"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as theRiverside Church speech,[1] is ananti–Vietnam War and pro–social justice speech delivered byMartin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, in New York City exactly one year before he wasassassinated.
The major speech atRiverside Church inNew York City followed several interviews[2] and several other public speeches in which King came out against theVietnam War and the policies that created it. Some, like civil rights leaderRalph Bunche, theNAACP, and the editorial page writers ofThe Washington Post[3] andThe New York Times[4] called the Riverside Church speech a mistake on King's part.The New York Times editorial suggested that conflating the civil rights movement with theAnti-war movement was an oversimplification that did justice to neither, stating that "linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion." Others, includingJames Bevel, King's partner and strategist in theCivil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. It was written by activist and historianVincent Harding.[1][5]
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 You can listen to the speech, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam", by Martin Luther Kinghere. |
King was long opposed toAmerican involvement in the Vietnam War, but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created.[6] At the urging of people such as SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of theSpring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, and inspired by the outspokenness of Muhammad Ali,[7] King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public.[6]
King delivered the speech, sponsored by the group Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, after committing to participate in New York's April 15, 1967 anti-Vietnam war march from Central Park to the United Nations, sponsored by the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam.[citation needed]
King spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."[8] He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:
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."[9]
King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have beenspent on social welfare at home. TheUnited States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less onanti-poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."[9] He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands", and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children."[10]
King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms.[11]
King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers.[12]"The press is being stacked against me", King said,[13]complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children."[14]Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script forRadio Hanoi",[9] andThe Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."[14][15]
The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressiveHighlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated.[16][17] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice.[18] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked tocommunism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support fordemocratic socialism.[19][20]
In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..."[21] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."[22]King had readMarx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism."[23]
King also stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."[24] King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution."[24] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in theThird World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.[24]
King's stance on Vietnam encouragedAllard K. Lowenstein,William Sloane Coffin andNorman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the1968 United States presidential election. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal on the grounds that he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited for his morally unambiguous role as an activist.[25]
On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to theUnited Nations. The march was organized by theSpring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft.
I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.[26]
The same year, King nominated Buddhist monkThich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year.[27] Thich Nhat Hanh, who publicly held a news conference in Chicago with King in 1966, was acknowledged for urging King to oppose the Vietnam War.[27]
In 2010,PBS commentatorTavis Smiley said that the speech was the most controversial speech of King's career, and the one he "labored over the most".[28]
A portion of this speech is used in the track "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" byLinkin Park, from their 2010 albumA Thousand Suns.[29]
One of the eight "sound cells" in@Large,Ai Weiwei's 2014–15 exhibit atAlcatraz, features King's voice giving the "Beyond Vietnam" speech.[30]
Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" byNordic Giants.[citation needed]
