The Great Silent Majority: "Beyond Vietnam" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)
The Great Silent Majority: "Beyond Vietnam" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1967)
Martin Luther King Jr. will always be remembered for his hugely (the word "huge" really doesn't do him justice) influential role in the American civil rights movement, but did you know that he was also adamantly opposed to the Vietnam War?
MLK viewed the end of the Vietnam War as both a human and civil rights issue. Like Nixon, MLK believed that peace was the ultimate goal. But, wow, did their visions of peace differ from one another. Nixon believed that peace was only attainable by handing the war over to South Vietnamese fighters and upping the aerial bombing campaign.
King, on the other hand, had this to say: "Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation" (paragraph 39). The two views on how to end the war in Vietnam couldn't have been more different.
On top of this, King also knew that African American men were being sent to fight in Vietnam at way higher numbers than Americans of other races. You'd better believe that if the Black Lives Matter movement had been around back then, they'd have a thing or two to say about the racial inequality taking place in the Vietnam War.