Sam Pollard Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘I Was Born This Way,’ starring Carl Bean, Billy Porter, Lady Gaga, Dionne Warwick, Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, Estelle Brown and Martha Payne

October 31, 2025

by Carla Hay

Carl Bean in “I Was Born This Way” (Photo by Jed Alan/I Was Born This Way Production LLC)

Directed by Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard

Culture Representation: The documentary film “I Was Born This Way” features a predominantly African American group of people (with a few white people and one Asian) who discuss the life and career of Carl Bean, who went from being a professional singer to becoming an archbishop LGBTQ activist.

Culture Clash: Bean (who experienced racism, homophobia and sexual abuse) was often misunderstood, degraded and underestimated when fighting for causes that he advocated.

Culture Audience: “I Was Born This Way” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries about lesser-known civil rights activists from the LGBTQ community.

A 1977 promotional photo of Carl Bean in “I Was Born This Way” (Photo courtesy of I Was Born This Way Production LLC)

“I Was Born This Way” is a worthy tribute to Carl Bean, who was an archbishop, former disco singer, and overlooked pioneer in LGBTQ civil rights activism. The documentary’s old interviews with Bean (who died in 2021) and others make it look a bit outdated. These interviews don’t lessen the film’s intentions or the quality of the stories told in the documentary, but “I Was Born This Way” gives the impression that the filmmakers didn’t get more recent interviews before this documentary was released in 2025.

Directed by Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard, “I Was Born This Way” had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Bean sat down for an exclusive interview for the documentary, which uses his storytelling as the driving narrative. Several other people who knew Bean and/or were influenced by him are also interviewed for “I Was Born This Way.”

Bean (who is quite a raconteur in this documentary) died of a prolonged undisclosed illness on September 7, 2021. He was 77. Throughout the documentary there is animation showing re-enactments of the stories that Bean and other people tell because many of the stories don’t have enough photos or other archival footage to serve as visual demonstrations. The animation (which is competently made and has some melodramatic moments) might get various reactions from viewers, since this animation takes up a great deal of screen time in the documentary.

The documentary “I Was Born This Way” begins by showing Billy Porter arriving at the home of Chris Jones, who is an archivist of recordings that Bean did when he was a disco/R&B singer in the 1970s. Chris Jones is the son of the late Bunny Jones, who co-wrote Bean’s most famous song: 1977’s “Born This Way.” Porter and Chris Jones meet each other for the first time and greet each other warmly.

Why is Porter at Chris Jones’ home? The documentary shows Porter there to hear unreleased recordings made by Bean and look at some rare memorabilia of Bean. Porter comments in the documentary, “I’m excited to hold history in my hands. This song [‘Born This Way’] was very important … for little gay boys like me.” Much later in the documentary, Porter is seen re-recording the Bean song “Liberation,” a song that was supposed to be the B-side to “Born This Way” but was unreleased because the lyrics to “Liberation” were considered “too gay” at the time.

Grammy-winning musician and Oscar-winning director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has this to say about “I Was Born This Way,” when he comments on the song while looking through vinyl records at a music store: “This song was ahead of its time …. This one song started a revolution.”

In the documentary, Bean tells his life story in chronological order. He talks candidly about his troubled childhood (he grew up in Baltimore), where he survived bullying from his peers, physical abuse from his father, sexual abuse from an uncle (his father’s brother), a suicide attempt by overdosing on pills, and the traumatic aftermath of his mother’s death from a then-illegal abortion. Bean was raised by his godparents because his biological parents were too young when they became parents to Bean.

Bean says, “From a young age, I knew I was different.” He adds, “Music oozed out of me.” Bean mentions that Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (best known for the 1956 hit “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”) had a tremendous influence on him to want to become a professional singer. Bean also says that when he was a child, he was sexually abused “too many times to count.” Bean says when he told his father about the sexual abuse, his father severely punished him. During Bean’s childhood and for much of his life, Bean says he was plagued by frequent nightmares of being chased by a phantom.

Bean’s sister Martha Payne, who says Bean’s childhood nickname was Sammy, has this description of what Bean was like as a child: “He liked doll houses, cheerleading, baton twirling. He never pretended to be anything other than he was.” When Bean was bullied by his peers, Payne says that he took it in stride. “When he was singing, he was at his happiest.”

As a teenager, his suicide attempt led to him being put in a psychiatric ward at a hospital, where his mother happened to work as a custodian. Bean remembers his mother assuring him during this hospital stay that there were other queer kids who existed too. She encouraged him to become a singer.

After he was discharged from the hospital, he went to live with his mother, who had two other kids living with her. Bean says this change in his living situation meant that his socioeconomic status went from “middle-class to working-class poor.” While living with his mother, Bean says he got to know a lot of gay and transgender hustlers and sex workers, who accepted him and made him feel like he was part of a community.

Sadly, tragedy struck when his mother died of an illegal abortion. And to add to this devastating loss, Bean says he was forced to testify against the nurse who administered this abortion when the nurse went on trial for murder. Bean moved to New York City after the trial ended.

The middle of the movie chronicles Bean’s up-and-down journey through the music business. After moving to New York City, he became a gospel singer in Harlem’s Christian Tabernacle Choir. Dionne Warwick, Cissy Houston and Estelle Brown were his mentors at the time. Warwick and Brown are interviewed in the documentary.

Warwick says she was impressed very early on with Bean: “He had an incredible voice.” Brown says, “I learned a lot from Carl regarding homosexuality.” Brown, who was a member of the gospel group the Sweet Inspirations, mentions that she was a closeted lesbian for most of her life, but her friendship with Bean helped her to eventually come out and live openly as a lesbian.

According to Bean, he got tired of his hard-partying lifestyle in New York City, so he relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. He also took his music in secular direction by deciding to perform R&B and later disco. Bean formed a band called Carl Bean and Universal Love, where he was the lead singer. And although the band was signed to ABC Records, which released the band’s 1974 album “Universal Love”), the band couldn’t break through to widespread commercial success. Universal Love drummer Royal Anderson is one of the people interviewed in the documentary

Bean then launched a solo career as a Motown Records artist during the disco craze of the late 1970s. “I Was Born This Way” (written by Chris Spierer and Bunny Jones) was originally recorded by singer Valentino in 1975. Bean’s 1977 version of the song, which was a hit on the disco charts, stood the test of time longer. Bean is the singer who is more likely to be associated with “I Was Born This Way,” which is credited with being the first gay anthem to become a mainstream hit. In the documentary, Iris Gordy—a former Motown Records executive and a niece of Motown founder Berry Gordy—makes brief comments about Bean and “I Was Born This Way.”

Why was “Born This Way” co-written by a woman who identified as heterosexual? Chris Jones explains in the documentary that his mother Bunny Jones had a hair salon and knew a lot of gay/queer people because of the salon. Fun fact: Bunny Jones was the first black woman to own a nationally prominent recording studio in the United States: She founded Astral recording studio in 1971, in New York City’s East Harlem district. Bunny Jones also founded Gaiee Records, which released Valentino’s version of “I Was Born This Way,” and she subsequently sold Gaiee to Motown.

Disco’s popularity, like Bean’s music career, eventually faded. He then made a career transition to being a full-time LGBTQ activist. In 1985, he founded the Minority AIDS Project as a way to help people of color during the AIDS crises. And in response to seeing many LGBTQ people being shunned and bullied by church communities, Bean founded his own queer-friendly ministry— Unity Fellowship Church—and became an archbishop. Unity Fellowship Church, which began in Los Angeles, has expanded its congregations to other U.S. cities.

Lady Gaga gives an emotionally candid interview in the documentary about how her hit song “Born This Way” (the title track of her 2011 second album) was directly influenced by Bean’s version of “I Was Born This Way.” She admits that she didn’t know much about Bean when she first heard the song. Lady Gaga (who is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ people) comments, “When I learned about what Carl did not just as a singer but as an activist, it made my heart explode.”

The most meaningful parts of the documentary aren’t about the glitz and glamour of showbiz but about how Bean took his pain as an abuse survivor and channeled it into many positive things in his life, including helping people who are often mistreated, abused or neglected. The documentary includes footage of Ben doing some of this activism, as well as his interactions with his vibrant Unity Fellowship Church congregation. Bean’s close confidant Rev. Dr. Russell E. Thornhill is interviewed in the documentary.

Other people interviewed in the documentary are Zachary G. Jones, a retired beautitude bishop of Unity Fellowship Church; Paul Kawata, former executive director of NMAC (formerly the National Minority AIDS Council); and Maxine Waters, U.S. Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district. Kawata says in the documentary of Bean’s activism for people of color with AIDS or HIV who experience discrimination: “He was the first to stand up and say, ‘This is not okay.'” Waters says in a separate interview why she became an activist for AIDS/HIV causes: “Because of Carl, I got involved.”

Although the documentary shows Bean going into details about many aspects of his life, he doesn’t reveal anything much his love life except to say that he’s gay. Bean briefly mentions he’s been been heartbroken many times, but he doesn’t go into specifics. He takes the same approach about his health issues. Ultimately, “I Was Born This Way” did not have to be a “tell-all” documentary. The movie capably shows that Bean left a very admirable and impactful legacy that changed many people’s lives for the better.

Jungefilm released “I Was Born This Way” in Los Angeles on October 30, 2025.

Review: ‘The League’ (2023), starring Bob Kendrick, Andrea Williams, Larry Lester, James Brunson III, Donald Spivey, Lawrence D. Hogan and Layton Revel

July 7, 2023

by Carla Hay

A 1936 archival photo of the Newark Eagles in “The League” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures/Yale University Art Gallery)

“The League” (2023)

Directed by Sam Pollard

Culture Representation: Covering the late 1880s to the 1950s in the United States, the documentary film “The League” features a predominantly African American group (with some white people) of baseball experts and cultural commentators discussing the Negro Leagues of American baseball, during an era when professional baseball was racially segregated in the United States.

Culture Clash: Despite the oppression of racism, the Negro Leagues helped African American communities economically and influenced how Major League Baseball was played, but racial integration caused the MLB to recruit the best Negro Leagues players, eventually leading to the Negro Leagues going out of business.

Culture Audience: “The League” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of American baseball and are interested in watching documentaries about African Americans in professional baseball.

A 1916 archival photo of owner/manager Rube Foster (center) and the Chicago American Giants in “The League” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures/Hake’s Auction)

“The League” has an impressive array of interviews and archival footage that give a comprehensive look at the Negro Leagues of American baseball. This highly informative documentary is at times a little too dryly academic, like a university lecture. However, it’s still essential viewing for anyone who cares about baseball, American history and the important role that the Negro Leagues had in both. “The League” had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

Directed by Sam Pollard, “The League” follows a very traditional format of being a mixture of footage and interviews. Pollard made this statement in the movie’s press kit about how he assembled this documentary: “My vision was simple. Find voices of those who played the game, surround them with historians and fans of the Negro Leagues, use as much archival footage and stills I could find and, to add drama, shoot period recreations and create animation that would add another level of cinematic texture to the film.”

Pollard added in the statement, “Fortunately, I was able to find the voices of former Negro League players because Byron Motley (whose dad, Bob Motley, had been a Negro League Umpire) had interviewed and recorded many former players years ago. It was a treasure trove of wonderful voices and added immensely to the telling of the story. Also, fortunately many of the die-hard Negro League historians had access or knew where to find footage that I had never seen, which added enormously to visualizing the story.”

The Negro Leagues began out of necessity, because only white men were allowed to play in Major League Baseball (MLB), until Jackie Robinson famously broke through this racism barrier in 1947, by being the first African American to play for MLB. The Negro Leagues got off to a rocky start in 1887, when the National Colored Base Ball League (a minor league) lasted just two weeks. In 1920, the National Colored Base Ball League was formed, followed by several other leagues that had African Americans (and a small minority of Latinos) as the players.

Most of “The League” documentary covers the Negro Leagues era between the 1920s and 1950s. The Negro Leagues played their last season during Jim Crow racial segregation in 1951, and then faded away by the 1960s. The most successful of these leagues (and the fiercest rivals to each other) were the National Negro League, the Negro American League and the Eastern Colored League. Some other Negro Leagues that existed were the American Negro League, the East–West League and the Negro Southern League. The first Colored World Series took place in 1924, in a best-of-nine competition between the Negro National League champion Kansas City Monarchs and the Eastern Colored League champion Hilldale Club. The Monarchs won in a 5-4 final result.

The biggest strength of “The League” documentary is how it clearly shows the historical context of the ups and downs of the Negro Leagues were directly tied to racial segregation and racial integration laws. Adrian “Cap” Anson, a white first baseman whose MLB championship career peaked in the 1880s, is singled out in the documentary as being one of the driving forces in making MLB a “whites only” group. Anson would often refuse to play in a game if the other team had players who weren’t white.

Anson’s racist actions were validated by the Plessy vs. Ferguson case of 1896, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold federal protection of racial segregation laws, under the notion that racial segregation could be separate but equal. It led to the Jim Crow era in the United States, when it was legal to racially segregate people by having “whites only” places and services, and any other race would have to do whatever was dictated by what the white lawmakers decided. It was under this legal racial segregation that the Negro Leagues were born.

Another big part of American history that affected the Negro Leagues was the Great Migration, which refers to African Americans relocating from states in the U.S. South to go to other states in search of better economic opportunities and states that had little or no racial segregation laws. Chicago was one of the cities that saw an influx of many African Americans because of the Great Migration, which was encouraged by the African American-oriented newspaper the Chicago Defender. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the Chicago American Giants were considered one of the best Negro League teams, as mentioned by several people who are interviewed in the documentary.

“The League” does an excellent job of giving vivid depictions of some of the larger-than-life personalities who were major influencers in the Negro Leagues. Chief among them was Andrew “Rube” Foster, founder of the Negro National League and owner of the Chicago American Giants. (Junius “Red” Gaten, who was Foster’s assistant, is one of the people heard in the documentary’s archival interviews.) Foster used to be a baseball player himself, and he is credited with inventing the screwball pitch, also known as the fadeaway. Foster’s spectacular baseball career was curtailed by his mental health issues, and he was put in a psychiatric facility. Foster died in 1930, at the age of 51.

Kent State University history professor Leslie A. Heaphy, author of “The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960,” says that the Negro Leagues had a slump in the 1930s, partially due to Foster’s death and partially due to the Great Depression. In the years when the Negro Leagues thrived, African American communities that had Negro League games reaped the financial benefits, because these games created jobs in the communities. The Negro League games became so important for many spectators, they began to travel outside their home areas to attend these games. Pittsburgh became an important hub for these travels, says journalist Mark Whitaker.

In the documentary, journalist Mal Goode talks about the extremely competitive rivalry between the Pittsburgh Crawfords owner William “Gus” Greenlee and Homestead Grays owner Cumberland Posey, including regular “poaching” of each other’s star players, such as Josh Gibson. Edward “Ed” Bolden, who founded the Eastern Colored League and owned Hilldale Club, is frequently mentioned in the documentary as an important vanguard in the Negro Leagues. There were white people who owned some Negro Leagues teams, but the Negro Leagues were also important opportunities for black people to own professional baseball teams at a time when only white people were allowed to own MLB teams.

Another famous business personality for the Negro Leagues was Effa Manley, who is often called the First Lady of the Negro Leagues. Manley was not the first woman to own a Negro League team (Olivia Taylor was the first), but Manley was the most well-known female Negro League team owner because of her charismatic personality. Manley’s vague racial identity (a lot of people weren’t sure if she was white or a light-skinned black person) added to the mystique about her personal background.

“The League” could have used more exploration of what it was like to be a female baseball player in the Negro Leagues. There were a few, such as Marcenia “Toni” Stone (second base), Mamie “Peanut” Johnson (pitcher) and Constance “Connie” Morgan (second base). The issue of sexism in the Negro Leagues is mentioned mainly in reference to what Manley experienced, but “The League” documentary should have had better inclusion of other women who broke through gender barriers in the Negro Leagues.

The documentary mentions that many of today’s baseball techniques that combine athletic skills with entertainment flair can be traced back to the Negro Leagues. Back when the Negro Leagues existed, many white players looked down on the African American players who would have a flamboyant performance style to baseball playing. The word “showboating” at the time was code for baseball players who didn’t play “white enough.” It’s similar to how the Harlem Globetrotters changed the way many people played basketball.

The voices of Negro Leagues players who can be heard in the documentary’s archival interviews include Harold Tinker, Monte Irvin, Wilmer Harris, Buck O’Neil Jr., “Prince” Joe Henry, Bob Feller, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Max Manning, Larry Doby, Wilmer Harris and Judy Johnson. Many of these players also became managers of their respective teams. Also featured in archival interviews are writers Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka; Paul Robeson Jr., whose famous actor father was a desegregation activist; Lloyd Brown, who was a community organizer and Paul Robeson Sr. biographer; and Odile Posey Stribling, sister-in-law of Homestead Grays player/manager/owner Cumberland Posey.

People who are interviewed on camera for “The League” include historian James Brunson III, journalist Andrea Williams, cultural critic Gerald Early, historian Lawrence D. Hogan, historian Donald Spivey, historian Rob Ruck, American National League scholar Larry Lester, journalist Shakeia Taylor, Negro League scholar Phil Dixon, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick, and Negro Leagues scholar Jim Overmyer. Also interviewed is Center for Negro League Baseball Research founder/executive director Layton Revel, who is also a researcher for the Negro Southern League Museum.

Breakthrough baseball player Robinson is the most famous alum of the Negro Leagues, since he was the first to cross over and become a player for MLB. Lester says of Robinson: “He was an ink spot on a white canvas of injustice.” Robinson has the most name recognition for Negro Leagues players, but several people in the documentary say that Satchel Paige was the best player from the Negro Leagues. Other famous Negro Leagues alumni, who also got inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, include Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roy Campanella, Willard Brown, Cool Papa Bell and Buck Leonard.

It’s mentioned that Latino players, particularly from Cuba and other Caribbean nations, were integrated into the Negro Leagues because they weren’t allowed to become MLB players during the years when MLB was a “whites only” group. Some of the notable Latino players for the Negro Leagues included José Méndez, Martín Dihigo, Emilio “Millito” Navarro, Luis Márquez and Minnie Miñoso. Many of these Latino players identified as Afro-Latino.

“The League” is the type of documentary that benefits from having exclusive archival interviews and a well-chosen group of experts who give commentary. There is a scholarly and deliberately paced tone to the movie that might not appeal to people with very short attention spans. However, most people watching “The League” will learn something new about baseball, American history, and some of the extraordinary people involved in the Negro Leagues.

Magnolia Pictures released “The League” in select U.S. cinemas, exclusively in AMC Theatres, on July 7, 2023. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 14, 2023.

Review: ‘MLK/FBI,’ starring Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Clarence Jones, Beverly Gage, Donna Murch and David Garrow

January 18, 2021

by Carla Hay

“MLK/FBI”

Directed by Sam Pollard

Culture Representation: The documentary “MLK/FBI” features an American group of white and black scholars, authors, civil rights activists and law enforcement officials commenting on American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), led by J. Edgar Hoover, when King was at the height of his power in the 1960s.

Culture Clash: King’s civil rights activism and vocal opposition to the Vietnam War angered high-ranking U.S. government officials, who labeled him as an enemy.

Culture Audience: “MLK/FBI” will appeal primarily to people interested in King’s legacy, the history of U.S. civil rights and reports involving government conspiracies.

Martin Luther King Jr. (speaking at podium) in “MLK/FBI” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

The riveting documentary “MLK/FBI” gives a clear and precise presentation of how the FBI targeted civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. King, who was also a Baptist minister, was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. It isn’t a secret that the FBI, under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, had intense surveillance of King and plotted to dig up scandalous information on him, in order to disgrace King and take away his power. The FBI documents detailing this surveillance have been declassified and are available for public viewing. What “MLK/FBI” (directed by Sam Pollard) does notably is provide an important historical context of what was going on in King’s life that escalated the FBI’s scrutiny of him.

“MLK/FBI” immerses viewers into King’s civil rights years by having almost nothing but archival footage from this era. The only exception is toward the end of the documentary, when several of the commentators who are interviewed or shown on camera during the last 10 minutes of this 106-minute film. Prior to being shown on screen, the commentators are only heard in voiceovers.

Many documentaries fall into a trap of interviewing too many people, which can often overstuff a documentary and make it too messy and unfocused. Instead, “MLK/FBI” wisely took a “less is more” approach. Only eight people are interviewed in the documentary. They are:

James Comey, FBI director from 2013 to 2017
Beverly Gage, Yale University history professor and author of “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the American Century”
David Garrow, author of “The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.: From ‘Solo’ to Memphis” (which is the basis of the “MLK/FBI” documentary) and “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference”
Clarence Jones, attorney and former speechwriter who worked with King
Charles Knox, retired FBI special agent in counterintelligence
Donna Murch, Rutgers University history professor and author of “Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California”
Marc Perrusquia, journalist for the Memphis-based newspaper The Commercial Appeal
Andrew Young, civil rights activist and former politician who was executive director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) from 1964 to 1969. King was the first president of SCLC, which was launched in 1957.

All of them except for Perrusquia and Comey (who doesn’t say much in the movie) appear on camera at the end of the documentary. But what they all have to say confirms that by the time that King was murdered, the FBI had labeled him a menace to society and he lost the support of U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ). In addition to King’s political activities making him a target of the FBI, his marital infidelities became the focus of a smear campaign to ruin his credibility as a moral leader.

It’s already been widely reported that the FBI’s plan, according to declassified documents, was to expose salacious details about King’s sex life. The FBI audio recorded many of his trysts with women by spying in hotels and various other places, and placing recording devices in the rooms where King was staying. King and many of his close associates had their homes “bugged” with surveillance devices, and their phones were wiretapped.

The documentary mentions that in 1977, the FBI was ordered to turn over the surveillance tapes to the National Archives. These sealed recordings can be unsealed and released to the public in 2027. While retired FBI agent Knox says in the “MLK/FBI” documentary that no good come from releasing the tapes, most of the other pundits in the documentary say that it’s in the public’s best interest to know what’s on the tapes.

There’s no doubt very explicit sexual content on the tapes, and it’s been public knowledge for decades that King cheated on his wife Coretta. But aside from the sexual content, the curiosity about the tapes has a lot to do with how far the FBI went in trying to bring down King and ruin him. Who was worse in the failings of morality and ethics? The FBI or King?

“MLK/FBI” also mentions a disturbing allegation noted in the FBI surveillance documents: During an alleged sex orgy, King allegedly stood by and laughed while witnessing an unnamed Baltimore minister rape a woman. However, Murch, Gage and some of the other documentary pundits point out that what the FBI agents reported should get some level of scrutiny and skepticism, since the FBI agents who were spying on King were rewarded for digging up the nastiest dirt possible on King. Therefore, it’s likely that some FBI agents might have been motivated to exaggerate or fabricate information that was put in the written documents.

It’s not a mystery why King became a target of the FBI. Gage comments: “The FBI was most alarmed about King because of his success. And they were particularly concerned that he was this powerful, charismatic figure who had the power to mobilize people.” Murch adds that civil rights leaders are often seen as heroes by the general public but are branded as “troublemakers” or “threats” by law enforcement: “When you look at the social movements from the point of view of the FBI, it looks very different … J. Edgar Hoover is famous for saying that he feared a black Messiah.”

Young and Jones, the close confidants of King who are interviewed in “MLK/FBI,” both say that the U.S. government underestimated King and then eventually began to fear him. King advocated for a non-violent civil rights movement, in keeping with his Christian faith. It’s a philosophy that not everyone agreed with (such as the Black Panthers and other left-wing groups) because these critics of King’s non-violent approach felt that the use of violent force was necessary to get things done.

Young comments on being involved in a grassroots movement for social change where King told activists not to use weapons and to treat their oppressors with kindness: “He let us accept the fact that what we were doing was insane … We were trusting in the power of God, and only crazy kind of people of faith would be willing to put their lives on the line and trust in God.”

What wasn’t crazy was Jones’ paranoia that King and his closest associates were under FBI surveillance. Jones found out that his own home was “bugged” and wiretapped when his wife told him about men who came to their house while Jones was away. These men claimed to be phone company employees who were ordered by Jones to work on the house’s phones.

However, what the men said was a lie because Jones made no such request. Jones says that King didn’t believe at first that the FBI would go to the trouble of spying on King. However, King got a rude awakening when the FBI sent sexually explicit recordings of his infidelities to King and his wife, with a cruel note saying that King should kill himself.

According to the documentary, the FBI also leaked some of these sex recordings to the media when King was alive, but the media refused to report these scandalous details, much to the annoyance of Hoover. Ironically, Hoover had his own sexual proclivities that he wanted to keep secret from the public. The documentary alludes to Hoover’s reported homosexuality (without mentioning that he was also a cross-dresser in private), but doesn’t sink into tabloid territory by going into tawdry details, since the movie is about King, not Hoover’s private life.

However, the documentary repeatedly names Hoover (who founded the FBI and was the FBI’s leader from 1935 to 1972) and William C. Sullivan (who was FBI director of domestic intelligence operations from 1961 to 1971) as the chief instigators of the campaign to ruin King’s life. According to Jones, the FBI under Hoover’s leadership had this attitude toward King: “We must mark him now as the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation.”

King’s close friendship with attorney/accountant Stanley Levison, who got to know King through Jones, also made King a target of Hoover’s Communist-hating FBI because Levison was a known Communist associate. As Garrow explains it in the documentary, the FBI went to then-U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) and then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy Jr. (JFK) to warn the two brothers about King’s ties to Levison. RFK then advised King to distance himself from Levison, and King agreed.

But in reality, the FBI found out through surveillance that King still secretly kept in touch with Levison. The FBI took this information back to RFK as “proof” that King couldn’t be trusted. RFK then authorized the wiretaps of King. But what started out as surveillance of King as a perceived “Communist threat” turned into something much more personal when the FBI discovered that King was a serial cheater in his marriage.

The FBI surveillance wasn’t the only way that the FBI dug up dirt on King. The FBI also paid informants who were either part of King’s inner circle or had regular close access to King. It’s explained that because FBI agents at the time were almost all white men who couldn’t go undercover as black people, the FBI used black people as informants to get other inside information on King. Two of the African American informants named in the documentary are photojournalist Ernest Withers and SCLC comptroller Jim Harrison. None of this is new information, since it was reported decades ago.

The documentary also chronicles how the FBI’s vendetta against King went public when Hoover ignited a feud with King in 1964, when he told reporters at a press conference in Washington, D.C., that King was “the most notorious liar in the country.” King then offered to meet with Hoover to try to sort out their differences. That closed-door meeting, which was the first and only time that King and Hoover met in person, was described as “very friendly” by King in the documentary’s archival footage of King being surrounded by reporters after coming out of the meeting.

However “friendly” that meeting might have been, it didn’t stop the FBI surveillance, and King continued to speak out and protest against racial injustice. And he also took up the cause of the anti-Vietnam War movement. LBJ was King’s ally until King began speaking out against the Vietnam War.

It’s pointed out in the documentary that in 1965, King had abided by LBJ’s request to stay publicly silent about the Vietnam War. King heeded that request until 1967, when he saw a photo spread in Ramparts magazine that had graphically gruesome photos of Vietnamese people (particularly children) who were bombing victims in the war. Footage of King’s famous 1967 anti-Vietnam War speech at Riverside Church in New York City is included in the documentary.

King was assassinated shortly after he announced the Poor People’s Campaign protests to march near government buildings and demand more resources for financially disadvantaged people. A longtime criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested and convicted of the murder, but some of the documentary’s pundits imply that Ray was not someone who acted alone to plan this heinous crime.

In addition to a wealth of archival visual footage (which naturally includes King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington), “MLK/FBI” also includes snippets of audio recordings that were secret at the time. There’s an undated audio clip of a conversation between LBJ and an unidentified FBI agent. In the conversation, LBJ says he’s being pressured to attend a dinner in New York with King, and he wonders if he should still go. The FBI agent advises LBJ not to attend the dinner. (The clip doesn’t say which dinner this was, so viewers won’t know if LBJ actually did attend or not.)

For some added pop-culture context, “MLK/FBI” also includes clips from the 1959 movie “The FBI Story” (starring James Stewart as a loyal FBI agent) and the 1948 film “Walk a Crooked Mile,” starring Dennis O’Keefe as a crusading FBI agent who teams up with a Scotland Yard detective to track down Communists. These clips are used in “MLK/FBI” to contrast the heroic images of FBI agents in entertainment media with the sinister reality of what the FBI was doing behind the scenes to King.

Several of the people interviewed in “MLK/FBI” say that the real motive to make King a target of FBI surveillance wasn’t because he was a threat to U.S. democracy but because he was a threat to white supremacy. After all, King preached non-violence and he was definitely not a Communist. King’s colleague Young says in the documentary: “In a very emotional and volatile environment, it was very important for us to come across as reasonable, sane and patriotic—because we were. We just wanted America to be what America said it was supposed to be.” Tragically, King was murdered for these beliefs, but his civil rights legacy continues to live on.

IFC Films released “MLK/FBI” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on January 15, 2021.