https://www.npr.org/2021/01/18/956741992/documentary-exposes-how-the-fbi-tried-to-destroy-mlk-with-wiretaps-blackmail

January 18, 20219:00 AM ET

Heard onFresh Air

SAM BRIGER

Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the Web.

Reposted under the Fair Use Doctrine

LISTEN·36:49

36-Minute ListenAdd toPLAYLIST

• Download
• Embed
• Transcript

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who had a “tremendous amount of burdens he had to deal with, both politically, socially and personally,” saysMLK/FBIdirector Sam Pollard.

Courtesy of IFC Films

From theMarch on Washingtonin 1963 up until hisassassinationin 1968, the FBI engaged in an intense campaign to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and his work. Film director Sam Pollard chronicles those efforts in the new documentary,MLK/FBI.

“The first fear that [FBI director J. Edgar Hoover] had was that King was going to align himself with the Communist Party, which … J. Edgar Hoover was…