He called it a speech to break the silence. And it created an uproar.
On April 4, 1967, before 3,000 people at New York’s Riverside Church, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the Vietnam War as an “enemy of the poor” and criticized the U.S. government as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”
President Lyndon Johnson was enraged. And until his assassination exactly one year later, King’s popularity waned.
But the controversial “Beyond Vietnam” speech had a lasting effect. Scholars and peace activists call King’s words as relevant to today’s war in Iraq as they were nearly four decades ago.
What’s more, in protesting the Vietnam War, King became the most prominent black American to criticize U.S. policies beyond civil rights. He forced the world to view his legacy beyond the Birmingham bus boycott and the “I Have a Dream” sound bite, while setting a precedent for black Americans to be recognized as more than advocates for racial justice.
“The whole notion of black Americans having a major say on foreign policy is just something that would not have been conceivable,” said Clayborne Carson, a history professor and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University. “Diplomacy was something that was done by elitist white guys from Yale.”
Today, on the holiday in observance of his birthday – he would have been 76 – peace protesters, scholars and civil-rights activists are urging the nation to embrace the complexities of King.
It took King years to speak out publicly against the Vietnam War, even though he was opposed to the war for a long time. King knew he risked alienating supporters and losing the focus of his civil-rights goals.
“When Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois took a stand against the Cold War, it ruined their careers,” Carson said. “For a black person to enter into a foreign-policy issue, it could end your career or maybe put you in prison. King crossed a major threshold that most blacks couldn’t do.”
It may be a curious notion by today’s standards, with blacks such as Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice helping to set U.S. foreign policy. But at the time, King opened many doors, Carson said.
Before speaking out, King felt conflicted. His decision came only after prodding from his wife, Coretta Scott King, and others in the civil-rights movement.
But King saw hypocrisy when Johnson diverted money from anti-poverty programs to the war.
And when King finally spoke out, he did so with a sense of relief, after years of being frustrated by his own indecision, Carson said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
