Communist Associations – FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had long been suspicious about potential influence of Communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights. Hoover directed the FBI to track King, and the SCLC, in 1957. This was in no small part spurred by King and four others attending a May 1, 1957 meeting at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The institution, founded in 1932 and still operating today, is billed as having “facilitated the great change in our society” of racial integration on its website.”During the 1950s and ’60s it trained civil rights workers in law, nonviolence, community organizing and other techniques of social change,” its website says.
MLK speaking at the Highlander Folk School in 1957 However, the FBI correctly identified it as a Communist front which sought to bring about a Marxist revolution in America, having been founded by Myles Horton (Communist Party organizer for Tennessee) and Don West (Communist Party organizer for North Carolina). In speaking at the Highlander Folk School, King praised the school for its “noble purpose and creative work” and for having “given the South some of its most responsible leaders in this great period of transition.” He then predicted that, through concerted nonviolent action, “the future is filled with vast and marvelous possibilities” and concluded, “this is a great time to be alive.”
King was accompanied to the Highlander Folk School by Myles Horton, Aubrey Williams, Abner Berry and James Dumbrowski, all open and acknowledged members of the Communist Party, USA. Their meeting laid the groundwork for initiating demonstrations and riots across the Southern states.
Stanley Levison (Lower Left) at a 1966 SCLC meeting with MLK In 1962, FBI investigators learned that one of King’s most trusted advisers was New York City lawyer Stanley Levison. The FBI found Levison had been involved with the Communist Party, USA. The FBI had observed his alienation from the Party leadership, but it feared he had taken a low profile in order to work as an “agent of influence” in order to manipulate King, a view it continued to hold despite its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party. Another King lieutenant, Hunter Pitts O’Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
The Bureau received authorization to proceed with wiretapping from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the fall of 1963 and informed President John F. Kennedy, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison. Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King’s phones “on a trial basis, for a month or so”, Hoover extended the clearance so his men were “unshackled” to look for evidence in any areas of King’s life they deemed worthy. The Bureau placed wiretaps on Levison’s and King’s homes and office phones, and bugged King’s rooms in hotels and motels as he traveled across the country.
For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to Communism, stating in a 1965 Playboy interview that, “there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida” and claiming that Hoover was “following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South.” Hoover’s concern about communist infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to “aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements.” In that same interview, however, King advocated that Blacks and other “disadvantaged” Americans be financially compensated for “historical wrongs.” According to Wikipedia, King set the bill at US$50 billion in 1965 dollars, and the amount be doled out to all people who have been disadvantaged, not only African-Americans.
Hoover did not believe King’s pledge of innocence and replied by saying the civil rights leader was “the most notorious liar in the country.”
After giving his “I Have A Dream” speech during the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, the FBI described King as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.” In December 1963, the FBI stated King was “knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists” whose long-term strategy was to create a “Negro-labor” coalition detrimental to American security. Levison did have ties with the Communist Party in the past in various business dealings, but the FBI refused to believe its own intelligence bureau reports that Levison was no longer associated in that capacity.
Bayard Rustin, an African-American Quaker and avowed homosexual and advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes, was a member of King’s circle and was a member of the Young Communist League, joining in 1936. In 1941, he became disillusioned with the CPUSA because it abandoned civil rights work in favor of trying to get the American government to aid the Soviet Union from German Nazi invasion. While Rustin began working with “anti-Communist Socialists” (an oxymoron) such as A. Philip Randolph, the head of the “Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters”, he later attended the 16th annual convention of SCLC in February 1957 and founded the SCLC with King a month later.
The SCLC was front-loaded with Communists as well. Its vice-president the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was also the president of an identified Communist front known as the Southern Conference Educational Fund. That group’s field director, Carl Braden, was simultaneously a national sponsor of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The program director of the SCLC was the Reverend Andrew Young, who went on to become Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to the UN and mayor of Atlanta. Young was trained at the Highlander Folk School. - See more at: http://www.therightperspective.org/2011/01/11/the-dark-side-of-martin-luther-king-jr/#sthash.wSx4ZWco.dpuf
