On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his speech "Beyond Vietnam" at Riverside Church in New York City. He called for people to take action to end all wars:
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 ....
Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.---- Dr. Martin Luthe
r King, April 4, 1967
As part of the
Voices of a People's History series, actor Michael Ealy gave a dramatic reading of an excerpt from Dr. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech in 2007.
The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb
Vincent Intondi explores the connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement and the movement to ban nuclear weapons.
Too often, textbooks reduce the Black freedom movement to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. Rosa Parks and Dr. King are put in their neat categorical boxes and students are never taught the Black freedom struggle's international dimensions.
From 1957 until his death, King consistently protested the use of nuclear weapons and war. Coretta Scott King (pictured above) largely inspired his antinuclear stance. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she worked with various peace organizations, and along with a group of female activists, began pressuring President Kennedy for a nuclear test ban. Continue reading.
Dr. King is featured in this teaching guide, which contains eight lessons about the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers, and whistleblowing.
We welcome your classroom stories about any one or more of the lessons.
