40 and 4

April 04, 2008

Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.
-Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
April 04, 1967

Martin Luther King, Jr, delivered his brilliant speech: Beyond Vietnam at the Riverside Church in NYC exactly one year before he was killed, 40 years ago on April 4, 1968, on that infamous balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. His most famous speech is the brilliant I Have a Dream that he delivered to the mass of people who gathered in front of the Lincoln Monument in DC for a Civil Rights' gathering in 1963. Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech, however, clearly makes the connections between poverty, racism and militarism and was very threatening to the out of control war machine that was waging a bloody, bloody catastrophe in Vietnam. Dr. King was an effective orator and great organizer, but when he gave his Beyond Vietnam speech, (which many of his colleagues begged him not to give) he became a threat to the pigs of war.