A year after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his iconic “I Have a Dream” on the National Mall in August 1963, an unsigned letter arrived, urging the civil rights leader to end his own life in light of allegations and evidence supposedly gathered by the writer.

King and his advisors knew that this was the work of the J. Edgar Hoover directed FBI.

Two days after King’s iconic dream speech a memo circulated in the FBI, written by Chief William Sullivan. It read:

“We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security,”

And after a year long investigation, attempts to prove King a communist and more the letter was a results and attempt to disloge King from his place of leadership and maybe make him end his own life.

The letter was found quite recently by Yale historian Beverly Gage, and published in the New York Times in November 2014. Read it in full below:

Here is the transcription:

KING,

In view of your low grade… I will not dignify your name with either a Mr. or a Reverend or a Dr. And, your last name calls to mind only the type of King such as King Henry the VIII…

King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure they don’t have one at this time anywhere near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. You could not believe in God… Clearly you don’t believe in any personal moral principles.

King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader. You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile. We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins, a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done. Your “honorary” degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done.

No person can overcome facts, not even a fraud like yourself. Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and all your dirt, filth, evil, and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time. I repeat — no person can argue successfully against facts. You are finished. You will on the record for all time your filthy, dirty, evil companions, male and females giving expression to you with your Gospel hideous abnormalities. And some of them to pretend to be ministers of the Gospel. Satan could not do more. What incredible evilness. It is all there on the record, your sexual orgies. Listen to yourself you filthy, abnormal animal. You are on the record. You have been on the record – all your adulterous acts, your sexual orgies extending far into the past. This one is but a tiny sample. You will understand this. Yes, from your various evil playmates on the east coast to [sic] and others on the west coast and outside the country you are on the record. King you are done.

The American public, the church organizations that have been helping — Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done.

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

Thanks to Vox for bringing this story to my attention.