Back in the 1960s when the world was a lot more racist place than it is today (though perhaps not by that much), the FBI under then-director J. Edgar Hoover was on a hardcore campaign to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

A Yale historian recently unearthed one of the more screwed up letters the FBI sent King and it’s been doing the rounds again as it was MLK Day in the US yesterday. It’s quite poorly written, and it’s believed this was on purpose so that no one would suspect it came from a place of authority.

Here it is:

So while they don’t implicitly tell him to take his own life, it’s definitely suggested with the phrase “there is only one thing left for you to do”.

Here’s the speech they were trying to stop MLK from making: