History of the MLK Files
History of the MLK Files
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. While the initial investigation quickly pointed to James Earl Ray, an escaped convict, a two month manhunt found him in London After being extradited to the US, Ray confessed but later recanted. Ray served his 99 year prison sentence in Tennessee, where he escaped and was re-captured. He died in 1998, but maintained his innocence. The King family supported his claim.
The records surrounding the case continue to draw attention -- both due to the historic importance of the event but due to conspiracy theories alleging government involvement or cover-ups.
Prior to 2025, limited files were released. The files were originally sealed until 2027, ostensibly to protect people who had personal information illegally gathered about them by the CIA or FBI.
Then on January 23, 2025 Executive Order 14176, Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. mandated the release of the full set of records. After review by various agencies the National Archives posted the collection on July, 21, 2025.
The document collection contains 243,496 pages, grouped across 6,301 PDF files (along with a single audio file) which contain a mixture of black and white and color scans. While there is a search feature on that site, the search functionality is limited to keywords in the PDF file names. For example, a search for "Memphis" only returns a single result: 00459961_lawyer_arrives_in_memphis_104-10129-10400.pdf
The July 21, 2025 release includes records from a variety of government agencies: the FBI records from the investigation into the assassination; records that the CIA deemed responsive to the EO (including documents already included in the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives); as well as Department of State files which relate to James Earl Ray’s extradition from the United Kingdom. The collection appear to also contain some files issues by the Department of Justice. Beyond that, it is difficult to summarize the content of 240,000 pages of documents, which is why we believe AI is such a critical tool for historical research and government transparency.