Documents / FOIA release

The Assassination of Martin Luther King.

Central Intelligence Agency · 166 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This CIA FOIA release contains an April 1968 dispatch, UFGA-29877, summarizing how Cuban media covered the assassination of Martin Luther King from 5 to 8 April. The dispatch quotes Granma and Havana radio stations, including statements by Stokely Carmichael and others that call for revolutionary violence. The release also includes May 1971 cables and a memo to the FBI on Americans at the World Peace Council conference in Budapest, where King was posthumously awarded the Joliot-Curie Gold Medal.

  • p. 102 …It is suggested that Headquarters may wish to send Venezuela some background information on Margaret with…
  • p. 156 ## NHCHAOS REF: HEADQUARTERS 1. IN FINAL COVERAGE ON 18 MAY OF WPC, WHICH ENDED 16 MAY…
  • p. 157 ## HEAD QUARTERS ## .CHAOS REF: HEADQUARTERS 1. IN FINAL COVERAGE ON 18 MAY OF WPC, WHICH ENDED…

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League and a member of the Jamaican (Caribbean) Workers Movement, on the possibility of holding demonstrations at the American Embassy in Kingston to protest against the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Vassel claimed that there was a United States citizen hiding in Jamaica to escape the draft who had in his possession recordings of speeches made by the late Malcolm X during 1984. One of these was entitled "The Ballot or Bullets". He stated that King's death disproved his theory of non-violence and was bringing into prominence men like Stokely Carmichael and H. Cap Brown.

d. During April, about 40 persons including Winston Monroe, Joseph Christie, Roy Jeffrey, Leonard Solomon and one Hy Survad, who is the American draft escape referred to in Paragraph c. above, met at 29 Fourth Street, Trench Town (Dallas Corner), where Survad, identified as a Black Muslim and a member of the Black Power Movement (BPM), answered questions put to him by the gathering. It was understood that Survad was in Jamaica to solicit support for the BPM in the United States as well as to establish a branch here. The record "The Ballot or Bullets" was played by Survad and recorded by Monroe.

e. Survad accepted George Myers' invitation to attend a get-together which he was arranging in Savanna- la-Mar on 11 May, and to spend a week or two with him there. They discussed the Congress of Racial Equality (CORS) and the SPM, and it was suggested that a local Steering Committee should be appointed to consider the formation of a group in Jamaica.

f. (Jamaica Service Comment: Survad has subsequently been identified as John Davis, aka Selvyn Grey, a member of CORS and the Black Muslims. He is in touch with Rastafarians at Kintyro, and the leaders of the Viking and Spade Gangs. He is expecting to meet one Corporal James, aka "Jimmy" of the Jamaica Defence Force, who is said to have complained that he was deprived of promotion because of his views. Arrangements were also being made for him to meet Walter Rodney of the University of the West Indies. Survad has stated

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About this file

FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 166 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.