Your fact-checks will appear here
(died 1805)
No simple yes-or-no answer resolves this question. FBI surveillance materials and later reporting contain allegations that Martin Luther King Jr. had multiple extramarital sexual encounters and that F...
A highly publicized allegation that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. watched and encouraged the rape of a woman in a Washington hotel room originates from notes and summaries in FBI files and was publicized...
The earliest public reporting that crystallized the modern “rape allegation” narrative about Martin Luther King Jr. traces to historian David J. Garrow’s 2019 article in Standpoint, which relied on FB...
Coretta Scott King did publicly respond to rumors about Martin Luther King Jr.’s alleged infidelities, generally downplaying them and expressing faith in her marriage even when FBI surveillance materi...
No—Martin Luther King Jr. was never criminally charged with or convicted of rape; the most explosive claims about him stem from FBI surveillance memos and a 2019 essay by David Garrow that cite sealed...
David J. Garrow published a controversial essay drawing on newly released FBI files that alleges extensive sexual misconduct by Martin Luther King Jr. — including numerous extramarital affairs, solici...
Martin Luther King Jr.’s alleged extramarital affairs are treated by most historians as but contested in scale and detail because the principal documentary evidence comes from an FBI campaign explicit...
No credible record in the supplied reporting shows Barack Obama directly addressing rumors about his sexuality; multiple sources state he has not publicly confirmed or denied such claims , while repor...
Claims that Martin Luther King Jr. engaged in sexual misconduct, including allegations of affairs and an accusation that he stood by during a rape, rest primarily on FBI surveillance materials and rep...
The central evidence for claims that Martin Luther King Jr. had extramarital affairs comes from FBI surveillance materials — wiretaps, informant reports, and an uncensored letter — produced as part of...
The declassified FBI files and later reporting contain salacious allegations that Martin Luther King Jr. participated in orgies and solicited prostitutes, but those claims originate in FBI dossiers, t...
David Garrow’s excavation of declassified FBI surveillance files on Martin Luther King Jr. reignited a split among historians: some praise his detailed documentary mining of Bureau records and previou...
Historians and biographers have long wrestled with allegations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sexual misconduct and with claims — based largely on FBI surveillance files and later reporting — that he wit...
The available reporting shows multiple sources alleging that Martin Luther King Jr. engaged in extramarital sexual relationships, with much of the documentary “evidence” coming from FBI wiretaps and r...
David Garrow published a sprawling 2017 biography, Rising Star, that included transcriptions and paraphrases of young Barack Obama’s love letters and a claim—based on letters held at Emory and describ...
The strongest public evidence for the allegation that Martin Luther King Jr. witnessed a rape and “looked on, laughed, and offered advice” comes not from living, contemporary eyewitnesses but from FBI...
The National Archives release (July 2025) and earlier reporting confirm that the FBI amassed a vast collection of files — over 230,000–240,000 pages — tied to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination an...
remains an iconic figure for civil rights, but his legacy contains documented and contested negative elements: credible archival evidence of extramarital sexual activity and questionable behavior reve...
’s 2019 essay mining newly released files to make explosive allegations about provoked a sharp split among historians: many condemned his treatment of heavily tainted FBI material as credulous and irr...
The archival record shows that surveillance collected and produced reports alleging engaged in extramarital sexual activity, and those materials were used in an explicit campaign to discredit him . At...