Rev. MLK was a serial cheater + other facts

Jeff Stone, Int'l Business (ibntimes.com); Sheldon S., Ash Wells, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Paul Wilson: Rev. King, Adultery of a Man and His Message | KC Confidential (Daily Mail)

7 Things You Don't Know About Martin Luther King Jr. - Parthenon Publishing (Stanford)

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Reverend Martin Luther King cheated on his wife [a lot] and other lesser-known facts about the civil rights leader for MLK Day

Can you stop opposing the military-industrial complex?

One of the easiest things to forget about Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is that he was just a person [and fornicator].

He was one of the most influential people of the 20th century, no doubt, but a person with flaws and quirks that made him different from the Christ-like figure he’s often portrayed as today.

• Sex tapes, FBI smears, and the sinful double life of an all too human saint: Dark side to the MLK story (Daily Mail)
• The adulterous love life of Martin Luther King Jr. - Lessons from History (medium.com)
• Was MLK Jr. related to Emperor Genghis Khan, the prolific lover? History of Yesterday

At the time of King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, he was still the personification of the civil rights movement in the United States.

18 mind-blowing MLK facts (whatculture)

But those near him said he appeared to have lost a step, in part because of conflicts in his inner circle of advisers and a growing estrangement from his former ally President Lyndon B. Johnson over the Vietnam War.

Rev. King stepped onto the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, to smoke a cigarette when he got shot. He was smoking when racist assassin James Earl Ray murdered him. Rev. King was a lifelong smoker who kept it secret,

Reverend King was a serial adulterer

Adulterous sex life of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. - Lessons from History (medium.com)

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Mrs. Coretta Scott King (King Center)

While the ethical reasons for the FBI’s monitoring of Rev. King were murky (at best), the recordings do make up much of what we now know about the man’s personal life.

Rev. King had engaged in so many extramarital affairs [adultery] that his wife, Coretta Scott King, had reportedly become disillusioned with their marriage.

FBI monitoring devices recorded audio of Rev. King during a [sexual] tryst at a Washington, D.C., hotel, eventually sending the tape to Mrs. King in an effort to discredit him in his own home.

Rev. King even spent the last night of his life with a woman who was not his wife. In the chaos outside the Lorraine Motel, his advisers told the young woman to stay out of the ambulance to avoid tarnishing his legacy.

MLK with Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh

King’s right-hand man, Ralph Abernathy, wrote in his 1989 autobiography that the staff “all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation.”

Abernathy also wrote that Rev. King had a “weakness for women” while Johnson – who considered Rev. King’s criticism of Vietnam a personal betrayal – called him a “hypocritical preacher.” 

The health and heart of an old man

"Why we can't win"? Hypocrisy?

At the time of his assassination Dr. King, 39, had the heart of a 60-year-old man.

Negotiating with government leaders while trying to unite poor people and fend off death threats would be enough to stress anyone out. And it did. Dr. King’s autopsy results revealed that his heart appeared to be in the condition of someone decades older.

His terrible eating habits almost certainly contributed, with aides reporting that they had to monitor the leader’s poor diet and often joked with him about his ballooning weight.

Not only was Dr. King fat and unhealthy with a bad heart, but conservative politicians have also claimed that he was a registered Republican. [Of course, Republicans were once "the good guys" compared to the Dixie Democrats in the South.] More