The Martin Luther King (MLK) Assassination Records Archive

The Black Vault presents a comprehensive archive of government documents related to the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., made accessible through a searchable interface for the public and researchers alike.

This collection stems from records held by various federal agencies and preserved under the authority of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). In accordance with U.S. law, NARA serves as the final repository of the records of the federal government and is tasked with making them available to the American people. While many of the documents related to Dr. King’s assassination were previously transferred to NARA from federal agencies, public access to the full breadth of these records has only recently expanded.

Beginning in early 2024, the National Archives began coordinating with agencies across the Executive Branch to identify, declassify, and release previously restricted records related to the 1968 assassination. Some information may remain withheld under legal exemptions, including those related to national security and personal privacy.

According to NARA:

“The July 21, 2025 release includes the FBI records related to the investigation into the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (codename: MURKIN); records that the CIA deemed responsive to E.O. 14176 (including documents already included in the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the National Archives); as well as Department of State file ‘PS 10-4 US-UK/Ray, James Earl,’ which includes information related to Ray’s extradition from the United Kingdom.”

The Black Vault has downloaded and processed the full collection of documents currently made available by the U.S. government. This includes more than 6,300 PDF files, totaling nearly 250,000 pages, all OCR-scanned to enable full-text searching. The archive also contains a single audio file with accompanying transcripts, ensuring that these components are also searchable and accessible.

Records in the archive include FBI investigative files, Department of Justice memoranda, law enforcement correspondence, and other federal documentation—some of which has never before been searchable in this format. All files are presented exactly as released by the U.S. government, with no alterations or omissions.

To aid in research and public access, the documents are indexed and searchable using the custom tool developed for this release. You can access it below.

👉 Launch the MLK Assassination Records Search Engine

 

 

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