Martin Luther King Jr. allegedly had sexual relations with at least 40 women, from prostitutes to people within his inner circle, new research by one of the civil rights leader's biographers maintains, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday.
The most shocking allegation David Garrow unearthed from old FBI files details a 1964 incident in which King reportedly “looked on, laughed and offered advice” to a fellow preacher who was raping a woman in a hotel room, the news outlet reported.
Garrow recounts other allegations from formerly sealed FBI documents – including that King fathered a love child and participated in an orgy with a female gospel legend — in an eight-page essay in Standpoint, a conservative British cultural and political magazine.
The incidents emerged as part of a National Archives data dump related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 2018, President Donald Trump ordered the release of more than 19,000 Kennedy-related documents, the Journal-Constitution reported.
Garrow won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his King biography, “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.”
“I have been the King guy for 40 years and I wrote a book on exactly this 38 years ago,” Garrow said, referring to his 1981 book, “The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.,” the Journal-Constitution reported.
“I felt a complete obligation to confront this stuff. I did not feel I had a choice. I have always felt spiritually informed by King and yes, this changed it. I have not heard his voice much the past year.”
Bernice King, the youngest daughter of King and the chief executive of the Atlanta-based King Center, declined to comment.
The Sunday Times in London published an article about Garrow’s research on Sunday; Garrow shared links to some of the FBI summaries on the government website with the Journal-Constitution, the news outlet reported.
But some are questioning Garrow’s source material, the Washington Post reported.
“J. Edgar Hoover is laughing in his grave today,” King’s personal lawyer Clarence Jones told the Post, vehemently denying the claims.
Donna Murch, a Rutgers University historian who specializes in the civil rights movement, told the Post the story had a “strange trail of evidence … that seems just very, very flimsy to me.”
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