The family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has responded to President Donald Trump’s executive order to declassify records relating to the late civil rights leader’s assassination, requesting that they be granted the “opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
Trump, who also ordered the declassification of records relating to the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy on Thursday, stated that “everything will be revealed.”
“A lot of people are waiting for this — for years, for decades. And everything will be revealed,” the newly sworn in president said as he signed the order:
Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s youngest child, responded to the announcement in a statement on social media on behalf of her family:
“Today, our family has learned that President Trump has ordered the declassification of the remaining records pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and our father, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the statement began.
“For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release,” Bernice, 61, added.
Bernice, who was just five years older when her father was shot at the age of 39 while he was standing on the second-floor balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, has previously stated that she does not believe that the man convicted of pulling off the assassination, James Earl Ray, was guilty.
Ray, a prison escapee who committed a variety of crimes prior to MLK’s murder, pleaded guilty to the assassination in order to avoid the death penalty, according to the Washington Post. He died about 29 years into his 99-year sentence from health complications.
“It pains my heart that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didn’t do,” Bernice told the Post in 2018.
Instead of Ray, the King family has said that a conspiracy possibly involving the FBI was behind the fatal shooting.
MLK Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, said there was “abundant evidence” showing a “major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband,” following the 1999 verdict of the family’s civil suit to force more information about the event into the public eye, according to the Post.
A Memphis jury found that local, state, and federal government officials were liable for MLK’s death.
Multiple government agencies, along with members of the Mafia, “were deeply involved in the assassination … Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame,” Coretta, who died in 2006, said at the time.
The civil case came after Loyd Jowers, the owner of a restaurant near the Lorraine Hotel, confessed to ABC News in 1993 that Frank Liberto, a Memphis produce dealer and alleged mobster, asked him to “hire someone to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King” and paid him $100,000.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has maintained the opinion that Jowers “fabricated his allegations, hoping to promote a sensational account of a conspiracy to murder Dr. King.”
According to Trump’s White House, the recent executive order requires the Director of National Intelligence and “other appropriate officials” to present a plan for the “full and complete release” of all JFK assassination records within 15 days, and allotted 45 days for the records relating to RFK and MLK.
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