On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War . Declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King described the war’s deleterious effects on both America’s poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through nonviolent means (King, “Beyond Vietnam,” 139).
King’s anti-war sentiments emerged publicly for the first time in March 1965, when King declared that “millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold troops in South Viet Nam and our country cannot protect the rights of Negroes in Selma” (King, 9 March 1965). King told reporters on Face the Nation that as a minister he had “a prophetic function” and as “one greatly concerned about the need for peace in our world and the survival of mankind, I must continue to take a stand on this issue” (King, 29 August 1965). In a version of the “Transformed Nonconformist” sermon given in January 1966 at Ebenezer Baptist Church , King voiced his own opposition to the Vietnam War, describing American aggression as a violation of the 1954 Geneva Accord that promised self-determination.
In early 1967 King stepped up his anti-war proclamations, giving similar speeches in Los Angeles and Chicago. The Los Angeles speech, called “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,” stressed the history of the conflict and argued that American power should be “harnessed to the service of peace and human beings, not an inhumane power [unleashed] against defenseless people” (King, 25 February 1967).
On 4 April, accompanied by Amherst College Professor Henry Commager, Union Theological Seminary President John Bennett, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel , at an event sponsored by Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam , King spoke to over 3,000 at New York’s Riverside Church. The speech was drafted from a collection of volunteers, including Spelman professor Vincent Harding and Wesleyan professor John Maguire. King’s address emphasized his responsibility to the American people and explained that conversations with young black men in the ghettos reinforced his own commitment to nonviolence .
King followed with an historical sketch outlining Vietnam’s devastation at the hands of “deadly Western arrogance,” noting, “we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor” (King, “Beyond Vietnam,” 146; 153). To change course, King suggested a five point outline for stopping the war, which included a call for a unilateral ceasefire. To King, however, the Vietnam War was only the most pressing symptom of American colonialism worldwide. King claimed that America made “peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments” (King, “Beyond Vietnam,” 157). King urged instead “a radical revolution of values” emphasizing love and justice rather than economic nationalism (King, “Beyond Vietnam,” 157).
The immediate response to King’s speech was largely negative. Both the Washington Post and New York Times published editorials criticizing the speech, with the Post noting that King’s speech had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people” through a simplistic and flawed view of the situation (“A Tragedy,” 6 April 1967). Similarly, both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Ralph Bunche accused King of linking two disparate issues, Vietnam and civil rights. Despite public criticism, King continued to attack the Vietnam War on both moral and economic grounds.
Branch, At Canaan’s Edge , 2006.
“Dr. King’s Error,” New York Times , 7 April 1967.
King, “Beyond Vietnam,” 4 April 1967, NNRC .
King, “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,” 25 February 1967, CLPAC .
King, Interview on Face the Nation , 29 August 1965, RRML-TxTyU .
King, Statement on voter registration in Alabama, 9 March 1965, MLKJP-GAMK .
King, Transformed Nonconformist, Sermon Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, 16 January 1966, CSKC .
“A Tragedy,” Washington Post , 6 April 1967.
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The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech
Dr. Benjamin Spock (2nd-L), Martin Luther King, Jr. (C), Father Frederick Reed and Cleveland Robinson lead a huge pacifist rally protesting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, Mar. 16, 1967 in New York. AFP/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it.
PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports . Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel.
By the time King made the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, Smiley tells host Neal Conan, "he had fallen off already the list of most-admired Americans as tallied by Gallup every year." Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. It was the speech he labored over the most."
After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." Not only that, but then-President Lyndon Johnson disinvited King to the White House. "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done."
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Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ Speech
On the evening of April 4, 1967, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King lent his full-throated oratory to a growing chorus of opposition to the rapidly expanding American role in the Vietnam War . King’s sharp rebuke of U.S. policy and call to protest brought him into direct conflict with President Lyndon B. Johnson , who was an ally of King’s in the struggle for equal rights for African Americans.
From the pulpit of New York’s Riverside Church, King eloquently speaks of breaking “the betrayal of my own silences” and goes on to reveal the “seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.”
With this pivotal address, the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner sought to bridge the movement for civil rights and justice to the antiwar movements: “I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission—a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for ‘the brotherhood of man.’”
One year later, April 4, 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis.
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Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar
Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on his back. That speech, entitled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break The Silence , was an unequivocal denunciation of America’s involvement in that Southeast Asian conflict.
The speech began conventionally. King thanked his hosts, the antiwar group Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. But he left little doubt about his position when he quoted from the organization’s statement.
“…I found myself in full accord when I read (the statement’s) opening lines: 'A time comes when silence is betrayal,’ “ King told the crowd gathered at Riverside Baptist Church in New York.
He indicated that his commitment to non-violence left him little choice. “…I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government.”
King had given an antiwar speech in February 1967. But that sentiment was often described as pro-Communist in an America that was in the midst of the Cold War. So King spoke again two months later, to ensure his position was clear.
In the April speech, King carefully laid out the history of the nation’s involvement in Vietnam. He started at 1945, when Vietnam's prime minister Ho Chi Minh overthrew the French and Japanese. He carried his audience through American support for France’s effort to regain its former colony, and for Vietnam’s dictatorial first president Premier Ngo Dinh Diem, assassinated in 1963. Through it all, King noted, America sent more and more soldiers to Vietnam.
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"The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. … Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy, " he said.
King also accused increasing military costs of taking money from domestic programs meant to fight poverty and racism. Instead, he said, young black men "crippled by our society" were being sent "eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they have not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."
In the decades since his assassination, the speech has all but disappeared from the public consciousness. His career is almost solely represented by the the last half of the 1963 I Have A Dream speech, delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in which King anticipated a world where content of character matter more than skin color.
In 1967, however, Beyond Vietnam ignited an uproar.
In its April 7 editorial “Dr. King’s Error,” The New York Times lambasted King for fusing two problems that are “distinct and separate.”
“The strategy of uniting the peace movement and civil rights could very well be disastrous for both causes,” the paper said. Similar criticism came from the black press as well as from the NAACP.
“He created a firestorm ... of criticism,” said Clarence B. Jones, King’s adviser and the speechwriter who helped shape the iconic Dream speech. Jones is now a diversity professor at the University of San Francisco, and a scholar-in-residence at Stanford University's Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
“People were saying, ‘Well you know you’re a civil rights leader, mind your own business. Talk about what you know about.’”
But King did not see himself as a civil rights leader at all, according to Clayborne Carson, who directs the institute. Carson is also a professor of history at Stanford University.
“…I think Rosa Parks recruited him to be that,” Carson said. “Had he not been in Montgomery in 1955 (for the bus boycott), he would have not become a civil rights leader; he would have certainly become a social gospel minister. He was already that.”
King articulated his commitment to social justice issues while a graduate student at Crozer Theological Seminary in the late 1940s. His stated concerns included unemployment and economic insecurity, not race relations.
King made good on that commitment in 1966, when he joined forces with local Chicago activists to fight for fair housing. But black churches refused to work with him, so he set up headquarters at an integrated West Side church, Warren Avenue Congregational Church.
“I think (the black churches) were scared of the (Richard J.) Daley administration and the political machine,” said Prexy Nesbitt , a long-time activist who worked with King. He now teaches African history at Columbia College in Chicago.
In Chicago, and later in Detroit, King was challenged by younger activists who mocked his insistence on nonviolence at home while American soldiers were killing thousands in Vietnam.
By the time of the Riverside speech, it had taken King two years to become an outspoken critic of the war. Doing so would destroy his relationship with President Lyndon Johnson, who was widely revered for pushing through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in 1964 and 1965.
“Had there been some way of carrying on the Vietnam War without having any cost to domestic programs, (King) might have maintained his silence,” Carson said.
The aftermath of the speech and the mounting opposition took a personal toll on King. Nesbitt saw King in 1968 and was struck by his changed demeanor.
“What I saw was a person who was more aware of the world situation, most of all Vietnam, and the forces of mal-intent that were mobilized and mobilizing against him.”
Almost 50 years later, Nesbitt is convinced the speech was the final straw for people who were determined to kill King, who was ultimately shot to death by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
“The racists were saying, ‘That going too far. Now he’s gonna tell us how to run our country. Who does he think he is?’ ” Nesbitt said.
Carson doesn’t think the speech directly caused King’s death. But he thinks it was a factor in a fate that was “already determined.”
“There were a lot people who preferred that (King) be dead," Carson said. "If they wouldn’t bring it about, they certainly weren’t disturbed by it. My feeling is that King would not have survived the ‘60s in any case.”
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City
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The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.
Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam?
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.
Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the aged.
. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
Now there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.
Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them -- the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.
When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:
."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet 'tis truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong: Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own.
The World Future Fund serves as a source of documentary material, reading lists and internet links from different points of view that we believe have historical significance. For a more detailed statement of our publications standards .
world affairs
The MLK Speech We Need Today Is Not the One We Remember Most
M ost Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr. for his dream of what this country could be, a nation where his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” While those words from 1963 are necessary, his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” from 1967, is actually the more insightful one.
It is also a much more dangerous and disturbing speech, which is why far fewer Americans have heard of it. And yet it is the speech that we needed to hear then–and need to hear today.
In 1963, many in the U.S. had only just begun to be aware of events in Vietnam. By 1967, the war was near its peak, with about 500,000 American soldiers in Vietnam. The U.S. would drop more explosives on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia than it did on all of Europe during World War II, and the news brought vivid images depicting the carnage inflicted on Southeast Asian civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom would die. It was in this context that King called the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
Many of King’s civil rights allies discouraged him from going public with his antiwar views, believing that he should prioritize the somewhat less controversial domestic concerns of African Americans and the poor. But for King, standing against racial and economic inequality also demanded a recognition that those problems were inseparable from the military-industrial complex and capitalism itself. King saw “the war as an enemy of the poor,” as young black men were sent to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”
What King understood was that the war was destroying not only the character of the U.S. but also the character of its soldiers. Ironically, it also managed to create a kind of American racial equality in Vietnam, as black and white soldiers stood “in brutal solidarity” against the Vietnamese. But if they were fighting what King saw as an unjust war, then they, too, were perpetrators of injustice, even if they were victims of it at home. For American civilians, the uncomfortable reality was that the immorality of an unjust war corrupted the entire country. “If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned,” King said, “part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.”
In his speech, which he delivered exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated, King foresaw how the war implied something larger about the nation. It was, he said, “but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality … we will find ourselves organizing ‘clergy and laymen concerned’ committees for the next generation … unless there is a significant and profound change in American life.”
King’s prophecy connects the war in Vietnam with our forever wars today, spread across multiple countries and continents, waged without end from global military bases numbering around 800. Some of the strategy for our forever war comes directly from lessons that the American military learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombing; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees; censorship of gruesome images from the battlefronts; and encouraging the reverence of soldiers.
You can draw a line from the mantras of “thank you for your service” and “support our troops” to American civilian regret about not having supported American troops during the war in Vietnam. This sentimental hero worship actually serves civilians as much as the military. If our soldiers can be absolved of any unjust taint, then the public who support them is absolved too. Standing in solidarity with our multicultural, diverse military prevents us from seeing what they might be doing to other people overseas and insulates us from the most dangerous part about King’s speech: a sense of moral outrage that was not limited by the borders of nation, class or race but sought to transcend them.
What made King truly radical was his desire to act on this empathy for people not like himself, neither black nor American. For him, there was “no meaningful solution” to the war without taking into account Vietnamese people, who were “the voiceless ones.” Recognizing their suffering from far away, King connected it with the intimate suffering of African Americans at home. The African-American struggle to liberate black people found a corollary in the struggle of Vietnamese people against foreign domination. It was therefore a bitter irony that African Americans might be used to suppress the freedom of others, to participate in, as King put it, “the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.”
Americans prefer to see our wars as exercises in protecting and expanding freedom and democracy. To suggest that we might be fighting for capitalism is too disturbing for many Americans. But King said “that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we … must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin … the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” Those words, and their threat to the powerful, still apply today. For the powerful, the only thing more frightening than one revolution is when multiple revolutions find common cause.
The revolution that King called for is still unrealized, while the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism” are still working in brutal, efficient solidarity. He overlooked how misogyny was also an evil, but perhaps, if he had lived, he would have learned from his own philosophy about connecting what seems unconnected, about recognizing those who are unrecognized. Too many of today’s politicians, pundits and activists are satisfied with relying on one-dimensional solutions, arguing that class-based solutions alone can solve economic inequality, or that identity-based approaches are enough to alleviate racial inequality.
King argued for an ever expanding moral solidarity that would include those we think of as the enemy: “Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view … For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”
This was the dream of King’s that I prefer–the vision of a difficult and ever expanding kinship, extending not only to those whom we consider near and dear, but also to the far and the feared.
Nguyen is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer . His latest collection is The Refugees
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Beyond Vietnam: 40th Anniversary of King’s Landmark Antiwar Speech
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Martin Luther King
Pacifica Radio Archives
Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King gave the speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered. He was speaking at the Riverside Church here in New York. King billed the speech as a declaration of independence from the war and called the United States: “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” [includes rush transcript]
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JUAN GONZALEZ : Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King gave the speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was murdered. He was speaking at the Riverside Church here in New York. King billed the speech as a declaration of independence from the war and called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” And The Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”
We turn now to that speech that King gave in April 1967.
REV . MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war and set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under the new regime, which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task: while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment, we must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.
These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
Now, there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
AMY GOODMAN : Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., giving his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church. It was April 4, 1967, 40 years ago today. A year later, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam”
Film clip. Voices of a People’s History. Dramatic reading of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” (1967) speech by Michael Ealy.
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Civil rights and anti-war activist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. Some civil rights leaders urged King not to speak out on the Vietnam War, but he said he could not separate issues of economic injustice, racism, war, and militarism. (The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had issued a statement against the Vietnam War the year before after the murder of Sammy Younge Jr.)
Dr. King’s speech was performed by Michael Ealy , February 1, 2007, at All Saints Church, Pasadena, California. Ealy reads from Voices of a People’s History of the United States edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.
Here is an excerpt:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death….
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain …”
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter-but beautiful-struggle for a new world. — Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967
More video clips can be found at the Voices of a People’s History website and in the film The People Speak .
Related Resources
A Revolution of Values
Teaching Activity. By Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 3 pages. Text of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War, followed by three teaching ideas.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Radical Vision
Teaching Activity. By Craig Gordon, Urban Dreams, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project. 2003, updated in 2017. Lesson to introduce students to the speeches and work of Dr. King beyond “I have a dream.”
Jan. 3, 1966: Sammy Younge Jr. Murdered
Samuel Younge Jr., Navy vet, Tuskegee student, activist was killed in Alabama for using a “whites-only” bathroom. SNCC issued a powerful statement about his murder and in opposition to the Vietnam War.
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Most appropriate for today’s society. A true visionary.
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Martin Luther King Jr. Online
In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out harshly against the war in Vietnam. His speech "Beyond Vietnam" was condemned by many civil rights leaders who thought it hurt their cause. It incensed President Lyndon Johnson, who revoked King's invitation to the White House. "The calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak," said King. "We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."
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A Reflection on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” Speech
April 25, 2017
Peace & Nonviolence
Join us this Thursday, May 4, at Arts Riot in Burlington for this Community Reading. More details below.
One of Martin Luther King Jr.’s lesser known yet equally impactful speeches, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” condemns the violence and atrocities committed by the U.S against the Vietnamese in their foolish bid to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. He highlights the intricacies and parallels of the war waged in Vietnam and against the poor in the U.S as one reflected in the interactions between the three threats facing democracy — racism, classism, and militarism. The world’s strongest and largest military claiming aggression from a poor small country on the other side of the world and their continuous assault of defenseless Vietnamese villagers reads as bleak irony. He goes as far as to declare the U.S government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, with such anti-American and anti-military sentiments later eroding his reputation and receiving widespread criticism, accusations of communist affiliation, and even mental instability.
He spoke to the hypocrisy of the American government; a nation defined by its commitment to freedom and independence yet contradictory in its support of France’s quest to reclaim their former colony. He emphasizes the imbalance of casualties felt by either side of the war, citing hospitals in Vietnam overcrowded with those injured from American firepower rather than the enemy Viet Cong, or National Liberation Front. Questioning the morality of sustaining an unjust war, he called for a unilateral ceasefire from all fronts and a massive upheaval of the American values praising the cause for war.
Giving a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam as well as the often ignored American poor even at the risk of losing most of his popular support struck a chord with me. In calling out the contradictory actions of his own government, he exposed flaws within what we as Americans prioritize over livable wages, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and equal opportunity transcending class, race, and gender. His condemnation of the ever-expanding military industrial complex rings true, especially in today’s political climate with President Trump’s proposed $54 billion increase to military spending at the expense of the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department, and numerous welfare and aid programs. Beyond Vietnam and continuing today, Martin Luther King’s urgent call to action for social change through nonviolence lives on.
by Kira Nemeth, PJC Programming Intern
Stand Against Racism Community Reading of MLK Speech: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”
Join the Peace & Justice Center as we collaborate with the YWCA, and Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee as part of nationwide events that each group is hosting. We will share a community reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech just after its 50th anniversary. One year before his assassination, Dr. King eloquently (and controversially) linked together the struggles for peace in Vietnam and for economic and racial justice at home. $15.00 Suggested Donation, no one turned away for lack of money.
5:30pm: Doors Open, Supper and Cash Bar 6:30pm: Opening Remarks and Reading 7:30pm: Coffee and Dessert
ArtsRiot, 400 Pine St, Burlington
More info on facebook .
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An Analysis of Martin Luther King Jr’s Beyond Vietnam
Martin luther king jr. builds an argument to persuade his audience that american involvement in the vietnam war is unjust..
Read a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King Jr’s Beyond Vietnam: Time to break silence.
Apart from being an advocate of Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence , Martin Luther King Jr was a great leader and rhetor of all times. While his I Have a Dream speech is considered his best one, his other speeches too offer a glimpse of his powerful rhetoric and his art of persuasion. However, the persuasiveness of his speeches does not come solely from his ability to connect with his audience’s emotions but from an extraordinary ability to reason and validate his point. King Jr delivered his “ Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence ” in 1967 in NewYork City. In his speech on the meaninglessness of the Vietnam war and to persuade the audience to listen to its own conscience rather than to conform to the idea of war in the name of patriotism, King Jr draws from the realms of economy, society, polity as well as religion and philosophy. To help his audience see that Vietnam is only madness, a wastage of resources and an ignorance of more pressing concerns, King once again affirms that war was never a means of peace. He includes various perspectives and addresses several counterarguments with the intention to prove the futility of war as a tool to address social, economic and political problems. He evaluates the psychological as well as social, political and economic implications of America’s participation in Vietnam war. King’s main motive was to persuade people to see how war was destroying lives, society and economy and being silent meant being in approval of the war. War was an inhuman and barbaric exercise and America’s participation was not in human interest.
Apart from drawing a parallel between the situation in Vietnam and America, he shows neither stood to gain from it. The war was only going to consume lives and resources. In this way, he condemns and questions the Vietnam war and its relevance at a time when America had several of its own major problems to address. He also affirms that people have better options and that the idea of war, despite that it sounds patriotic is basically inhuman. In this way, he appeals to the emotions of the audience and challenges the logic behind an unnecessary war. King Jr knew that war creates confusion and that his audience’s mind was boggled with questions. Some would be uninterested and some not knowing what to do. However, all wanted clarity on the subject. It is why he constructs an argument that will help people decide which side to stand with and which to not. He tries to make people see the other side of the picture where both black and white men were being pushed into hell without considering and questioning the outcome.
King successfully brings out the irony behind the war through the use of figurative speech and plenty of imagery to paint a picture of destruction and doom in Vietnam. Apart from the use of ethos, pathos and logos in his speech, he builds a rock solid argument by involving religious figures and facts from history and philosophy. He repeatedly stresses upon breaking the silence because in this situation being silent was a sin. To make his claims stand out and have a deeper impact, he uses instances from Vietnamese history to show the level of injustice faced by its people how war has destabilized them. In this way, he personifies war as a demon that consumes people’s lives and a nation’s valuable resources which would otherwise be happy if it was not being ruined by bombs and bullets. War makes the innocent lose hope and leaves behind horrific memories for generations on both sides. He quotes Langston Hughes, in his speech to establish a connection between the struggle for civil liberty in United States and the oppression in Vietnam. Just like the people of America, the Vietnamese also have a right to live free on the lands of their fathers.
Right at the outset, King involves religious figures to establish the credibility for his reason and to prove that war was improper and inhuman. He says, “ And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us ”. The war with Vietnam was just as unjust as unnecessary.
Both religion and society condemn war and even popular religious figures have stood up to speak against it for the toll it takes upon human lives and for it is against the spirit of humanity and brotherhood. To further strengthen, the credibility of his argument and question the morality behind the war, he says, “ Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America ”. In this way, while he successfully draws a parallel between the struggles of Vietnamese people and that of the Americans, he also lays the foundation for the next stages of his argument.
To construct a clear and strong picture and show how condemnable the war exercises in Vietnam were, King compared it with an arena of gladiators which even if it amuses and engages, is something absolutely animal and barbaric. He notes, “ as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube ”. In this way, he tries to stress that even if we have progressed, we have grown nowhere better than the ancient barbarians that killed for fun. He calls the situation “some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war”. His speech grows deeply sarcastic at times. He does it to engage people’s imagination and to awaken their consciences. This is an attempt to connect with the audience’s emotions and prove that the war was imposed on them and even if politicians call it patriotic, society and people would never love war. Moreover, it is the poor and the helpless mainly who are falling prey to this war game.
The war according to King Jr. is nothing more than a political game played for the sake of fun and ego. America is overlooking its own poor and pouring resources into a war which does not offer any political, economic or social advantage. It is just a continuation of the regimes that have been trying to oppress the Vietnamese. The irony is explicit in King’s words that the war is just an attempt to cover and hide the more pressing issues before America. The idea of nonviolence is much larger than ordinary people see. It encompasses all humanity and not just America. So, what America is doing to other nations like Vietnam also matters. The problems being faced by either America or Vietnam were never going to be solved through rifles but through peaceful and nonviolent action. King also links the issue to the question of America’s integrity. To get his point through and make the meaning clear, King uses phrases like “break the silence of the night”, “a vocation of agony”, ‘based upon the mandates of conscience’, ‘deeper level of awareness’. His choice of words in the speech is meant to have a direct effect on the audience’s psychology. However, his words while they aim to bring the pain of the Vietnamese alive before the audience also include a request that a progressive nation should stand with humanity and not lose control of its feelings.
The persuasive techniques utilized by King Jr are aimed at making people think over the outcomes of Vietnam war and if it was not against America’s integrity. He means to make people ask questions of themselves and ponder over the meaninglessness and uselessness of war and what would remain behind once the war was over. While his words clearly deliver his disappointment over the path American government had chosen, it also expresses a clear intention to not be with the wrong and instead listen to one’s inner voice. However, his speech is not filled entirely with only emotionally charged words and phrases or just with pictures of war and destruction or poverty. Instead, King chooses to use facts to show what an illness war is. He picks from history as well as politics and also supports his choices with philosophical wisdom. The American intervention came at a time when the Vietnamese were expecting freedom and peaceful life and it came in a manner that was even devastating compared to the French occupation. This makes the irony explicit and that Vietnam being a smaller and weaker nation was being made to face injustice which it never deserved or desired. His use of imagery and diction is aimed at making people break their silence and express their anger clearly.
Apart from highlighting the wicked nature of the war, King Jr ‘s speech also sets the urgency for protest. He notes how essential it is to break silence before all hope is lost. He expresses his anguish at seeing people of Vietnam and America suffer and also notes that if American folks do not break their silence they stand to lose much more than their opponents. King Jr makes a strong statement against war and his speech successfully evokes compassion and sympathy for the poor and the weak in both Vietnam and America. As he notes towards the end of his speech, “ If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood “. His speech emphasizes at transitioning from war to peace and from violence to a nonviolent and peaceful society. It is why while he attacks America’s intervention in Vietnam on the one hand, on the other he brings people’s attention towards the other side of life where America can become a beacon of hope and peace for the entire world including Vietnam. In his argument, King mounts a multi-pronged attack on America’s participation in the Vietnam war and also gains people’s sympathy for the Vietnamese. His choice of diction and use of imagery help him deliver his point effectively in a manner that impresses both the audience’s heart and mind.
Rhetorical Analysis of Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam: a Time to Break Silence”
In Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence” (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. Dr. King’s purpose is to make the church leaders he is speaking to aware that the time has come for them to speak out loudly in opposition of the war in Vietnam. He offers many practical reasons for the opposition, as well as spiritual and moral reasons.
He then outlines the history of the war in Vietnam, showing that he is not simply preaching about religious ideals. He also makes an emotional plea by vividly describing the conditions in Vietnam. Dr. King plainly states his purpose near the beginning of his speech. It is clear that he wants the audience of church leaders to go back to their churches and fearlessly speak out in opposition of the war. With an urgent tone, he repeats the phrase, “we must speak…” (4), several times. This use of repetitive language conveys urgency and shows that he deeply believes the churches may influence the government if they speak against the war.
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He does not want the church leaders to simply listen to his message. He wants them to go back to their churches and spread the message. Dr. King says, “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war” (3). This demonstrates to the audience that he realizes it is going to be difficult for them to speak out in opposition of the government. It is not typical for churches to do so. However, he is about to arm them with many valid reasons why it is crucial for them to join the opposition.
His first reasons are all about practicality. Dr. King says that the war is draining valuable resources that could be helping the poor in our own country. He specifically mentions a poverty program that was looking promising before the United States became involved in Vietnam. “Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war…”(8). War is expensive. This is a logical fact with which no one can argue.
He also says the war is further crippling the poor in the United States by sending a disproportional number of them to the front lines to die. These arguments work because they point out that even though the war is not happening on our soil, it is having a devastating effect here, especially in poor areas where people cannot afford to be hindered any more than they already are. For these practical and logical reasons, the church should join the opposition. Then Dr. King says that the church should oppose the war simply because it is counter to the ministry of Jesus Christ.
He says, “To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war” (12). This is an obvious and extremely effective argument, especially among a group of Christian church leaders. Dr. King genuinely believes that the war is in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ and therefore the church must speak out in a united voice against it. Dr. King includes a brief, but poignant history of the war in Vietnam which is important because he needs to prove that he knows and understands the politics of the situation.
He successfully proves that The United States has done far more harm to the Vietnamese than good. If he had not shown knowledge of the background of the war, it would be easy to dismiss his other pleas as lofty religious ideals. Dr. King further discredits the United States’ intentions in Vietnam by comparing us to Germany in World War II saying, “What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? ” (21). This comparison is very sobering.
Nothing could be lower than being placed parallel to the senseless violence of Nazi Germany. Showing his knowledge of the history of the war and using it to discredit the United States’ reason for being there is crucial to Dr. King in developing his position. Perhaps the most convincing part of the speech is the emotional appeal. Dr. King paints a vivid, heart-wrenching picture of the devastation in Vietnam. In a solemn tone, he talks about their crops being destroyed and their water being poisoned, presumably referring to Agent Orange.
He talks about the innocent people killed in the crossfire, mostly children. “They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals” (20). Nothing evokes a more emotional response than the image of children suffering or being killed. These emotionally charged images would seemingly convince anyone that the cause for this war could not possibly be just. All of Dr. King’s arguments are very effective. His pleas are first to the audience’s sense of logic and their immediate concerns for their own country.
He also reminds the church leaders of something seemingly obvious that they may have lost sight of: “…the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children…” (13). Therefore, to remain silent would truly be betrayal. He then paints a picture of the suffering endured by Vietnam and tells how the United States has a long history of doing the wrong thing to this tiny country. All of the valid arguments and vivid imagery Dr. King uses combine to make this a very effective, passionate and memorable speech.
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MLK Beyond Vietnam Speech
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April 4, 1967. On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War.Declaring "my conscience leaves me no other choice," King described the war's deleterious effects on both America's poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through ...
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech, is an anti-Vietnam War and pro-social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated.The major speech at Riverside Church in New York City, followed several interviews and several other public speeches in which King came out against the ...
Beyond Vietnam Summary
Summary. Last Updated September 5, 2023. Delivered in New York at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, "Beyond Vietnam" is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful call to America to end the ...
The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech : NPR
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. PBS talk show host Tavis ...
Dr. Martin Luther King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech opposing the Vietnam War in April 1967. On the evening of April 4, 1967, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King lent his full-throated oratory to a growing chorus of opposition to the rapidly expanding American role in the Vietnam War. King's sharp rebuke of U.S. policy and call to protest brought ...
Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar
Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on ...
Martin Luther King Beyond Vietnam Speech Full Text and Video
Full text of speech. Sadly, this speech is in many ways even more relevant today than in 1967. Watch Video Here on YouTube. TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH BELOW: Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. Note: We added some subtitles in a red font to ...
Beyond Vietnam
Reading b y Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. Photo: John C. Goodwin. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his first major speech on the war in Vietnam.
The MLK Speech We Need Today Is Not the One We Remember Most
Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam" is incredibly insightful regarding how it speaks to issues we face today. Viet Thanh Nguyen on Dr. King's 1967 speech 'Beyond Vietnam'
Beyond Vietnam: 40th Anniversary of King's Landmark Antiwar Speech
Donate. Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King gave the speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.". It was April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered. He was ...
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Beyond Vietnam"
Dramatic reading of Dr. Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" (1967) speech by Michael Ealy. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. Some civil rights leaders urged King not to speak out on the Vietnam War, but he said he could not separate issues of ...
PDF Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Excerpts from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" Delivered at Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967 ... There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in ...
Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence : Dr Martin Luther King, Jr
One of Dr. King's most radical speeches, given at Riverside Church in Manhattan, 1967. ... Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Publication date 1967-04-04 Topics Martin luther King, MLK, Beyond Vietnam, radical democracy, radical, civil rights movement, freedom movement, vietnam, anti-war protests Collection
Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break Silence
In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out harshly against the war in Vietnam. His speech "Beyond Vietnam" was condemned by many civil rights leaders who thought it hurt their cause. It incensed President Lyndon Johnson, who revoked King's invitation to the White House. "The calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must ...
MLK, "Beyond Vietnam," 1967
MLK, "Beyond Vietnam," 1967. Excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam": Speech at Riverside Church Meeting, New York, N.Y., April 4, 1967. In Clayborne Carson et al., eds., Eyes on the Prize: A Reader and Guide (New York: Penguin, 1987), 201-04. ...I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence · SHEC: Resources for Teachers
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King delivered his first major public statement against the Vietnam War, entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Addressing a crowd of 3,000 at Riverside Church in New York City, King condemned the war as anti-democratic, impractical, and unjust. He described the daily suffering of Vietnamese ...
Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence (Martin Luther King Jr, 1967
On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. Declaring "my conscience leaves me no other choice," King described the war's deleterious effects on both America's poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through nonviolent ...
A Reflection on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam: A Time
Join us this Thursday, May 4, at Arts Riot in Burlington for this Community Reading. More details below. One of Martin Luther King Jr.'s lesser known yet equally impactful speeches, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," condemns the violence and atrocities committed by the U.S against the Vietnamese in their foolish bid to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.
PDF Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence ~ MLK Speech 1967
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Rev. Martin Luther King April 4, 1967 Riverside Church, New York City. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us ...
An Analysis of Martin Luther King Jr's Beyond Vietnam
King Jr delivered his " Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence " in 1967 in NewYork City. In his speech on the meaninglessness of the Vietnam war and to persuade the audience to listen to its own conscience rather than to conform to the idea of war in the name of patriotism, King Jr draws from the realms of economy, society, polity as ...
Beyond Vietnam Themes
Discussion of themes and motifs in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Beyond Vietnam. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of Beyond Vietnam so you can excel on your essay or test.
Rhetorical Analysis of Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam: a Time to
In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. Dr. King's purpose is to make the church leaders he is speaking to aware that the time has come for them to speak ...
MLK Beyond Vietnam Speech : Martin Luther King Jr. : Free Download
MLK Beyond Vietnam Speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Publication date 1967-04-04 Topics MLK, Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam, 1967, Speech Language English. Martin Luther King Jr. Opposition to the Vietnam War . Addeddate 2022-01-06 19:00:20 Identifier mlk-beyond-vietnam-speech Scanner
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April 4, 1967. On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War.Declaring "my conscience leaves me no other choice," King described the war's deleterious effects on both America's poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through ...
"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech, is an anti-Vietnam War and pro-social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated.The major speech at Riverside Church in New York City, followed several interviews and several other public speeches in which King came out against the ...
Summary. Last Updated September 5, 2023. Delivered in New York at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, "Beyond Vietnam" is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful call to America to end the ...
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. PBS talk show host Tavis ...
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech opposing the Vietnam War in April 1967. On the evening of April 4, 1967, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King lent his full-throated oratory to a growing chorus of opposition to the rapidly expanding American role in the Vietnam War. King's sharp rebuke of U.S. policy and call to protest brought ...
Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on ...
Full text of speech. Sadly, this speech is in many ways even more relevant today than in 1967. Watch Video Here on YouTube. TRANSCRIPT OF SPEECH BELOW: Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. Note: We added some subtitles in a red font to ...
Reading b y Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. Photo: John C. Goodwin. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his first major speech on the war in Vietnam.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam" is incredibly insightful regarding how it speaks to issues we face today. Viet Thanh Nguyen on Dr. King's 1967 speech 'Beyond Vietnam'
Donate. Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King gave the speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.". It was April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered. He was ...
Dramatic reading of Dr. Martin Luther King's "Beyond Vietnam" (1967) speech by Michael Ealy. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. Some civil rights leaders urged King not to speak out on the Vietnam War, but he said he could not separate issues of ...
Martin Luther King, Jr. Excerpts from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" Delivered at Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967 ... There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in ...
One of Dr. King's most radical speeches, given at Riverside Church in Manhattan, 1967. ... Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Publication date 1967-04-04 Topics Martin luther King, MLK, Beyond Vietnam, radical democracy, radical, civil rights movement, freedom movement, vietnam, anti-war protests Collection
In this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out harshly against the war in Vietnam. His speech "Beyond Vietnam" was condemned by many civil rights leaders who thought it hurt their cause. It incensed President Lyndon Johnson, who revoked King's invitation to the White House. "The calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must ...
MLK, "Beyond Vietnam," 1967. Excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam": Speech at Riverside Church Meeting, New York, N.Y., April 4, 1967. In Clayborne Carson et al., eds., Eyes on the Prize: A Reader and Guide (New York: Penguin, 1987), 201-04. ...I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King delivered his first major public statement against the Vietnam War, entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Addressing a crowd of 3,000 at Riverside Church in New York City, King condemned the war as anti-democratic, impractical, and unjust. He described the daily suffering of Vietnamese ...
On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. Declaring "my conscience leaves me no other choice," King described the war's deleterious effects on both America's poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through nonviolent ...
Join us this Thursday, May 4, at Arts Riot in Burlington for this Community Reading. More details below. One of Martin Luther King Jr.'s lesser known yet equally impactful speeches, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," condemns the violence and atrocities committed by the U.S against the Vietnamese in their foolish bid to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Rev. Martin Luther King April 4, 1967 Riverside Church, New York City. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us ...
King Jr delivered his " Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence " in 1967 in NewYork City. In his speech on the meaninglessness of the Vietnam war and to persuade the audience to listen to its own conscience rather than to conform to the idea of war in the name of patriotism, King Jr draws from the realms of economy, society, polity as ...
Discussion of themes and motifs in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Beyond Vietnam. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of Beyond Vietnam so you can excel on your essay or test.
In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. Dr. King's purpose is to make the church leaders he is speaking to aware that the time has come for them to speak ...
MLK Beyond Vietnam Speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Publication date 1967-04-04 Topics MLK, Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam, 1967, Speech Language English. Martin Luther King Jr. Opposition to the Vietnam War . Addeddate 2022-01-06 19:00:20 Identifier mlk-beyond-vietnam-speech Scanner