WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond and his staff tried to get the FBI to build a case against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 on the grounds that he was “controlled by communists.”

Thurmond’s efforts are documented in a memo, part of his recently released FBI file. The memo shows the late senator’s attempt to marry two causes dear to him — fighting communism and defeating civil rights.

On Monday, the FBI released the first installment of Thurmond’s FBI file — nearly 600 pages of sometimes heavily-edited memos, letters and other documents. The documents detail a long, secret and mutually beneficial relationship between Thurmond and the FBI. An additional 1,700 pages remain to be released.

Thurmond was not the only conservative politician who tried to paint the civil rights movement’s leaders as “red.”

But the memo plumbs the depths of Thurmond’s aversion to desegregation. And with other pages in the now-public FBI file, it shows how much of Thurmond’s politics was dedicated to fighting the “Red Menace.”

Thurmond, an iconic figure in Southern political history and an ardent segregationist who later publicly embraced his black constituents, was willing to go to great lengths to vilify King in the 1960s.

The Sept. 15, 1965, memo, written by Cartha “Deke” DeLoach, a top deputy to then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, recounts a meeting in the senator’s office that was supposed to include Thurmond, but at which he was represented by aides.

One Thurmond aide, according to the FBI memo, said Thurmond wanted King to be exposed as a communist. DeLoach’s memo recounts the aide “stated that it was widely understood that King was controlled by communists in this country.”

The aide, whose name the FBI has edited out of the memo, also reportedly asked DeLoach “if there was a concerted effort on the part of the FBI to discredit King.”

DeLoach wrote he responded that “such matters were beyond our jurisdiction.”

It was later revealed that the FBI indeed had tried to discredit King by secretly wiretapping his telephone and leaking the information to reporters and others.

At the meeting, the aide also showed DeLoach recent newspaper clippings in which Thurmond had criticized King for “injecting himself into matters of foreign policy at the United Nations.”

Those same clippings, DeLoach wrote, criticized Arthur Goldberg, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for meeting with King.

S.C. NAACP vice president Joe Darby said Tuesday that those who opposed the civil rights movement tried to label its activists as communists.

“That was a very dirty word to get folks stirred up,” he said. Many blacks were intimidated into silence, he said, because they knew standing up for their rights could invite the charge.

Today, Darby said, it is hard for people to realize how inflammatory the word “communist” was, but “it made sense to the white South in the 1960s.”

“It was not a matter of logic; it was a matter of gut reaction.”

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

Dan Carter, a nationally known civil rights historian at USC, attests to the power of the “communist” smear upon the civil rights movement.

“As late as 1962 or 1963, a majority of Americans actually believed that communists were involved or were instigators of the civil rights movement,” he said.

Moreover, he said, the segregationist White Citizens Councils — in their appeals to Northerners — stressed the supposed communist leanings of civil rights workers rather than segregation.

“The segregationists played the anti-communist card,” Carter said. “It was the one card they could deal to both Northerners and Southerners.”

The FBI never conclusively found King was a communist, Carter said. But it tried to link him to communists by saying he associated with them or had ties to organizations that included communists.

Nevertheless, Thurmond biographer Jack Bass said, Hoover “no doubt was a source of Strom Thurmond’s belief that Martin Luther King Jr. was heavily influenced by communists.”

The 1965 memo says DeLoach expressed to Thurmond’s aide an unwillingness to take up the senator’s suggestion.

Instead, DeLoach advised the staffer that it was “the prerogative of any of the senators” to “expose” King, but they should “do their homework well.”

Asked for advice on how to proceed against King, DeLoach recalled himself warning that Thurmond, as a Southerner, “would no doubt be considered subject to bias and suspicion in any statements he might make.”

The Thurmond aide, according to DeLoach, also said the senator would like to meet with DeLoach personally on the matter. Records released by the FBI to date do not indicate whether that meeting ever took place.

Historian Carter wonders if DeLoach told the Thurmond aides more than the memo indicates. It was common practice in the FBI, he said, to write memos in such a way “that nothing could come back to bite you.”

COMPLICATED PICTURE

The memo makes clear Thurmond’s dislike of King. But the senator’s admirers of today ask that his actions be considered not only in the context of the times — but also in the context of Thurmond’s changing record on race.

It is a complicated picture. In his 1947 inaugural address as governor of South Carolina, Thurmond — widely considered a progressive — urged whites to improve black schools.

His tack soon changed. In 1948, he ran for president on the segregationist States Rights Party ticket, promising to fight for separate schools, churches and swimming pools for blacks and whites.

But Thurmond, who set records as the longest-serving and oldest senator in history, charted a new course in the 1970s. In 1971, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black aide.

In 1983, Thurmond voted to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday.

He died, at 100, in June 2003. On Monday, 600 pages of his FBI file, including the memo regarding King and communism, were released by the FBI.

State Sen. John Courson, R-Richland, a longtime Thurmond friend and supporter, said Thurmond’s criticism of King must be understood from the vantage of the 1960s.

The senator and many other Americans were genuinely concerned about the spread of communism, Courson said.

In the 1940s and 1950s, eastern Europe and China turned communist. The Iron Curtain went up, restricting movement in Europe. Communist North Korea invaded South Korea.

In the United States, the spy trial of State Department official Alger Hiss, the selling of secret hydrogen bomb plans to the Soviet Union, and the hearings of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy into communism in the State Department provoked widespread fear.

“One didn’t know whether one’s next-door neighbor was a Marxist or not,” Courson said.

In hindsight, he said, it is not legitimate to link the civil rights movement with communism. He wants Thurmond remembered for — among other things — his efforts to reach out to blacks in the decades after the civil rights movement.

UNSPOKEN ASSUMPTIONS

The tactic of smearing advocates of racial equality with the communist label has its roots in the pre-Civil War South, said College of Charleston history professor Bernard Powers.

In those days of slavery, he said, whites feared Northern abolitionists and would say such things as, “If it were not for these outside agitators, our blacks would be tranquil and life in the South would go on as normal.”

“Someone like Strom Thurmond is not consciously thinking about abolition,” Powers continued, “but there were unspoken assumptions that were passed along to those who attempted to undermine the civil rights movement.”

In the 1920s and 1930s, American communists were outspoken in saying white supremacy was wrong. In the early 1930s, communists provided lawyers to help blacks charged with rape in the notorious Scottsboro case in Alabama.

But mid-century, communists lost influence as the civil rights movement gained strength on its own. Blacks became wary of associating with communists. They didn’t need communists to tell them that segregation was wrong, Powers said.

“If people hadn’t been afraid to speak up, they might have spoken up earlier. They might have been more aggressive.”

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com Reach Monk at (803) 771-8344 or jmonk@thestate.com