Hey, everyone. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Except to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Today, the FBI honors the life and work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A quote from Dr. King is etched in stone at the FBI Academy’s reflection garden in Quantico as a reminder to all students and FBI employees: “The time is always right to do what is right.” #MLKDay pic.twitter.com/UKMLAAZw5w
— FBI (@FBI) January 20, 2020
It’s a whole thing, but people haven’t forgotten the agency’s ugly history with the civil rights icon. They won’t forget anytime soon.
Annual reminder that the FBI wrote to Martin Luther King Jr. and told him he’d be better off dead. #MLKDay https://t.co/SLD4cLs1aZ pic.twitter.com/k5forWJ8Yc
— Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) January 20, 2020
The bureau once sent King an anonymous letter. The letter, meant to appear written by a black person, told King to die by suicide.
“King, there is only one thing left for you to do,” the letter-writer stated. “You know what it is.”
Federal investigators later found that the FBI engaged in a campaign to discredit King even after his death because then-Director J. Edgar Hoover loathed the civil rights figure.
“Evidence obtained by the committee indicated that the allegation that Dr. King posed a threat to national security was merely a convenient rationalization used by the Director to justify his personal vendetta against the civil rights leader,” they wrote.
With all that in mind, the FBI is a popular target for on Twitter. That pattern continued Monday.
They do this every year, as if they’re trolling at this point. https://t.co/fYVbtnt6ex
— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) January 20, 2020
Maybe sit this one out. https://t.co/8gDD8fK3bM
— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) January 20, 2020
You hated him then and you’d hate him today if he were alive. https://t.co/xbltHzMIfD
— Wagatwe Wanjuki 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 (@wagatwe) January 20, 2020
Would it have killed you to add “we have tried to learn from our gross mistreatment of him”?https://t.co/WZoz8KLTRn
— DopesAnd/OrBabiesHat (@Popehat) January 20, 2020
Poet and former BuzzFeed editor Saeed Jones literally had no words.
— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) January 20, 2020
James Comey, one of Hoover’s successors, has called the the agency’s surveillance of King “shameful.”
[Image via MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images]
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