Sheriff Joe
DA
JUNE 2, 2019
Sexual Abuse and a Re-Examination of Martin Luther King
By Michael Curtis
Just friends, but not like before. To think of what the Rev, Martin Luther King, Jr. has seemed to be seems like pretending.
It is commonplace that prominent figures, like the U.S. Founding Fathers, are not devoid of faults, though they can be generally admired. Yet the allegations of sexual misconduct against King are surprising. He has been universally admired and is celebrated and memorialized all over the world in statues, names of streets and schools, a U.S. national holiday, a monument on the National Mall in D.C., and a bust in Westminster Abbey in London.
The exercise of power has always been fraught with anxiety and concern, as well as the source of privileges and admiration. The experiments conducted in the 1960s by Yale Professor Stanley Milgram revealing that people obey an authority who instructs them to conduct an act that can conflict with personal conscience or beliefs were disquieting. A large proportion obeyed instructions to inflict great personal pain. Though the experiments can be criticized, they made clear that obedience to the command of an authority is more common than not and that people abide by and are vulnerable to abuse of power. Recent studies in the U.S. have indicated that prominent men strive for and use their positions of personal authority not simply to gain privileges, but to illustrate their power. More specifically, sexual abuse by prominent men against women in less prominent positions may be more the result of desire more for exercise of power than for sex. The question has now been opened for discussion regarding Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a result of a recent publication, the question arises whether King abused the power and popularity he had to take advantage of women, and to disgrace both his profession and his religious and moral beliefs. The information, or alleged information, about King, appears in an article by David J. Garrow in Standpoint Magazine, May 30, 2019, about the orgies, solicitations, prostitutes, and affairs with 40 women with whom King was involved. Garrow's account depends on recently declassified FBI documents that summarize tape recordings of King in his home, office, and hotel rooms, such as the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. and the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. The documents are under seal in the U.S. National Archives and will remain there until 2027. It is known that it was Robert F. Kennedy, then U.S. attorney general, who on November 8, 1963 allowed the FBI, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, 1924–1972, to bug King's phone calls.
Hoover was preoccupied with real or imaginary threats to American security. He had over 60 folders on public figures, which were destroyed after his death, but his files documenting the private lives of individuals survive. Irrespective of his animosity toward King on a personal level because of King's binge-drinking and compulsive sexuality, Hoover was concerned for two reasons: he suspected that King was associated with communists, and he thought King's adultery made him vulnerable to blackmail. The FBI in the 1960s, relying on domestic intelligence, not electronic surveillance, had a list of 4,453 suspected communists, of whom 336 were FBI informants.
Sexual Abuse and a Re-Examination of Martin Luther King
By Michael Curtis
Just friends, but not like before. To think of what the Rev, Martin Luther King, Jr. has seemed to be seems like pretending.
It is commonplace that prominent figures, like the U.S. Founding Fathers, are not devoid of faults, though they can be generally admired. Yet the allegations of sexual misconduct against King are surprising. He has been universally admired and is celebrated and memorialized all over the world in statues, names of streets and schools, a U.S. national holiday, a monument on the National Mall in D.C., and a bust in Westminster Abbey in London.
The exercise of power has always been fraught with anxiety and concern, as well as the source of privileges and admiration. The experiments conducted in the 1960s by Yale Professor Stanley Milgram revealing that people obey an authority who instructs them to conduct an act that can conflict with personal conscience or beliefs were disquieting. A large proportion obeyed instructions to inflict great personal pain. Though the experiments can be criticized, they made clear that obedience to the command of an authority is more common than not and that people abide by and are vulnerable to abuse of power. Recent studies in the U.S. have indicated that prominent men strive for and use their positions of personal authority not simply to gain privileges, but to illustrate their power. More specifically, sexual abuse by prominent men against women in less prominent positions may be more the result of desire more for exercise of power than for sex. The question has now been opened for discussion regarding Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a result of a recent publication, the question arises whether King abused the power and popularity he had to take advantage of women, and to disgrace both his profession and his religious and moral beliefs. The information, or alleged information, about King, appears in an article by David J. Garrow in Standpoint Magazine, May 30, 2019, about the orgies, solicitations, prostitutes, and affairs with 40 women with whom King was involved. Garrow's account depends on recently declassified FBI documents that summarize tape recordings of King in his home, office, and hotel rooms, such as the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. and the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. The documents are under seal in the U.S. National Archives and will remain there until 2027. It is known that it was Robert F. Kennedy, then U.S. attorney general, who on November 8, 1963 allowed the FBI, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, 1924–1972, to bug King's phone calls.
Hoover was preoccupied with real or imaginary threats to American security. He had over 60 folders on public figures, which were destroyed after his death, but his files documenting the private lives of individuals survive. Irrespective of his animosity toward King on a personal level because of King's binge-drinking and compulsive sexuality, Hoover was concerned for two reasons: he suspected that King was associated with communists, and he thought King's adultery made him vulnerable to blackmail. The FBI in the 1960s, relying on domestic intelligence, not electronic surveillance, had a list of 4,453 suspected communists, of whom 336 were FBI informants.
