'There is but one way out for you': Uncensored 'suicide letter' sent from FBI to Martin Luther King made public for the first time

The uncensored contents of a letter sent from the FBI to Martin Luther King in which he is called an "evil, abnormal beast" and apparently encouraged to kill himself have been made public for the first time.

In what appears to be a heavy-handed attempt to unsettle the civil rights leader, the anonymous letter was written by a deputy of the bureau's director J Edgar Hoover, posing as a disappointed activist, and sent to King in the weeks before he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

While the existence of the document, dubbed the "suicide letter", has been known for some time, only heavily redacted versions had previously been available.

It has now been published in full in The New York Times Magazine after an unredacted version was discovered in the National Archive by Yale University historian Beverly Gage, as she researched a book on Hoover.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/there-is-but-one-way-out-for-you-uncensored-suicide-letter-sent-from-fbi-to-martin-luther-king-made-public-for-the-first-time-9857609.html

An anonymous letter? No doubt it got the laughter it deserved.