"MLK/FBI" -- Movie Review

 

During the first full week of The 58th New York FilmFestival, I streamed the documentary MLK/FBI.

Synopsis

How did the FBI – and in particular, J. Edgar Hoover -- try to destroy the pacifist work of social activist Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Story

Exactly who was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Was he a threat to the security of The United States of America?  Or was he simply a civil rights leader and pacifist who merely advocated for the freedom and equality of his fellow African-Americans in the United States?  Perhaps the answer to that question may lie in where your political preferences reside.  In the 1950’s and 1960’s, many white Americans saw him as a threat who showed little (if any) respect to America for what it had given his people up until that point. 

Rev. King began as a civil rights leader in 1955, as a 27 year old man.  By 1964, he had won The Nobel Peace Prize  In between, the FBI saw him as a threat to American security because they believed him to be a communist.  Why was Rev. King a communist?  Apparently, it was because he believed that he and his fellow African-Americans deserving of equality in this country.  During the 1950’s, The Communist Party was also advocating for racial equality; as a result, many Americans saw that as a threat. 

Hoover, despite his own personal indiscretions, was far from done with King.  He had the FBI wiretap Rev. King and many of his associates.  By doing so, he managed to discover that King had been disloyal to his wife; Hoover’s goal was then to prove that through these recordings, Dr. King had no business being the moral leader of the Black people of this country.  King proved to be an even greater threat to this country in 1967 when he finally started to speak out against the war in Vietnam.  By 1968, he had been assassinated.  Did the FBI have a role in this?     

Review

If you are able to watch MLK/FBI and not feel a distinct sense of outrage, then you are without a doubt a better person than most of us.  Dr. Martin Luther King was a human being.  He was not a saint.  He was not a god.  He was a human being like the rest of us – and like the rest of us human beings, he was flawed.  Despite that, however, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI and (like the rest of us, a flawed human being) targeted him in the 1960’s as a danger to the rest of the United States of America simply because he was a human being who happened to make the egregious mistake of having been born with a black skin. 

MLK/FBI is a documentary that gives no quarter to either side – although it does concede to the fact that some of the FBI files are not yet available to the general public (nor will they be until the year 2027).  Whether these files will reveal anything new or not can only be a matter of mere speculation at this point.  However, what is clear is that the FBI sought to criminalize MLK as soon as possible; starting in 1955, Hoover experienced him as a threat to American security simply because King advocated equality for the African American community.

What makes MLK/FBI an important and necessary documentary is the fact that it is a historical document of how villainized an American hero was simply because he advocated for equality.  That’s it.  That’s the reason why it deserves to be watched.  Is it really all that remarkable that Dr. King was made out to be a villain because he was a pacifist?  Consider the execution of George Floyd.  Was his murder much different from the assassination of Dr. King?  The filmmakers make it crystal clear:  in a certain segment of America, African-Americans are undeserving of fairness.  And that is why you need to watch this film.