Martin Luther King

• Interview onthe Garrow book:

"The most damaging memos describe King witnessing a rape in a hotel room. Instead of stopping it, handwritten notes in the file say he encouraged the attacker to continue. . . . The microphones also picked up activities from the night before, when Kearse, who died in 1991, allegedly sexually assaulted one of his parishioners. According to the memos, King was in the room. The handwritten note indicates that King didn’t just observe the assault – he laughed.

Worse, instead of trying to stop the incident, the memos say King apparently offered advice to the perpetrator, encouraging the abuse."

"Garrow had taken his findings to other outlets, but each decided against publishing them. The Guardian initially agreed to take the story, edited the piece, paid Garrow for his work and then decided the story was too risky to run. Editors at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said they didn’t want to run the piece because they couldn’t listen to the actual recordings the documents were based on."

• [https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama Interview of Garrow on Obama}, The Tablet (2023).

I’m entirely certain that I understand Doc. I understand Doc far better than I understand Barack because Doc, even though he was so consistently disciplined in public, was otherwise, to people who knew him well, a completely transparent person—in his strengths, his weaknesses, and his failures.

This looms so huge to me, and I work at how to best articulate it: When I first started meeting the King people in September ‘79, I was 26 years old, and I had no ability to appreciate how close in time I was to 1968. It didn’t seem close to me. I can picture the first time I met Dorothy Cotton. I can picture Dorothy’s house, and I don’t want to get off on this, but I should say it: The most profound decision I’ve ever made was to protect Dorothy both in the FBI book and in BTC. Because it was her very clear wish that she didn’t want to be painted or pigeonholed as just Dr. King’s, you know—it’s a word that begins with M.

And I won’t even use that word because a lot of us, not in public, have called Dorothy the real wife. And having known Dorothy and having known Coretta, it was eminently obvious to me why someone as needy of solace as Doc would spend more time with Dorothy.

Thanks to that NARA document dump from the JFK Records Act four years ago now, I know a whole lot more of the details in the understory now than I did in 1986. I’ve always expected someone to challenge me on why I protected Dorothy. But to me, it came very easily. I’ve never doubted myself about it. But back when I first heard about Dolores Evans and Chrystal, way back in ‘85 or so, I didn’t believe it was true. I thought it was very unlikely to be true because I understood that it was mainly coming from Don Newcomb and that Newcomb was an alcoholic. So I wrongly thought it was some guy talking in his liquor."

• "You may have seen me say in print somewhere that there’s a very clear distinction in FBI documents. Something that comes from an electronic intercept is 99.9 percent reliable because they were very good transcriptionists. Where FBI records are --- is when it’s coming from human informants. Which is the whole elongated story of Dr. King being quoted as saying, “I am a Marxist.” Well, Morris Childs is telling the FBI what Gus Hall said Lem Harris told him that Stanley Levison told Lem. It’s like fifth-hand.

And the whole relationship between the bureau and the CPUSA was so totally --- because Hall and the other CPUSA hierarchy are embezzling significant amounts of money. The Childs were certainly embezzling some themselves. But the bureau is running the CPUSA. The bureau could have shut down CPUSA in about 1958."

• "The real crux of the problem with Doc was the binge drinking. But I’m very uncomfortable about emphasizing the drinking problem, because I fear that it sounds like you’re making some sort of fraternity-house excuse."