ATLANTA — President Donald Trump’s executive order Thursday to declassify the records of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. has been met with a mixed response.
Channel 2’s Richard Elliot learned some are excited over the release while others want the King family to get a look at them first.
In a unified statement, the King family wants to look at the documents before they are released, and there is support for that.
In his order Thursday, Trump said “Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all the records related to these assassinations without delay.”
The King family said in a statement, “For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release.”
“I hope that they will see it first and then whatever is appropriate, we will support them,” said Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia chapter of the NAACP.
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Griggs hopes the release of the documents won’t retraumatize King’s surviving children.
“I think it needs to be a more sensitive release of this information, because the community does know how he died, but we don’t need to retraumatize the family without them first seeing it,” Griggs said.
Bernice King and her brother Martin Luther King III appeared at the Democratic National Convention supporting former Vice President Kamala Harris. Dr. King’s niece Alveda King was a staunch supporter of Trump.
Atlanta city council member Michael Julian Bond, whose father was a civil rights icon himself, is looking forward to the release.
“I’m excited about it, you know. It’s always been controversy, you know, around it and rumor, and so having more information is better to help people have a clearer picture of what may have actually happened,” Bond said.
The government has 45 days from the executive order to release that information.
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