KANSAS CITY, Mo. — President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Thursday to release files related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The president's order directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to make a plan within fifteen days to release the records for Kennedy’s assassination.
A plan to release federal records related to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Dr. King must be completed within 45 days.
The Kennedy brothers were assassinated within five years of each other.
Dr. King was assassinated in the same year as Robert Kennedy in 1968.
"It was all about race and it was all about civil rights. It was all about let’s demean and denigrate the people who were making those steps forward so you kill them you get them out of the way and you hope nobody else steps up or steps forward," said Dr. Carmaletta Williams, chief executive officer for the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City.
Williams said the timing for the orders being the same week as the president took office doesn't matter.
"Our motto here at the Black Archives is no revisionist history. Tell the truth. This will allow a lot of those falsehoods to be corrected," said Carmaletta Williams, CEO of the Black Archives, who thinks the timing is irrelevant. "We will all know what’s been hidden from us for so long."
Dr. King's daughter, Bernice King, posted on X asking for the family to see the records before the public.
Statement on behalf of the Family of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 24, 2025
“Today, our family has learned that President Trump has ordered the declassification of the remaining records pertaining to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy,… pic.twitter.com/gPK1ivj41p
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who now serves under President Trump, thanked him for making the decision.
JFK warned that “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secrecy … We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers… https://t.co/cM0lxiycA7
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 24, 2025
"They [RFK Jr. and Bernice King] can make peace or they can just have more knowledge so then when they’re confronted, they can tell a better truth. They can tell the real truth," Williams said.
Dr. Williams said RFK, President JFK and Dr. King were killed because they wanted to move the country forward and people should not immediately trust everything they read.
"When we look at these documents, first foremost on our minds, we should be saying, why, you know, why and why these people?" she said.
It's unclear when the records could be made public and whether some files may be exempt.
Williams believes somewhere in the narratives of how they were killed, people will be able to find the truth.
"We have to let the world know," she said. "I think we always need to keep our minds open that when we read these documents that we are reading somebody's opinion, somebody's idea of what happened and we need to scurry through those and get down to the nuggets of the truth."
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