why did attorney geneeral robert kennedy spy on martin luther king jr

Did the FBI wiretap Martin Luther King Jr?

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy approved FBI wiretaps on Rev. Martin Luther King on this day because of allegations that two of his aides had Communist associations. (See the confrontation between King and President John Kennedy regarding these allegations on June 22, 1963 .) Robert Kennedy authorized the wiretaps in response to continued pressure from FBI Director J. Edgar …

What did Robert F Kennedy do to Martin Luther King Jr?

The relationship between the Attorney General Kennedy and the civil rights movement was tested when King and several hundred protesters were threatened by an angry mob outside of a Montgomery church, where King was holding a mass meeting in support of the Freedom Rides. As the mob grew more hostile, King feared for the people inside and phoned Kennedy, asking …

Who was Martin Luther King's Attorney General?

Jun 19, 2019 · The FBI began wiretapping King’s home and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference office in Atlanta on Nov. 8, 1963, with Robert Kennedy’s written approval. A major reason, as Mr. Garrow ...

Was Kennedy’s wiretapping of Martin Luther King ‘one of the most ignominious acts’?

on october 10, 1963, u.s. attorney general robert f. kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern american history: he …

What did Attorney General Robert Kennedy do?

As attorney general, Kennedy pursued a relentless crusade against organized crime and the Mafia, sometimes disagreeing on strategy with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800 percent during his term.

What is Robert F Kennedy's main purpose in his speech about Martin Luther King's assassination?

Once the audience quieted down, Kennedy spoke of the threat of disillusion and divisiveness at King's death and reminded the audience of King's efforts to "replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love." Kennedy acknowledged that ...

Where did Robert F Kennedy give his speech about Martin Luther King?

On April 5, 1968, one day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy delivered a speech entitled "On the Mindless Menace of Violence" at the CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND. In the 10-minute speech Kennedy deplored violence in American society.

What is the central idea of Robert F Kennedy's speech?

Central Idea In “On the Death of Martin Luther King Jr.”, Robert F Kennedy persuades America to come together as one following Martin Luther King's assassination instead of giving in to the anger and responding with violence.

What is the central idea of Kennedy's speech?

The main focus of the speech can crudely be boiled down to one theme—the relationship between duty and power. This is emphasized by Kennedy's strong use of juxtaposition in the first part of the speech.

When did Robert F Kennedy give his speech about Martin Luther King?

April 4, 1968Statement on Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Indianapolis, Indiana, April 4, 1968. (The following text is taken from a news release version of Robert F. Kennedy's statement.) Listen to this speech.

How did Robert Kennedy impact the civil rights movement?

Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent 400 federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and urged the Interstate Commerce Commission to order the desegregation of interstate travel.

What is the name of the poet Kennedy quotes at the end?

Kennedy said: My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote, “And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”Jan 11, 2011

How did the Attorney General Kennedy and the Civil Rights Movement relate?

The relationship between the Attorney General Kennedy and the civil rights movement was tested when King and several hundred protesters were threatened by an angry mob outside of a Montgomery church, where King was holding a mass meeting in support of the Freedom Rides.

Who challenged Robert Kennedy?

Although the Kennedy administration was the first to give substantial attention to the southern freedom struggle, King continuously challenged Robert Kennedy and the Department of Justice to make a greater commitment to civil rights.

When was Robert Kennedy born?

Born on 20 November 1925 , Robert Kennedy was the seventh of nine children of Joseph Patrick and Rose Kennedy. Despite a mediocre academic performance in high school, Kennedy was admitted to Harvard University in 1944. He joined the Navy during World War II, but was discharged following an injury.

Who was the person who feared for the people inside the Montgomery protests?

As the mob grew more hostile, King feared for the people inside and phoned Kennedy, asking him to intervene. Kennedy assured King that federal marshals were on the way to Montgomery and proposed a cooling-off period for the Freedom Rides. James Farmer and Diane Nash rejected the idea of a halt to the demonstrations.

Who was the KGB officer who was at the United Nations?

KGB officer Victor Lessiovsky” when Lessiovsky was at the United Nations. Despite urgent requests from the president and his brother to ditch Levison and O’Dell, King kept them on as close advisers, even while preparing his historic March on Washington.

Was Martin Luther King a communist?

King was not a Communist himself, but his ...

What was the FBI's role in the Montgomery bus boycott?

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, and engaged in covert operation s against him throughout the 1960s. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was personally hostile toward King, ...

What was the FBI's counterintelligence program?

Under the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) King was subjected to various kinds of FBI surveillance that produced alleged evidence of extramarital affairs, though no evidence of Communist influence. The FBI was created in 1909 as the Justice Department’s unit to investigate federal crimes.

Why was Hoover hostile to King?

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was personally hostile toward King, believing that the civil rights leader was influenced by Communists. This animosity increased after April 1964, when King called the FBI “completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South” (King, 23 April 1964). ...

Who wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr.'s phone?

July/August 2002 Issue. On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

When did the FBI learn about Martin Luther King's elbow?

But when the FBI tardily learned of Levison's closeness to King in early 1962, the Bureau understandably hypothesized that someone with Levison's secret (though thoroughly documented) record of invaluable service to the CPUSA might very well not have turned up at Martin Luther King's elbow by happenstance.

What did Jack and Morris do?

Jack and Morris represented a huge intelligence coup. The firsthand information they provided to the FBI about Stanley Levison's secret financial work for the CPUSA in the years before Levison became Martin Luther King's most important political counselor changed American history in a profound way.

How old was Stanley Levison when he met Martin Luther King Jr.?

Stanley Levison was forty-four years old when he first met the twenty-seven-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., in 1956. Stanley and Roy had grown up in Far Rockaway; Stanley attended the University of Michigan before obtaining two law degrees from St. John's University, in Queens, in 1938 and 1939.

How much did Levison get out of the CP?

As Jack later related, Miller told him that "Levison gets about $200 per week out of the business for the CP," somewhat less than LaSalle's contribution back in 1948, and that he and Levison had also acquired a 50 percent interest in another firm, Liberty Luggage, on behalf of the Party.

What would happen if the Childs brothers had never signed on with the FBI?

If the Childs brothers had never signed on with the FBI, or if Jack had not heard about his old comrade Levison's newfound friendship with Martin Luther King, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations would most likely have embraced both King and the entire southern black freedom struggle far more warmly than they did.

When did Jack Levison stop working for Weiner?

What's more, when Jack stopped working for Weiner, in 1948, "he transferred to Stanley Levison all cash, bonds, and lists of depositories and records there [to]fore under the informant's control.". Stanley Levison was a new name to the FBI.

What did RFK say about his brother's death?

Two month before his own assassination, RFK spoke about his brother's death when comforting African-American's in Indianapolis about the assassination of Dr. King. A hand-held fan memorializes the three.

Where was Robert Kennedy's funeral?

His face wore an expression of resignation. Robert Kennedy died a day later. His funeral ceremonies began with a Mass in New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and his coffin was carried from New York to Washington on a slow-moving train.

Who did RFK lose to?

Three weeks later, he lost Oregon to U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and on June 4, he triumphed again in California and South Dakota. After RFK’s early-morning victory speech in Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Jordanian who opposed Kennedy’s support for Israel, shot the senator in the head.

Who was the senator who died on April 4, 1968?

On April 4, 1968, when his campaign plane reached Indianapolis on that night, Robert F. Kennedy (above: in a 1968 portrait by Louis S. Glanzman) learned of Dr. King’s death. (NPG, gift of Time Magazine © Louis Glanzman) Martin Luther King Jr.—murdered. The news of April 4, 1968, was like a body blow to Senator Robert Kennedy.

Who is the curator of the Smithsonian?

Smithsonian curator Aaron Bryant says King was making a transition from civil rights to human rights. (NMAAHC, gift of Linda and Artis Cason) As Kennedy’s funeral procession passed, “people were really moved, of course, because he was a very important part of how the campaign happened,” explains Bryant.

Who was the wife of the slain leader at the Atlanta funeral?

Both Kennedy and his pregnant wife Ethel attended King’s Atlanta funeral, where they saw the slain leader lay in an open casket. They met privately with his widow. Mrs. King and Ethel Kennedy hugged upon meeting—by the end of the year both would be widows.

Was RFK's speech un-speech?

After the initial shock, the audience listened silently except for two moments when they cheered RFK’s peace-loving message. “It’s a very un-speech speech, ” says Harry Rubenstein, a curator in the division of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Why is the story of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy so hard to tell?

The story of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy is hard to tell because they left so few fragments of it behind. For two such famous men whose lives and fates were so closely intertwined, there was only a scant paper trail.

What did the spiritual King approach Bobby Kennedy with?

The ostensibly spiritual King approached Bobby Kennedy with a hardheadedness that the pragmatic Kennedy would have admired. He had no illusion about Kennedy’s instincts, which were viewed initially by the skeptical civil rights community as authoritarian, pragmatic, and not especially sympathetic.

What did King do to help Bobby Kennedy?

When they’d met, Kennedy had little experience with, or interest in, or understanding of, or empathy for blacks. King helped coax out Bobby Kennedy’s better angels, especially with the 1963 protests in Birmingham that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Who invited more blacks to his home?

Inveterately social and intellectually adventurous, Kennedy probably invited more blacks to his home — the black essayist and novelist James Baldwin among them — than any white politician of his era, but Martin Luther King was never among them….

Who was the brother of the President who was shot?

On June 5 of that same year, Senator Robert F. Kennedy — brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, the former U.S. Attorney General and a presidential candidate — was fatally shot at a Los Angeles hotel after winning California’s Democratic primary. In this excerpt from “The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King, ...

Was King's relationship with Bobby Kennedy more personal?

He just grew more famous, ambitious, revered and inspiring, loathed and threatening, angry, bitter, radical, desperate. As elusive as it was, King’s relationship with Bobby Kennedy was much deeper, more personal, and more intricate than his relationship with Jack, and not just because it lasted twice as long.