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"Beyond Vietnam"
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 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."
Web Resources
Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. I'm Neal Conan. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News in Washington.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
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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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.”
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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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King, Martin Luther Jr. "Beyond Vietnam." In Joanne Grant (Ed.) . 2nd ed. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1974. P. 418-425.
King, Martin Luther Jr. . New York: Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, 1986.
. . San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1971. P. 206-215.
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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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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: A Time to Break Silence
"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech, [1] 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 [2] and several other public speeches in which King came out ...
"Beyond Vietnam"
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 ...
Martin Luther King's Historic Speech: Beyond Vietnam (Full)
Dive into history with the full recording of Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful speech titled "Beyond Vietnam." Join Dr. King as he passionately addresses the...
Martin Luther King Jr. "Beyond Vietnam" April 4, 1967
Delivered April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York.King's seminal speech condemning the Vietnam War. "My conscience leaves me no other choice...
MLK: Beyond Vietnam
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in Vietnam.
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. This is the speech that linked war, poverty and corrupt economics. This is the speech that talked about America being " the greatest purveyor of violence in the world" and on "the wrong side of a world revolution." This is perhaps the speech that helped get ...
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.
Martin Luther King
As Tavis Smiley said, "King was gunned down on that balcony in Memphis a year to the day later...after that speech, he was persona non grata in this country. Over 55 percent of black Americans had turned against their leader, Dr. King. Three-quarters of the American people—three-quarters of the American people—had turned against Dr. King.
The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech
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 ...
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 ...
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: A Time To Break Silence : Martin Luther King, Jr
" Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as Riverside Church speech, is an anti-Vietnam war and pro-social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1967. The major speech at Riverside Church in New York, New York, followed several interviews [2] and several other public speeches in which King came out ...
Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar
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.
PDF Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence ~ MLK Speech 1967
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 together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about ...
Beyond Vietnam: 40th Anniversary of King's Landmark Antiwar Speech
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 ...
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Many folk have heard that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. made the comment that the U.S. government [was/is] "the greatest purveyor of violence i...
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 ...
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Full-Text and Audio Excerpts of Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond Vietnam" April 4, 1967 - Riverside Church, NYC, available on this site. King, Martin Luther Jr. "Beyond Vietnam." In Joanne Grant (Ed.) Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses, 1619 to the Present. 2nd ed. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1974. P. 418-425.
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 Item Size 54.0M . Martin Luther King Jr. Opposition to the Vietnam War . Addeddate 2022-01-06 19:00:20 Identifier
Martin Luther King Speaks! Beyond Vietnam (Full)
Martin Luther King Speaks! Beyond Vietnam. April, 1967. Riverside Church. New York City.
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'
Martin Luther King Jr., "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"
Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. against the "triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism." Audio. This speech was released by Black Foru...
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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: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech, [1] 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 [2] and several other public speeches in which King came out ...
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 ...
Dive into history with the full recording of Martin Luther King Jr.'s powerful speech titled "Beyond Vietnam." Join Dr. King as he passionately addresses the...
Delivered April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York.King's seminal speech condemning the Vietnam War. "My conscience leaves me no other choice...
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in Vietnam.
One of Dr. King's most radical speeches, given at Riverside Church in Manhattan, 1967. This is the speech that linked war, poverty and corrupt economics. This is the speech that talked about America being " the greatest purveyor of violence in the world" and on "the wrong side of a world revolution." This is perhaps the speech that helped get ...
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.
As Tavis Smiley said, "King was gunned down on that balcony in Memphis a year to the day later...after that speech, he was persona non grata in this country. Over 55 percent of black Americans had turned against their leader, Dr. King. Three-quarters of the American people—three-quarters of the American people—had turned against Dr. King.
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 ...
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 ...
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: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as Riverside Church speech, is an anti-Vietnam war and pro-social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1967. The major speech at Riverside Church in New York, New York, followed several interviews [2] and several other public speeches in which King came out ...
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.
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 together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about ...
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 ...
Many folk have heard that the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. made the comment that the U.S. government [was/is] "the greatest purveyor of violence i...
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 ...
Full-Text and Audio Excerpts of Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond Vietnam" April 4, 1967 - Riverside Church, NYC, available on this site. King, Martin Luther Jr. "Beyond Vietnam." In Joanne Grant (Ed.) Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses, 1619 to the Present. 2nd ed. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1974. P. 418-425.
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 Item Size 54.0M . Martin Luther King Jr. Opposition to the Vietnam War . Addeddate 2022-01-06 19:00:20 Identifier
Martin Luther King Speaks! Beyond Vietnam. April, 1967. Riverside Church. New York City.
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'
Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. against the "triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism." Audio. This speech was released by Black Foru...