Profumo Scandal in Great Britain and specifically
stated, with reference to Levison and O'Dell,
"They're Communists. You've got to get rid of them."6
Even after this conversation, King
"made no move to sever ties with either O'Dell or
Levison."7 It was not until the FBI
leaked information to the press about O'Dell and the
publication of this information that King "accepted"
O'Dell's resignation from SCLC in a letter of July 3,
1963. King had still done nothing to sever ties with
Levison, and not until after a meeting of Burke Marshall
with Andrew Young of SCLC did a change in their
relationship occur. in this meeting Marshall told Young,
"I can't give you any proof, but, if you know Colonel
Rudolph Abel of the Soviet secret intelligence, then you
know Stanley Levison? This characterization suggests
that the FBI may have had other facts about Levison
showing a direct link with the Soviet Union.
Levison himself reportedly
suggested to King that they curtail their association,
and King reluctantly agreed. However, they now entered
into a means of communication deliberately designed to
deceive the FBI and the Kennedy Administration. Levison
and King were to communicate only through an
intermediary (or "cut-out" in intelligence
parlance) and to avoid direct contact with each other.
In this way Levison could continue to influence King.
Whether Levison or King instigated this clandestine and
deceptive relationship is not clear.
The intermediary between King and
Levison, from July, 1963 until 1965, when the overt
contact between them was resumed, was Clarence B. Jones,
a black lawyer whose "left political views and firm
resistance to any symptoms of racial discrimination had
placed him in hot water a number of times" while
serving in the U.S. Army in the 1950s?
Jack O'Dell continued to maintain
an office at SCLC offices in New York City even after
his "resignation" of July 3, and King and SCLC
issued contradictory explanations of this continuing
relationship. King himself made commitments to federal
officials that he would sever his ties to Levison and
O'Dell, but telephonic surveillance of King, Levison,
and Jones showed that he had not done so in regard to
either individual. As Burke Marshall stated in an
interview in 1970:
"...if
you accept the concept of national security, if you
accept the concept that there is a Soviet Communist
apparatus and it is trying to interfere with things
here-which you have to accept-and that that's a national
security issue and that taps are justified in that area,
I don't know what could be more important than having
the kind of Communist that this man was claimed to be by
the Bureau directly influencing Dr. King? "
Hunter Pitts O'Dell
Hunter Pitts O'Dell (also known as
"Jack O'Dell" and "J.H. O'Dell"), known to have been
extensively involved in CPUSA affairs at a high level of
leadership, worked for the SCLC at least as early as
1961. O'Dell met Martin Luther King in 1959 and had
communicated with him by mail in 1959 and 1960. In June,
1962, Stanley Levison recommended to King that he hire
O'Dell as his executive assistant, and O'Dell
subsequently was increasingly active in SCLC and was
listed as a "ranking employee of the organization?"11
O'Dell testified under subpoena in
hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal
Security (SISS) in New Orleans on April 12, 1956; he
took the Fifth Amendment when asked about his
organizational activities in New Orleans on behalf of
tile CPUSA. Materials discovered in O'Dell's apartment
at the time the subpoena was served were described in
the Annual Report of the Subcommittee as "Communist
literature from Communist parties in various parts of
the world."12 He also took the Fifth
Amendment when asked if he was a member of the CPUSA in
a hearing before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities (HCUA) on July 30, 1958. O'Dell, according to
an FBI report of 1962, was elected a member of the
National Committee of the CPUSA in December, 1959, and,
according to information submitted to HCUA in 1961, was
a member of the National Committee as of that year.13
As Garrow states, "no one, including O'Dell, denied
his work with the Communist Party from the late 1940s to
at least the late 1950s." 14
O'Dell is an associate editor of
Freedomways, a magazine described in 1964 by J.
Edgar Hoover as an organ which the CPUSA "continues
to use as a vehicle of propaganda." One of the
editors of Freedomways is Esther Jackson, a
member of the CPUSA and wife of James Jackson, a leader
of the CPUSA. O'Dell, as well as James Jackson, are
included in a "List of Members" of the World
Peace Council for 1980-1983. The World Peace Council,
long known as a Soviet-controlled front organization,
was described by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1982
as "the major Soviet-controlled international front
organization."15
In October, 1962, various
newspapers in the United States, using information
provided them by the FBI, exposed O'Dell's Communist
affiliations and his current ties to King and the SCLC.
King issued an inaccurate statement that sought to
minimize O'Dell's work with the SCLC and accepted
O'Dell's resignation. As Garrow states, "The
resignation ... was more fiction than fact, as King's
own message and appointment books for late 1962 and the
first half of 1963 reflect."16 Further
news stories of June, 1963, which exposed O'Dell's
continuing relationship with King and his presence in
the New York office of SCLC, coupled with warnings from
the Kennedy Administration led King again to accept the
resignation of O'Dell on July 3, 1963. Even after this
date, however, FBI surveillance showed a continuing
relationship between O'Dell and SCLC.
There is no doubt about O'Dell's
extensive and high level activities in and for the
Communist Party, and his affiliations since 1961
strongly suggest continued adherence to and sympathy for
the CPUSA and the Soviet Union to the present day.
Despite these ties and King's knowledge of them, King
promoted O'Dell within the SCLC at the behest of Levison
and retained his help after twice publicly claiming to
have disassociated himself from O'Dell following strong
and explicit warnings from the Kennedy Administration
about O'Dell's Communist background and affiliations.
Southern Conference Educational
Fund
Stanley Levison and Hunter Pitts
O'Dell were not the only individuals of Communist
background with whom Martin Luther King was in contact
and from whom he received advice, although they were in
a better position than most to exert influence on him.
From the mid 1950s through at least the early 1960s,
King and the SCLC were closely involved with an
organization known as the Southern Conference
Educational Fund (SCEF), essentially a Communist front
organization. SCEF was itself dominated by the Communist
Party through the Party members who ran it, and some of
these individuals provided assistance to King and
exerted influence on him and the SCLC.
A. Background of SCEF
SCEF was originally founded as part
of an organization known as the Southern Conference on
Human Welfare (SCHW), founded in Birmingham, Alabama, on
September 6, 1938. SCHW was originally located in
Nashville, Tennessee, but later moved to New Orleans,
Louisiana. In 1947, the House Committee on Un-American
Activities issued a report on SCHW, which found:
Decisive and key posts [of SCHW] are in most instances
controlled by persons whose record is faithful to the
line of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union ....
The
Southern Conference for Human Welfare is perhaps the
most deviously camouflaged Communist-front organization.
When put to the following acid test it reveals its true
character:
1. It
shows unswerving loyalty to the basic principles of
Soviet foreign policy.
2. It
has consistently refused to take sharp issue with the
activities and policies of either the Communist Party,
USA, or the Soviet Union.
3. It
has maintained in decisive posts persons who have the
confidence of the Communist press.
4. It
has displayed consistent anti-American bias and
pro-Soviet bias, despite professions, in generalities,
of love for America.17
In 1944 the Special Committee on
Un-American Activities (SCUA) of the House of
Representatives also cited SCHW as a Communist-front.
Soon after its identification as a
CPUSA front in 1947, SCHW was dissolved, but the
Southern Conference Educational Fund continued. SCEF
maintained the same address as SCHW (808 Perdido Street,
New Orleans, Louisiana) and published the same
periodical (The Southern Patriot). In 1954 the Senate
Subcommittee on Internal Security (SISS) held hearings
in New Orleans on SCEF and found that at least 11 former
officials of SCHW were or had been also officials of
SCEF. Among these were the President and Executive
Director of SCEF, both of whom were identified in
testimony taken under oath as having been members of the
CPUSA and as having been under the discipline of the
CPUSA. Both individuals in their own testimony denied
these allegations. The Subcommittee concluded in its
report that
an
objective study of the entire record compels the
conclusion that the Southern Conference Educational
Fund, Inc., is operating with substantially the same
leadership and purposes as its predecessor organization,
the Southern Conference for Human Welfare.
The
subcommittee accordingly recommends that the Attorney
General take the necessary steps to present this matter
before the Subversive Activities Control Board in order
that a determination can be made as to the status of the
Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc.19
B. Backgrounds of Individual
Leaders of SCEF
At least two key associates of
Martin Luther King were formally associated with SCEF as
well as with the SCLC itself. The Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, King's principal vehicle for
civil rights activism, was officially founded in
Montgomery, Alabama on August 7-8, 1957. Among the
guests at the organizational meeting in Montgomery was
Ella J. Baker of New York City, of the "In Friendship"
organization? Baker was also formally associated with '
t" SCEF as of October, 1963, as a "Special Consultant ."
In 1958 Baker established SCLC headquarters in Atlanta,
Georgia, and was a longstanding friend of Martin Luther
King. She later played a key role in the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an
organization that became notorious in the 1960s for its
advocacy and instigation of racial discord and violence.
John Lewis, a founder of SNCC, described Ella Baker as
"the spiritual mother, I guess you would call her, of
S.N.C.C."21
Little appears to be known of the
"In Friendship" organization of which Ella Baker was the
representative at the SCLC organizational meeting in
1957. However, Stanley Levison also was closely involved
with this organization in New York. According to Garrow,
Levison ... had first become
involved in the southern civil rights struggle as one of
the most active sponsors of a New York group named In
Friendship. Organized in 1955 and 1956, In Friendship
provided financial assistance to southern blacks who had
suffered white retaliation because of their political
activity. In Friendship had sponsored a large May, 1956,
rally at Madison Square Garden to salute such southern
activists, and a good percentage of the funds raised
went to King's Montgomery Improvement Association.22
It was Levison who, with Bayard
Rustin, sent Ella Baker to Atlanta to oversee the SCLC
office in that city, just as he had brought O'Dell into
the SCLC office in New York.
Fred L. Shuttlesworth,
corresponding secretary of SCLC in 1957, was in 1963 the
President and a former Vice-President of SCEF.
Shuttlesworth was responsible for the formation of the
Montgomery Improvement Association, through which King
and other civil rights activists became involved in
civil rights work. Several other individuals affiliated
with SCEF as organizational leaders were alleged under
oath to have been members of the Communist Party and to
have accepted Party discipline or can be shown to have
had ties to known Communist Party front organizations.
Internal documents of SCEF reveal that Martin Luther
King was in close contact with some of these leaders of
SCEF.
(1) Aubrey Williams:
President-Emeritus of SCEF in 1963, Williams had been
identified as a member of the CPUSA and as having
accepted the discipline of the Communist Party in the
testimony of two former members of the Party, Paul
Crouch and Joseph Butler, before SISS in 1954. Williams
denied these allegations.
(2) Dr. James A. Dombrowski:
Executive Director of SCEF, Dombrowski had also been
identified as a member of the Communist Party and as
having accepted Party discipline by witnesses Crouch and
Butler before SISS in 1954. Dombrowski denied these
allegations?
(3) Carl Braden: Field Organizer
for SCEF, Braden was identified as a member of the CPUSA
in the testimony of Alberta Aheam, an FBI informant in
the Party, before SISS on October 28, 1957. Braden later
served as Executive Director of SCEF (1966-1970) and,
until 1973, Information Director of SCEF. Braden was
indicted and convicted of advocacy of criminal sedition
in the state of Kentucky in 1954 and was sentenced to
fifteen years imprisonment; the conviction was reversed
by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in
Pennsylvania v. Nelson, 350 U.S. 497 (1956), which
struck down state sedition laws. In 1959 Braden was
convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer
questions before HCUA. Braden served a year in a federal
penitentiary for this offense, and his conviction was
upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Braden's wife, Anne
McCarty Braden, was also identified by Alberta Aheam as
a member of the Communist Party in testimony before SISS
in 1957. Anne Braden also was active within the
leadership of SCEF.24
(4) William Howard Melish: "Eastern
Representative" of SCEF (in New York City) in 1963,
Melish was identified as a member of the communist Party
in testimony before the Subversive Activities Control
Board (SACB) in 1956 in connection with SACB hearings on
the National Council of American Soviet Friendship,
described by HCUA as "the Communist Party's principal
front for all things Russian" and included in the
Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations
pursuant to Executive Order 10450. William Howard Melish
is the father of Howard Jeffrey Melish (also known as
"Jeff Melish"), a member of the Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS) and of the violent
"Weatherman faction" of SDS. Jeff Melish was
arrested in Chicago during the violent "Days of Rage"
rioting organized by the Weatherman faction in 1969; he
attended the 9th World Youth Festival in Sofia,
Bulgaria, in 1968 and traveled to Cuba in 1970.25
(5) Benjamin E. Smith: Formerly
counsel to and in 1963 treasurer of SCEF, Smith was a
member of the executive board of the National Lawyers
Guild (NLG), repeatedly cited as a Communist front
organization, in 1956 and in 1962 was listed as
"Co-Secretary" of the NLG Committee to Assist Southern
Lawyers. In the 1950s Smith was active in the legal
defense of persons charged with violating the Smith Act,
and in at least one instance he was reported to have
received funds from the Emergency Civil Liberties
Committee, an organization also identified as a
Communist front organization.26
C. Internal Documents of SCEF
On October 4, 1963, state and local
police raided the headquarters of SCEF in New Orleans
and seized a number of internal documents, memoranda,
and letters. Much of this material shows extensive
involvement on the part of SCEF and its staff in the
activities of other CPUSA front organizations. Several
of the documents reveal a close relationship between
SCEF and Martin Luther King, Jr. These documents include
the following:
(I) An appeal to sign a petition to
President Kennedy for executive clemency for Carl
Braden, recently convicted of contempt of Congress for
his refusal to answer questions before HCUA. Among the
signatures on the appeal found in SCEF offices are those
of" (The Rev.) Martin Luther King, Jr., Atlanta, Ga."
and of two former Presidents of SCEF (Aubrey Williams
and Edgar A. Love) and of a future President of SCEF,
Fred Shuttlesworth. In addition to King and
Shuttlesworth, other officers of the SCLC also signed
the appeal: Rev. C.K. Steele, first Vice-President of
SCLC, and Rev Ralph Abernathy treasurer, SCLC?
(2) A memorandum, dated January 18,
1963, from Carl Braden to Howard Melish (both of whom
had been identified as members of the Communist Party),
"IN RE MARTIN KING." Complaining that "Martin King has a
bad habit of arriving late at meetings and sundry
affairs such as the one we are planning in NYC on Feb.
8," Braden suggested, as a means to correct King's
habit, that
either
you or Jim Dombrowski should write him at his home,
asking him to come to a dinner with you or Mogulescu or
some of the key people .... The dinner invitation to his
home will serve to remind him of the engagement that
night and will also pin down whether he will be there?
The significance of this memorandum
is that it shows identified Communists (Braden, Melish,
and Dombrowski) planning the influencing and
manipulation of King for their own purposes. The
assumption of the memorandum is that Melish and
Dombrowski at least were close enough to King to invite
him to dinner and to expect to be able to exert
influence on him.
(3) A photograph of Martin Luther
King, Jr., Carl Braden, Anne Braden, and James A.
Dombrowski, with the legend on the back of the
photograph in the handwriting of Dombrowski, "The 6th
Annual Conference of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, Birmingham, Alabama, September 25 to 28,
1962."29
(4) A check dated March 7, 1963 for
$167.74, issued by SCEF to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
with the notation "N.Y. exp." (New York expenses), and
signed by Benjamin E. Smith and James A. Dombrowski,
treasurer and executive director of SCEF respectively.
The Southern Patriot of March, 1963' reported that King
"paid high tribute" to SCEF in his remarks at the
reception of the New York Friends of SCEF, and the UE
News, official organ of the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America, reported on October 21,
1963, that King protested the seizure of the records of
SCEF in Louisiana and the arrest of two of its leaders
and an attorney during the course of his remarks? (5) A
letter on the stationery of SCEF apparently from
Dombrowski to Dr. Lee Lorch, dated August 2, 1963. Lee
Lorch was /identified as a member of the Communist Party
in testimony under oath by John J. Edmiston, a former
member of the Party, in a hearing before HCUA on July
12, 1950. The letter from Dombrowski to Lorch discusses
activities supportive of civil rights legislation then
being considered in the Congress, and proposes the
following:
As part of a massive letter writing
campaign, we propose to place a full-page ad in at least
one newspaper in each of these 15 states.
We enclose a layout and text for
the ad to be signed by the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference; Dr. Martin Luther King, president; the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and SCEF.
SCEF will raise the money. It will
take about $10,000 to place the ad in one newspaper in
each of the 15 states, $20,000 in two papers per state,
etc?
(6) A memorandum from Dombrowski to
members of the executive committee of SCEF, dated June
20, 1962, "RE: ATLANTA CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND
CIVIL LIBERTIES.', The memorandum states in part:
For almost a year the staff has
been discussing with various leaders in Atlanta the
possibility of a Southwide conference in that city on
civil rights and civil liberties. There has been a most
encouraging response. Most gratifying is the interest
shown by a number of organizations which in the past
have not publicly associated themselves with projects in
which the SCEF was involved.
.... the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker of
SCEF has promised his cooperation, including the
personal participation of the SCLC president, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr?
(7) A letter, dated July 27, 1963,
from Carl Braden to James Dombrowski, which states in
part:
The
pressure that has been put on Martin [Luther King, Jr.]
about [Hunter Pitts] O'Dell helps to explain why he has
been ducking us. I suspected there was something of this
sort in the wind.
The UPI
has carried a story quoting Martin as saying they have
dumped O'Dell for the second time because of fear that
the segreationists [sic] would use it against them. He
expressed no distaste for Communists or their beliefs,
merely puts it on the pragmatic basis that SCLC can't
handle the charges of Communism. This is a quite
interesting development.
So I
think it is best to let Martin and SCLC alone until they
feel like coming around to us. They'll be back when the
Kennedys and other assorted other [deleted] opportunists
with whom they are now consorting have wrung all
usefulness out of them-or rather when they have become a
liability rather than an asset. Right now the
Red-baiters in New York are holding Martin and SCLC as
prisoners through offers of large sums of money. We
shall see if they get the money and, if they do, how
much of a yoke it puts upon them?
It will
be recalled that in the summer of 1963, President
Kennedy had urged King to sever relations with O'Dell
and that King had appeared to do so by accepting
O'Dell's resignation from SCLC. FBI surveillance showed,
however, that O'Dell continued to frequent the New York
office of SCLC.
The documents cited above show
clearly (a) that individuals in the leadership of SCEF,
identified in testimony under oath as members of the
Communist Party or generally well known for their
activities on behalf of Communism, considered themselves
to be on close terms with Martin Luther King and in a
position to exert influence on him, and (b) that King
himself had no objection to working with identified
Communists except on the "pragmatic basis" that
Communist affiliation might lend his activities a
negative public image and be counter-productive. Indeed,
King appears to have worked closely with individuals
generally identified as Communists.
King's Activities on Behalf of
Other Communist or Communist Front Groups:
In addition to his association and
cooperation with SCEF and its leaders, Martin Luther
King also associated and cooperated with a number of
groups known to be CPUSA front organizations or to be
heavily penetrated and influenced by members of the
Communist Party. On October 4, 1967, Congressman John M.
Ashbrook of Ohio, at that time the ranking minority
member of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities
and an authoritative spokesman on internal security
matters, inserted in the Congressional Record extensive
documentation of King's activities in this regard: 34
(1) Martin Luther King, Jr. was
listed as a sponsor of the National Appeal for Freedom,
held in Washington, D.C., November 19-21, 1960, of the
Committee to Secure Justice for Morton Sobell, a group
identified as a Communist front organization by HCUA and
SISS in 1956.
(2) King sent a congratulatory
telegram to the 27th annual convention of the United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) in
1962. UE was expelled from the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (C.I.O.) in 1949 on grounds that it was
dominated by Communists, and in 1944 the SCUA, in a
report on the C.1.O. Political Action Committee, found
that
the
600,000 members of the United Electrical, Radio, and
Machine Workers of America (employed in many of the most
vital American defense industries) are submitting to an
entrenched Communist leadership...?
(3) In May, 1962, King addressed
the convention of the United Packinghouse Workers of
America (UPWA). Stanley Levison wrote this speech.
Charles Hayes of Chicago of UPWA was a guest at the
founding meeting of the SCLC in Montgomery, Alabama, in
1957 (with Ella J. Baker of "In Friendship"). The Annual
Report of HCUA for 1959 states that Charles A. Hayes of
Chicago had been identified as a member of the Communist
Party by two witnesses: by John Hackney, a former member
of the Communist Party who had served as a Communist in
several Party units within the meat-packing industry,
and by Carl Nelson, "who stated that he had attended
many Communist Party meetings with Mr. Hayes. 36
In 1952, in testimony before HCUA, witness Roy Thompson,
a former member of the Communist Party and a former
official of UPWA in Chicago, stated that he had attended
Communist training meetings in which instructions in
Communism were given by "a Mr. Charley Hayes"37
In 1959, witness Carl Nelson, a former Communist and
worker in the meatpacking industry, testified before
HCUA that "the Communist Party deliberately sought to
infiltrate its members into the meatpacking industry"
because "they would be in an excellent position to
cut off food for the Armed Forces" in the event of war?
Mr. Nelson also identified as having been Communists the
editor of the official organ of the UPWA, two field
representatives of the union, a departmental director of
the union, a district secretary-treasurer of the union,
a secretary in the international office of the union,
and a former president of a local of the UPWA, in
addition to Mr. Hayes, who was a district director of
the UPWA, and his secretary?
(4) Martin Luther King was a
luncheon speaker at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, of
the National Lawyers Guild Committee to Assist Southern
Lawyers, held on November 30 and December 1, 1962. The
National Lawyers Guild was cited several times as a
Communist front, and in 1962 the Committee stationery
listed Benjamin E. Smith, co-secretary of the Committee
and treasurer of SCEF and Arthur Kinoy, as affiliated
with it. Kinoy is reported by Garrow to have been a
friend of Stanley Levison and to have recommended
William Kunstler as an attorney to Levison for the
latter's appearance before SISS in April, 1962.40
(5) King also lent his support to
the National Committee to Abolish the Committee on
Un-American Activities, identified as a Communist Party
front by HCUA in 1961. Seven of the thirteen founders of
this organization were identified as having been members
of the CPUSA, including William Howard Melish. Carl
Braden was also active in the Committee, as was Anne
Braden?
(6) King also assisted in the
initiation of appeals for executive clemency for Carl
Braden and, in 1962, for Junius Scales, former chairman
of the North Carolina-South Carolina district of the
Communist Party and sentenced to a six-year prison term
for violation of the Smith Act?
(7) Highlander Folk School: One of
the most controversial aspects of King's career concerns
his association with the Highlander Folk School of
Monteagle, Tennessee, and the nature of the school. In
the 1960s groups in opposition to King frequently
publicized a photograph showing King at the school,
which was described as a "Communist training school,"
sitting in the company of persons alleged to be
Communists or pro-Communists.
This photograph is an authentic
one, taken on September 2, 1957, when King addressed the
25th anniversary celebration of the Highlander Folk
School. Shown in the photograph sitting adjacent to King
are Abner Berry, a correspondent for the Communist Party
newspaper, the Daily Worker; Aubrey Williams, identified
as a member of the CPUSA and President of SCEF; and
Myles Horton, a founder and director of the Highlander
Folk School. Although Myles Horton was not identified as
a member of the Communist Party, a witness before SISS
in 1954 and a former member for seventeen years and a
former official and organizer for the Party, Paul
Crouch, testified that he had solicited Horton to join
the Party:
At that
meeting after we discussed the [Highlander Folk] school
I asked Mr. Horton to become a formal member of the
Communist Party and his reply was, as near as I can
recall his words, "I'm doing you just as much good now
as I would if I were a member of the Communist Party. i
am often asked if I am a Communist Party member and I
always say no. I feel much safer in having no fear that
evidence might be uncovered to link me with the
Communist Party, and therefore I prefer not to become a
member of the Communist Party."43
Crouch also testified that Horton
had been affiliated with the Southern Conference
Educational Fund and with its predecessor organization,
the Southern Conference for Human Welfare.44
The Highlander Folk School (HFS)
was founded in 1932 by Myles Horton and became well
known for its involvement in a number of leftist causes.
Both Aubrey Williams and James Dombrowski, each of whom
was identified as a member of the Communist Party, were
affiliated with HFS. Paul Crouch, who had been district
organizer for the state of Tennessee for the Communist
Party, described in his testimony the uses of the HFS
for the Party as they were developed in a conference
that included himself, Horton, and Dombrowski:
The purpose of the conference was
to work out a plan by which the Daily Worker would be
purchased by the school. They would be made accessible
to the students, that everywhere possible the
instructors should refer to the Daily Worker, to news
that had come in it, to encourage the students to read
it, and it was agreed that the Communist, Party should
have a student, a leader, sent there as a student whose
job it would be to look around for prospective recruits
and Mildred White, now in Washington, D.C., was selected
to attend the Highlander Folk School for the purpose of
recruiting for the Communist Party and carrying the
Communist Party line among the student body there.
MR. ARENS [Special Counsel to the
Subcommittee]: You said it was agreed? Who agreed?
MR. CROUCH: Mr. Horton and Mr.
Dombrowski.45
Based on this information and
considerable evidence of a similar nature collected by
the Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American
Activities of the state of Louisiana in 1963 and by
other investigative bodies, it is not inaccurate to
describe the Highlander Folk School as a Communist, or
at least a pro-Communist, training school.
Although Martin Luther King, Jr.
was present only briefly at HFS on September 2, 1957,
when the photograph was taken, his relations with HFS
appear to have been prolonged and positive. On February
23, 1961, the New York Times reported that
The Southern Christian Leadership
Conference ... and the Highlander Folk School have
joined forces to train Negro leaders for the civil
rights struggle.46
In 1962 the Highlander Center
opened in Knoxville, Tennessee, with Myles Horton on the
board of directors. In December, 1962, Martin Luther
king, jr. Was listed as a sponsor of the highlander
center on its letterhead. 47
Martin Luther King and the
Vietnam War
As the Vietnam war escalated in the
mid 1960s, Martin Luther King became one of the most
outspoken critics of U.S. policy and involvement in
Vietnam. It is probable that Stanley Levison in
particular encouraged King's criticism, since Levison
himself was also critical of the war and wrote President
Johnson to urge American withdrawal from Vietnam,
describing American policy in Vietnam as "completely
irrational, illegal and immoral" and as supportive
of "a succession of undemocratic regimes which are
opposed by a majority of the people of South Vietnam."48
FBI surveillance of King showed that Levison "was urging
King to speak out publicly against American military
involvement in Vietnam?9
On December 28-30, 1966, a
conference was held at the University of Chicago to
discuss and make plans for a nationwide student strike
against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. This
conference, which led to a week of demonstrations
against the war known as "Vietnam Week," April
8-15, 1967, was initiated by Bettina Aptheker, daughter
of Communist Party theoretician and member of the
National Committee of the CPUSA Herbert Aptheker, and
herself a member of the CPUSA. The Chicago conference,
as a report of the HCUA found, "was instigated and
dominated by the Communist Party, U.S.A., and the W.E.B.
DuBois Clubs of America," described by Attorney General
Katzenbach in 1966 as "substantially directed, dominated
and controlled by the Communist Party?49
The scheduled after-dinner speaker
at the Chicago conference was Rev. James L. Bevel, of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who had
been released from his duties with SCLC by Martin Luther
King in order to serve as national director of the
Spring Mobilization Committee To End the War in Vietnam,
an organization found by the HCUA to be heavily
influenced, supported, and penetrated by Communists and
in which "Communists are playing a dominant role." Bevel
joined the DuBois Clubs as a co-plaintiff in a suit to
prevent the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB)
from holding hearings on the DuBois Clubs as petitioned
by Attorney General Katzenbach, and Bevel was a sponsor
of Vietnam Week and of the Chicago conference that
initiated it? The report of the HCUA concluded that
the proposal for a nationwide
student strike was completely Communist in origin ....
Communists are playing dominant
roles in both the Student Mobilization Committee and the
Spring Mobilization Committee. Further, these two
organizations have unified their efforts and are
cooperating completely in their purpose of staging on
April 15 [1967] the largest demonstrations against the
war in Vietnam ever to take place in this country....Dr.
Martin Luther King's agreement to play a leading role in
the April 15 demonstrations in New York City, and his
freeing Rev. James Bevel from his key position in the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference to head up the
Spring Mobilization Committee, are evidence that the
Communists have succeeded, at least partially, in
implementing their strategy of fusing the Vietnam and
civil rights issues in order to strengthen their chances
of bringing about a reversal of U.S. policy in Vietnam.52
The major statement of Martin
Luther King on the Vietnam war is contained in a speech
he delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City on
April 4, 1967, a few days prior to the beginning of
"Vietnam Week." Analysis of this speech shows that
King's criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam was not based
on a consideration of American national interests and
security nor on a belief in pacifism and non-violence
but on an ideological view of the Vietnam conflict that
is indistinguishable from the Marxist and New Left
perspective?
King portrayed U.S. troops in
Vietnam as foreign conquerors and oppressors, and he
specifically compared the United States to Nazi Germany:
They
[the South Vietnamese people] move sadly and
apathetically as we herd them off the land of their
fathers into concentration camps where minimal social
needs are rarely met .... They watch as we poison their
water, as we kill a million acres of their crops ....So
far we may have killed a million of them-mostly
children. What do they think as we test out our latest
weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new
medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of
Europe?
King described the U.S. government
as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world
today" and President Ngo Dinh Diem as "one of the most
vicious modern dictators," but he spoke of Ho Chi Minh,
the Communist dictator of North Vietnam, as a national
leader and the innocent victim of American aggression:
Perhaps
only his [Ho Chi Minh's] sense of humor and of irony can
save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the
world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of
bombs on a poor weak nation more than 8,000 miles away
from its shores.
The Communists, in King's view,
were the true victims in Vietnam:
in
Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence
against the Japanese and the French .... After 1954 they
watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which
would surely have brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a
united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed
again.
In King's view, the National
Liberation Front (NLF), the political arm of the Viet
Cong terrorists controlled by North Vietnam, was
"that strangely anonymous group we call VC or
Communists," which consisted of a membership that
"is less than 25 per cent communist."
King might have been interested to
learn of the television interview given in France on
February 16, 1983 by North Vietnamese generals Vo Nguyen
Giap and Vo Bam. As reported by The Economist
(London) in its issue of 26 February, 1983:
General
Bam admitted the decision to unleash an armed revolt
against the Saigon government was taken by a North
Vietnamese communist party plenum in 1959. This was a
year before the National Liberation Front was set up in
South Vietnam. The aim, General Bam added, was 'to
reunite the country.' So much for that myth that the
Vietcong was an autonomous southern force which
spontaneously decided to rise against the oppression of
the Diem regime. And General Bam should know. As a
result of the decision, he was given the job of opening
an infiltration trail in the south. The year was still
1959. That was two years before President Kennedy
stepped up American support for Diem by sending 685
advisers to South Vietnam. So much for the story that
the Ho Chi Minh trail was established only to counteract
the American military build-up ....General Barn got his
orders on May 19, 1959. 'Absolute secrecy, absolute
security were our watchwords,' he recalled?
King included himself as one of
those who
deem
ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are
broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond
our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are
called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for
victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for
no document from human hands can make these humans any
less our brothers.
Apart from the arrogance and
ingratitude displayed by these remarks, it is a logical
implication of this self-proclaimed universal humanism
that King should have denounced Communist atrocities and
tyranny at least as strongly as those he attributed to
his own country. Yet throughout King's speech there is
not a single word of criticism, let alone of
condemnation, for North Vietnam or for Ho Chi Minh, for
Ho's internal and external policies by which a
totalitarian state was created and its institutions were
imposed on adjacent states, for the use of terrorism by
the Viet Cong or for the terrorism and systematic
repression perpetrated by the Communists in North
Vietnam.
King portrayed American policy in
Vietnam and U.S. foreign policy in general as motivated
by a "need to maintain social stability for our
investments" and formulated by men who refuse "to
give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from
the immense profits of overseas investment." He saw
"individual capitalists of the West investing huge
sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to
take the profits out with no concern for the social
betterment of the countries."
King, in other words, did not
dissent from U.S. policy in Vietnam because he was
concerned for the best interests of the United States or
because of moral and humanitarian beliefs. His
opposition to the war was drawn from an ideological (and
false) view of American foreign policy as motivated by
capitalist and imperialist forces that sought only their
own material satisfaction and which were responsible for
"the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and
militarism."
This view of American foreign
policy is fundamentally Marxist, and it parallels the
theory of Lenin in his
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. It
was a doctrine that became increasingly fashionable in
New Left circles of the late 1960s and 1970s, although
it has been subjected to devastating scholarly
criticism.
Public reaction to King's speech on
Vietnam was largely negative. The Washington Post,
in an editorial of April 6, 1967, said that the speech
"was filled with bitter and damaging allegations and
inferences that he did not and could not document."
He has no doubts that we have no
honorable intentions in Vietnam and thinks it will
become clear that our "minimal expectation is to occupy
it as an American colony."... It is one thing to
reproach a government for what it has done and said; it
is quite another to attribute to it policies it has
never avowed and purposes it has never entertained and
then to rebuke it for these sheer inventions of
unsupported fantasy.
Life magazine, in its issue
of April 21, 1967, described King's speech as "a
demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio
Hanoi." Carl Rowan wrote that King "has alienated
many of the Negro's friends and armed the Negro's foes
... by creating the impression that the Negro is
disloyal."55 John P. Roche, a former
director of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), in a
memorandum to President Johnson, wrote that King's
speech "indicates that King-in desperate search of a
constituency-has thrown in with the commies."56
Conclusion: Was Martin Luther
King a Communist?
As stated earlier in this report,
there is no evidence that Martin Luther King was a
member of the Communist Party, but the pattern of his
activities and associations in the 1950s and 1960s show
clearly that he had no strong objection to working with
and even relying on Communists or persons and groups
whose relationships with the Communist Party were, at
the least, ambiguous. It should be recalled that in this
period of time (far more than today) many liberal and
even radical groups on the left shared a strong
awareness of and antipathy for the anti-democratic and
brutal nature of Communism and its characteristically
deceptive and subversive tactics. It is doubtful that
many American liberals would have associated or worked
with many of the persons and groups with whom King not
only was close but on whom he was in several respects
dependent. These associations and, even more, King's
refusal to break with them, even at the expense of
public criticism and the alienation of the Kennedy
Administration, strongly suggest that King harbored a
strong sympathy for the Communist Party and its goals.
This conclusion is reinforced by
King's own political comments and views-not only by the
speech on Vietnam discussed above but also by a series
of other remarks made toward the end of his life. King
apparently harbored sympathy for Marxism, at least in
its economic doctrines, from the time of his education
in divinity school. The Rev. J. Plus Barbour, described
by Garrow as "perhaps King's closest friend"
while at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1951,
believed that King "was economically a Marxist ....
He thought the capitalistic system was predicated on
exploitation and prejudice, poverty, and that we
wouldn't solve these problems until we got a new social
order."57 King was critical of capitalism
in sermons of 1956 and 1957, and in 1967 he told the
staff of the SCLC, "We must recognize that we can't
solve our problems now until there is a radical
redistribution of economic and political power."58
In 1968 he told an interviewer that
America
is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both
economically and socially .... the black revolution is
much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It
is forcing America to face all its interrelated
flaws-racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It
is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole
structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather
than superficial flaws and suggests that radical
reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be
faced.59
In 1967, in his remarks to the SCLC
staff, he argued that
For the
last twelve years we have been in a reform movement ....
But after Selma and the voting rights bill we moved into
a new era, which must be an era of revolution. ! think
we must see the great distinction here between a reform
movement and a revolutionary movement [which would]
raise certain basic questions about the whole society
....this means a revolution of values and of other
things?
In 1968 he publicly stated, "We
are engaged in the class struggle."61
King's view of American society was
thus not fundamentally different from that of the CPUSA
or of other Marxists. While he is generally remembered
today as the pioneer for civil rights for blacks and as
the architect of non-violent techniques of dissent and
political agitation, his hostility to and hatred for
America should be made clear. While there is no evidence
that King was a member of the Communist Party, his
associations with persons close to the Party, his
cooperation with and assistance for groups controlled or
influenced by the Party, his efforts to disguise these
relationships from public view and from his political
allies in the Kennedy Administration, and his views of
American society and foreign policy all suggest that
King may have had an explicit but clandestine
relationship with the Communist Party or its agents to
promote through his own stature, not the civil rights of
blacks or social justice and progress, but the
totalitarian goals and ideology of Communism. While
there is no evidence to demonstrate this speculation, it
is not improbable that such a relationship existed. in
any case, given the activities and associations of
Martin Luther King described in this report, there is no
reason to disagree with the characterization of King
made by Congressman John M. Ashbrook on the floor of the
House of Representatives on October 4, 1967: "King
has consistently worked with Communists and has helped
give them a respectability they do not deserve" and "I
believe he has done more for the Communist Party than
any other person of this decade."62
Addendum
On January 31, 1977, in the cases
of Bernard S. Lee v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al. (U.S.D.C.,
D.C.) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference v.
Clarence M. Kelley, et al. (U.S.D.C., D.C.), United
States District Judge John Lewis Smith, Jr., ordered
that the Federal Bureau of Investigation purge its files
of: all known copies of the recorded tapes, and
transcripts thereof, resulting from the FBI's
microphonic surveillance, between 1963 and 1968, of the
plaintiffs' former president, Martin Luther King, Jr.;
and
all known copies of the tapes,
transcripts and logs resulting from the FBI's telephone
wiretapping, between 1963 and 1968, of the plaintiffs'
offices in Atlanta, Georgia and New York, New York, the
home of Martin Luther King, Jr., and places of
accommodation occupied by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Judge Smith also ordered that
at the
expiration of the said ninety (90) day period, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation shall deliver to this
Court under seal an inventory of said tapes and
documents and shall deliver said tapes and documents to
the custody of the National Archives and Records
Service, to be maintained by the Archivist of the United
States under seal for a period of fifty (50) years; and
it is further ORDERED that the Archivist of the United
States shall take such actions as are necessary to the
preservation of said tapes and documents but shall not
disclose the tapes or documents, or their contents,
except pursuant to a specific Order from a court of
competent jurisdiction requiring disclosure.
This material was delivered to the
custody of the National Archives and Record Service to
be maintained by the Archivist of the United States
under a seal for a period of fifty years.
Footnotes
1
Most of this section is drawn from David J. Garrow, The
FBl and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From "Solo" to Memphis
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981), esp. pp. 21-78.
2
Ibid., p.41.
3
United States, Department of Justice, Report of the Task
Force to Review the FBI Martin Luther King. Jr.,
Security and Assassination Investigations, January 11,
1977, pp. 121-22.
4
Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (New York: Atheneum,
1971), pp. 162-63.
5
Quoted in Garrow, FBI, p. 28.
6
Quoted in Garrow, FBI, p. 61.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., p. 62
9
Ibid., p. 63.
10
Ibid., quoted, p. 95.
11
Ibid., p. 151.
12
United States, Congress, Senate, Report of the
Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the
Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws,
Committee on the Judiciary, 84th Congress, 2nd Session,
for the Year 1956, Section III, December 31, 1956, p.
46. (Publications of this Subcommittee hereinafter cited
as SISS).
13
United States, Congress, House of Representatives,
Structure and Organization of the Communist Party of the
United States, Part 1, Hearings before the Committee on
Un-American Activities, 87th Congress, 1st Session,
November 20, 21, and 22, 1961, Testimony of Francis J.
McNamara, p. 576. (Publications of this Committee
hereinafter cited as HCUA).
14
Garrow, FBI, p. 50.
15
World Peace Council, List of Members, 1980-1983
(Helsinki, Finland: Information Centre of the World
Peace Council), pp. 141-42; for O'Dell's background, see
Review of the News, July 13,
1983, pp. 49-50; Soviet Active Measures, Hearings before
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of
Representatives, 97th Congress, 2nd Session, July 13,
14, 1982, p. 57.
16 Garrow, FBI,
p. 50.
l7 HCUA, Report
on Southern Conference on Human Welfare, 80th Congress,
1st Session, June 16, 1947, pp. 2 and 17.
18 HCUA, Guide
to Subversive Organizations and Publications (and
Appendixes,) Revised and published December 1, 1961 to
supersede Guide published on January 2, 1957, p. 154
(hereinafter cited as Guide).
19 SISS.
Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc.. Hearings,
March 18, 19, and 20, 1954, p. VIII.
20 Trezz
Anderson, "New Rights Group Launched in Dixie,"
Pittsburgh Courier, August 17, 1957, p. 2; this article
misprints "In Friendship" as "in Fellowship."
21 Robert H.
Brisbane, Black Activism: Racial Revolution in the
United States, 1954-1970 (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson
Press, 1974), p. 49; see also the masthead of The
Southern Patriot of October, 1963, reproduced in State
of Louisiana, The Joint Legislative Committee on
Un-American Activities, Report No. 4. November 19, 1963,
"Activities of the Southern Conference Educational Fund,
Inc. in Louisiana" Part 1, p. 74, Exhibit 29
(hereinafter cited as JLCUA).
22 Garrow, FBI,
p. 26.
23 SISS,
Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc. Hearings, pp,
Vi and VII.
24 SISS,
Communism in the Mid-South, Hearinqs, October 218 and
29, 1957, Testimony of Alberta Ahearn, p. 37; John M.
Ashbrook, "Rev. Martin Luther King: Man of Peace or
Apostle of Violence," Congressional Record, October 4,
1967, p. H13013.
25 JLCUA, p.
14; Guide, pp, 117-18; United States, Congress, House of
Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American
Activities, Report on the C.I.O. Political Action
Committee, 78th Congress, 2nd Session, March 29, 1944,
p. 156; United States, Department of Justice, Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Foreign Influence - Weather
Underground Organization (WUO), August 20, 1976, p. 332.
26 See Guide,
p. 1212, for citations of the National Lawyers Guild as
a Communist front; JLCUA, pp. 14-16.
27 JLCUA, p.
86, Exhibit 37.
28 Ibid., p.
97, Exhibit 41.
29 Ibid., p.
100, Exhibit 43a.
30 Ibid., p.
101; Exhibits 44 and 44a; Ashbrook, Congressional
Record, October 4, 1967, p. H13012.
31 JLCUA, p.
102, Exhibit 45; for the identification of Lee Lorch as
a member of the Communist Party, see HCUA, "Hearings
Regarding Communist Activities in the Cincinnati, Ohio,
Area -- Part I," 81st Congress, 2nd Session, July 12,
13, 14, and 15; August 8, 1950, p. 2675.
32 JLCUA, p.
104, Exhibit 46.
33 Ibid., p.
106, Exhibits 47 and 47a.
34 Ashbrook,
Congressional Record, October 4, 1967, pp. H13005-
H13017 passim.
35 Report on
the C.I.O. Political Action Committee, p. 183.
36 For Hayes's
presence at the SCLC meeting in Montgomery, see Trezz
Anderson, Pittsburgh Courier, August 17, 1957, p. 2,
where Hayes's name is given as "Chris Hayes, United
Packing-house Workers ... of Chicago." And see HCUA,
Annual Report, 1959, p. 40.
37 HCUA,
"Communist Activities in the Chicago Area-Part 2 (Local
347, United Packinghouse Workers of America, CIO),"
Hearings, 82nd Congress, 2rid Session, September 4 and
5, 1952, Testimony of Roy Thompson, p. 3767.
38 HCUA, Annual
Report, 1959, pp. 37-38.
39 Ibid., pp.
38-39.
40 Ashbrook,
Congressional Record, October 4, 1967, p. H13010; JLCUA,
p. 75, Exhibit 30.
41 Ashbrook,
Congressional Record, October 4, 1967, pp. H13011 -
H13013.
42 Ibid., pp.
H13010-13011.
43 SISS,
Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc.,Hearings,
Testimony of Paul Crouch, p. 136.; see also Ashbrook,
Congressional Record, pp. H13000-H13012; and JLCUA, pp.
23-37.
44 SISS,
Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc., Hearings,
Testimony of Paul Crouch, p. 137.
45 Ibid., pp.
135-36.
46 Quoted,
Ashbrook, Congressional Record, October 4, 1967, p.
HI3011.
47 Ibid., p.
H13012.
48 Garrow, FBI,
pp. 137-38.
49 Ibid., p.
139.
5o HCUA,
Communist Origins and Manipulation of Vietnam Week
(April 8-15, 1967), Report, March 31, 1967, pp. 53 and
5.
51 Ibid., pp.
25-26, 53, 33-37.
52 Ibid., p.
53.
53 The text of
King's speech, "Beyond Vietnam," was inserted by
Congressman Don Edwards, "Dr. Martin Luther King on
Vietnam," Congressional Record, May 2, 1967, pp.
11402-11406; all quotations given below are from this
text.
54 "Vietnam: We
Lied to You," The Economist (London), 26 February 1983,
pp. 56-57.
55 Carl T.
Rowan, "Martin Luther King's Tragic Decision," Reader's
Digest (September, 1967), p. 42; for further negative
reactions, see Garrow, FBI, pp. 180-81.
56 Quoted in
Garrow, FBI, p. 180.
57 Garrow, FBI,
p. 304, p. 25.
58 Ibid., pp.
213-14. 59 Ibid.,
p. 214.
6o Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ashbrook,
Congressional Record, October 4, 1967, p. H13005.
