Martin Luther King Jr: Trump administration releases files on slain civil rights leader

About 230,000 pages of records are unsealed, despite opposition from some of the King family.

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A court-imposed order had kept the documents, totalling 230,000 pages, blocked from public view since 1977.

Prominent members of King's family had opposed the release. A statement from his two living children condemned "any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father's legacy".

King, the country's most famous civil rights activist, was shot in Memphis on 4 April 1968, at age 39. James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to the killing, but later renounced his plea.

Trump's critics noted the release comes as the administration is accused of a lack of transparency over files relating to influential sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose 2019 jail death was ruled a suicide.