FBI To Martin Luther King: 'You Filthy Animal'

A letter sent to Martin Luther King Jr calls the civil rights leader a "filthy, abnormal animal" and urges him to commit suicide.

While the existence of the letter was known, and some of its parts had been revealed, The New York Times has published the full text of the letter for the first time.

"Listen to yourself, you filthy, abnormal animal," it says, at other points calling Rev King an "evil, abnormal beast" and a "dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile."

The note, dating to about 50 years ago, is anonymous.

But Beverly Cage, an American history professor at Yale who uncovered the letter during research in the National Archives, wrote in the newspaper that Rev King was "certain" the letter had come from the FBI.

"Its infamous director, J Edgar Hoover, made no secret of his desire to see King discredited."

The type-written note, known as the "suicide letter", threatens to expose Rev King as an adulterer.

"You will find yourself in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time," the letter said, accusing him of engaging in "sexual orgies".

The note appears to be written with deliberately ungrammatical sentences and typos.

"You will find on the record for all time your filthy, dirty, evil companions, male and females giving expression with you to your hideous (sic) abnormalities."

The note ends with an appeal to Rev King to kill himself.

“There is but one way out for you," it said.

"You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

The letter was believed to have been devised shortly before Rev King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The human rights leader was assassinated in 1968.