Files Detail FBI Probe of Abernathy

Within a month of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI began investigating King’s successor, looking for the same type of “immoral activities” the bureau had tried to use to discredit King, newly released FBI files show.

The files, obtained by Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act, include an April 22, 1968, memo from FBI headquarters ordering an investigation of the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy. He had been King’s right-hand man since the two led the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955 that launched the civil rights movement. Abernathy died in 1990.

The memo asked the Atlanta FBI office to search its files for “background information” on Abernathy and begin following all his activities “through established informants and sources.” The investigation continued until 1974.

FBI spokesman Tron W. Brekke said the files “should be viewed in their historical context and should in no way infer that the FBI currently initiates investigations utilizing the standards of that era.”

Before King’s April 4, 1968, assassination, the FBI had used wiretaps to gather detailed information about his private life and extramarital affairs and had leaked it to reporters and government officials in attempts to discredit him.

The files suggest that the FBI under former Director J. Edgar Hoover targeted Abernathy similarly.

“Little information has been developed regarding promiscuous activity on the part of Abernathy,” the Atlanta FBI office reported in an April 29, 1968, memo responding to what Atlanta called “the bureau’s recent request for information dealing with immoral activities on the part of” Abernathy.

Atlanta noted that FBI headquarters in 1964 had been sent transcripts from a 1958 Alabama court case in which a woman accused Abernathy of having “normal and abnormal sexual relations” with her when she was 15. It also noted that Abernathy had contact with a woman in San Francisco in 1965 “that suggested a degree of affection between them.”

“Our limited knowledge of Ralph Abernathy suggests he might have had some extramarital experiences,” the Atlanta office concluded. “It by no means supports the conclusion his experience has been extensive or may be continuing.”

A month later, Hoover had the Washington, D.C., field office checking out allegations that Abernathy was “involved in illicit relations with white women” and had been “beaten by five Negroes who surprised him in bed with a white woman.” The office was unable to confirm any aspect of the allegation, it reported.

The FBI files, heavily censored to remove information considered by the FBI to infringe on the privacy rights of others, include several instances in which the bureau used sexual information in an attempt to undermine Abernathy.

In 1970, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew called Hoover to complain about Abernathy’s “inflammatory pronouncements.” Hoover wrote that Agnew “said he thought he was going to have to start destroying Abernathy’s credibility. . . .”

The next day, the FBI sent Agnew a report that included “information about sexual immorality, Abernathy’s luxurious accommodations during the Poor People’s Campaign and his support of the Black Panther party.”

The bureau released 1,169 pages of Abernathy files, in contrast to its 16,000-page pre-assassination file on King. There is no evidence in the files that Abernathy ever was the target of an FBI wiretap.