At a moment when the personal lives of artists and celebrities are being placed under the spotlight as almost never before, the secret life of Martin Luther King Jr. now seems like more than the disquieting semi-submerged footnote it once did. It’s long been public knowledge that King, during most of the time of his leadership (which began in 1955, with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and ended with his death, on April 4, 1968), had many adulterous affairs, and that the FBI, starting in 1963, put him under surveillance, surreptitiously recording hours and hours of King with his mistresses and other women in hotel rooms. How does this reality affect our perception of King’s greatness as a leader?