description:
The film explores the investigation and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. by J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, through newly declassified documents.
Much of the documentary utilizes archival footage of MLK between 1955 and 1968, the years of his work as a civil rights activist. It is largely chronological, showing a young MLK from the early sixties until 1968 when he was assassinated. No new information is revealed about his assassination. The last sequence makes the statement that not all FBI documents have been declassified, and that the whole record will be declassified and made available to the public in 2027.
The documentary covers the attempts by Hoover and the FBI to discredit King by collecting recordings and images of his private sexual life with women other than his wife. This is to denigrate his status within the civil rights movement for black people in the United States, which was gaining momentum. There is a stark contrast between the thoroughly white complexion of the FBI and the many crowds of black people assembled around MLK.
