In Sam Pollard’s superb, infuriating documentary, “MLK/FBI,” Andrew Young quotes comedian and activist Dick Gregory: “If you’re Black and not slightly paranoid, you’re sick.” It’s a fitting line for a film about J. Edgar Hoover’s widespread surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1963 to April 4, 1968. Tapes of these wiretaps and bugs were turned over to the National Archives in 1972, and will be available for public consumption in 2027. In the meantime, we have this powerful, upsetting record of events based on
The FBI and Martin Luther King: From ‘Solo’ to Memphis by David J. Garrow. Pollard and editor Laura Tomaselli stitch together an incriminating mix of real-life footage and scenes from movies that served as law enforcement propaganda. Those images are supplemented by onscreen selections from FBI documents that paint a salacious picture of the civil rights leader they surveyed. Myth and legend are pushed aside, creating a human portrait of a gre