FBI Sheds New Light on Luther King the Orator

Undercover informers from the FBI who believed they were playing a part in undermining the work of Martin Luther King have unwittingly helped to add to his archive and further enhance his reputation.

One of their clandestine tapes of his speeches during the civil rights struggle in the 60s is being published in its entirety for the first time.

The tape in question was made in Selma, Alabama, in January 1965, during a registration drive for black voters. A march that year from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery, in March, was one of the key moments of the civil rights struggle.

In the speech, Dr King warns his followers of the dangers ahead.

"They're going to try to provoke violence, because their backs are against the wall. But if we will keep in the spirit of love and non-violence, we can change this thing," he says on the tape. "There are dark moments in this struggle, but I want to tell you that I've seen it over and over again, that so often the darkest hour is that hour that appears before the dawn of a new fulfilment.

"Now, the way we're going to change these things," says Dr King on the tape, "the way you're going to get this street out here paved and all of the other streets where negroes live that are unpaved, the way you're going to get better salaries, the way you will have better homes, will be to engage in a vigorous, non-violent struggle to get the ballot and put people like [the local] Sheriff Clark out of office."

Later he says: "They're going to try to provoke violence, because their backs are against the wall ... Now, let me assure you that I'm not talking about emotional bosh. I'm not talking about some sentimental or affectionate emotion. It would be nonsense to urge oppressed people to love their violent oppressors in an affectionate sense. I'm talking about something much deeper."

A police informer in Selma had kept the tape for years, eventually realising that it might be worth a lot of money. For a number of years, he had tried to sell it, claiming that it was worth up to $1m.

Dr King's biographer, Taylor Branch, eventually persuaded the informer that the tape belonged in the public domain. He referred to it in his biography in 1997.

Now in a new anthology of civil rights oratory, Ripples of Hope, the whole speech has been published for the first time. It shows Dr King to have been at the peak of his oratorical abilities.

"This is not what you see on national television. This is talking to the foot soldiers. It's a really brilliant moment," Josh Gottheimer, who has compiled the anthology, told the Associated Press.

Selma became a focus of the movement after hundreds of black voters would line up to register, only be to thwarted by delaying tactics of officials. Three civil rights campaigners died in incidents connected to the marches from Selma.

J Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI, made Dr King a particular target of the bureau.