The National Archives recently released records on the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., detailing years of intense government surveillance of the civil rights leader as well as leads from the investigation into his death. Northeastern University historian Edward Miller says the more than 240,000 records will take a long time for historians to delve through; however, he sees the records as burnishing the image of King as a “titan” and moral leader, even among extreme pressure and surveillance from the FBI.
“This man was a courageous fighter for justice, an extraordinary human being and just a giant in terms of what he had to deal with and what he was up against,” says Miller, academic director of the social science division at the university’s College of Professional Studies. “Now we’re going to be able to see how intense that scrutiny was—a tremendous burden for one man to carry and he carried it with grace under extreme pressure.”
