‘MLK/FBI’ doc explores FBI’s surveillance
When a public figure transcends the realities of their own life to become a symbol, or an icon, it can be hard to remember that they were, indeed, human, too. This becomes one of the motivating theses of Sam Pollard’s illuminating documentary “MLK/FBI,” alongside another, equally important charge.
Using newly declassified documents and testimony from witnesses and historians, Pollard’s film examines the ways in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, recklessly and lawlessly surveilled the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in hopes of discrediting a moral leader whose ideas about civil rights posed a threat to a status quo that kept white men at the top of the social hierarchy.
The Emmy-winning, Oscarnominated documentarian Pollard has crafted a remarkably layered film, dense with information and revelation not only about King but also about an almost obsessive campaign lobbied by the FBI to discredit him, using an incredible overreach of their powers to surveil the civil rights leader. Pollard uses the new FBI evidence, as well as the book “The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From ‘Solo’ to Memphis” by David Garrow, as the basis for the film’s arguments, which are woven together from archival footage, documents and Hollywood films, with audio from historians, scholars and close confidants of King’s layered underneath the images.
This approach to documentary filmmaking, utilizing archival footage and snippets of significant pop cultural ephemera, calls to mind Raoul Peck’s staggering documentary about James Baldwin, “I Am Not Your Negro.” But “MLK/FBI” is more than a cinematic essay or examination of race relations and the fight for civil rights. It’s an argument for the humanity of our revolutionaries, flaws and all, a humanity that has been either systematically denied, or weaponized against them.
Pollard’s interview subjects, including scholars Garrow, Donna Murch, Beverly Gage, former FBI agent Charles Knox and FBI director James Comey, as well as King friends and colleagues Andrew Young and Clarence Jones, discuss the ways in which the FBI persecuted King, not only surveilling him, wiretapping the homes of close allies and bugging hotel rooms, but infiltrating the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, using paid informants to report on his movements and the inner workings of the organization.
Hoover and his deputy, William Sullivan, were so threatened by King, beholden by racist notions of Black male sexuality, coupled with his message of nonviolent revolution for Black people and the poor, that they didn’t just seek to surveil him, but to disrupt him and his work, sending anonymous threatening letters and salacious recordings to King and his wife, Coretta Scott King. The tapes of King’s private endeavors will be unsealed in 2027, and Pollard’s film seems to be an attempt to start the conversation about them in advance of their release.
What astonishes about Pollard’s film is just how current it feels, a reminder that the propaganda playbook stays the same. While Hoover, Sullivan and Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson wrung their hands and dropped bombs over Communism, the dreaded C-word was lobbed at King and his cohort in a gross misinformation campaign, calling to mind contemporary political rhetorical tactics.