US President Donald Trump’s administration has released a trove of records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, including FBI surveillance files on the civil rights leader, the BBC reports.
A court-imposed order had kept the documents, totalling 230,000 pages, blocked from public view since 1977.
Prominent members of King’s family had opposed the release. A statement from his two living children condemned “any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father’s legacy”.
King, a Baptist minister, was shot in Memphis on 4 April 1968, at age 39. James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to the killing, but later renounced his plea.
