Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

,
“Beyond Vietnam,”
1967
[Martin Luther King, Jr., half-length portrait, facing left, speaking
at microphones, during anti-war demonstration, New York City] /
World Journal Tribune photo by Don Rice. Retrieved from the
Library of Congress.
 Name: ___________________________________________ Date: ____________ Pd: _______

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam”

Background: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated for an end to racism, economic injustice, and militarism. For King,
the Vietnam War was strongly connected to the issue of white supremacy in America. When he decided to publicly
condemn the Vietnam War, many warned King that it would make him even more unpopular in the United States.
However, King maintained that he could not stay silent. On April 4, 1967 he gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York
opposing the war in Vietnam. He gave this speech exactly one year before he was assassinated.

Directions: Below, you will read selected excerpts of King’s speech from 1967. As you read his speech, answer the
corresponding questions.
MLK’s Speech Questions
“‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ That time Why do you think King says speaking out against the Vietnam War is a
has come for us in relation to Vietnam… “vocation of agony”? What might happen to people who spoke out about
the U.S. government’s actions in Vietnam?
Men do not easily assume the task of opposing their
government’s policy, especially in a time of war…

Some of us who have already begun to break the

silence of the night might have found that the calling
to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must
speak…
According to King, how did people attempt to dissuade him from speaking
…As I have moved to break the betrayal of my own out against the war? (Note: To dissuade means to convince someone not
silence and to speak from the burnings of my own to do something.)
heart, as I have called for radical departures from
the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have
questioned me about the wisdom of my path... ‘Why
are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are
you joining the voices of dissent?’ ‘Peace and civil
rights don’t mix,’ they say. ‘Aren’t you going to hurt
the cause of your people?’ they ask…”
“There is at the outset a very obvious…connection Think about what occurred in the 1960s (including the presidencies of JFK
between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and and LBJ). What do you think King is referring to when he says there was
others have been waging in America. “promise of hope for the poor…through the poverty program”?

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
this program broken and eviscerated as if it were According to King, why is war the “enemy of the poor”?
some idle political plaything on 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.”

1
 Name: ________________________________ Date: ____________ Pd: _______

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam,” Continued

MLK’s Speech Questions

“Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took Based on what you know about the Vietnam War, the draft, and
place when it became clear to me that the war was America in the 1960s, why would King say that poor Americans
doing far more than devastating the hopes of the died in “extraordinarily high proportions” in Vietnam?
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 Restate King’s points from the last three paragraphs in this section.
thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Try to summarize his 3 main points in three bullet points:
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
hardly live on the same block in Chicago. 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 Who/what does King claim to be the most violent force in the
awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the world? Why does he say this?
ghettos of the North…

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….

But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about

Vietnam?’ They asked if our own nation wasn’t using
massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to
bring about the changes it wanted. Do you agree with King’s statements in this section? Why or why
not?
Their questions hit home, and 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 today: my own government.

For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this

government, for the sake of the hundreds of
thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be
silent.”

2
 Name: ___________________________________________ Date: ____________ Pd: _______

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam,” Continued

MLK’s Speech Questions

“Surely this madness must cease. We must stop What do you think King means when he says poor Americans pay
now. “double the price”?

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.
King asserts that the U.S. could stop the war if they wanted to do
I speak for the poor in America who are paying the so. Why do you think the U.S. didn’t end the war in the earlier
double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt stages?
death and corruption in Vietnam….

I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of

our own nation: The great initiative in this war is
ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”
“…The words of the late John F. Kennedy come back According to King, what would a “radical revolution of values” look
to haunt us. Five years ago he said, ‘Those who like in the United States? What would change?
make peaceful revolution impossible will make
violent revolution inevitable.’

…I am convinced that if we are to get onto the right

side of the world revolution, we as a nation must
undergo a radical revolution of values.

We must rapidly begin…the shift from a thing-

oriented society to a person-oriented society.

When machines and computers, profit motives and

property rights, are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme
materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.”
“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the What injustices does King call out in this section? (Restate his
world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling points.)
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 the veins of
peoples normally humane,
of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and
psychologically deranged, Do you agree with King’s statement that a nation that should spend
cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. more money on social programs than military defense? Why or
why not?
A nation that continues year after year to spend
more money on military defense than on programs
of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

3
 Name: ________________________________ Date: ____________ Pd: _______

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam,” Continued

MLK’s Speech Questions

“America, the richest and most powerful nation in What does King say will not defeat communism?
the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of
values….

War is not the answer. Communism will never be

defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear
weapons….
What does King suggest is the best way to defeat communism?
We must with positive action seek to remove those
conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice,
which are the fertile soil in which the seed of
communism grows and develops…

If we will but make the right choice, we will be able

to speed up the day, all over America and all over
the world, when justice will roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Summary Activity: Hosting a Radio Broadcast

Directions: You are a radio show host from New York. You were present at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s
speech at Riverside Church in April 1967. Afterward, it is your job to produce a short radio segment
describing King’s speech to your thousands of listeners. Someone who listens to your broadcast should
completely understand MLK’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech.

Your goal is to summarize Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech. In each of the speech bubbles
below, write 2-3 sentences summarizing his main points. You can add in your own creative commentary,
but you must thoroughly summarize MLK’s speech.

Vector Images are from Douglas Santos from the Noun Project 4