April 4, 2021 will mark the 53rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tragic and untimely assassination, and the 54th anniversary of his prophetic speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
In the years following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, peace and justice groups in Oakland, California started organizing annual April 4 public participatory readings of Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech in front of the Federal Building. These readings have served as powerful community-building experiences and have since been organized by groups around the country.
This year, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to curtail our public gatherings, we invite you to listen to a recording of Dr. King giving this speech, as you read the text and reflect on its meaning today.
If you’re feeling especially ambitious and have the technical skills, you may wish to organize a virtual participatory reading via Zoom, by adapting our how to Organize a Public Reading of Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” Speech in your Community “tool kit.” You’ll need to update the introduction. You will find a useful set of fact sheets from the Poor People’s Campaign here.
Click here for additional Martin Luther King, Jr. resources, including speeches and posters.
Hopefully, by April 4, 2022 we’ll be able to gather again in public spaces and experience the inspiration of participating in public readings of this powerful speech.
When Dr. King gave the speech, the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War. The country was in turmoil as peace activists resisted the draft, and anti-war and civil rights protesters took to the streets. King’s speech laid bare the relationship between U.S. wars abroad and the racism and poverty being challenged by the civil rights movement at home. And it was controversial in some parts of the civil rights movement.
In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King declared: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
We believe that Dr. King’s words were both precautionary and prophetic, providing both a diagnosis and a cure – “a true revolution of values” – for our society’s gravest illnesses, “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”
At the time he was murdered, Dr. King was organizing a massive Poor People’s Campaign. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished agenda, and on June 20, 2020, held the largest digital and social media gathering of poor and low wealth people, moral and religious leaders, advocates, and people of conscience in this nation’s history. The global pandemic has exposed even more the already existing interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and militarism, and the distorted narrative of religious nationalism. The Poor People’s Campaign is a addressing these five interlocking injustices by building a powerful “moral fusion” movement.
United for Peace and Justice is proud to be a national organizing partner with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Join the Poor People’s Campaign!
