Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”

Context

When King delivered his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, the Vietnam War was a growing source of global controversy. More than four hundred thousand Americans in uniform were fighting in South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson had sent the first U.S. combat troops to that nation little more than two years earlier, in March 1965, transforming a conflict that the South Vietnamese had previously fought with U.S. advice and armaments into an American war. Johnson at first enjoyed widespread public support for what he said was a war of necessity to halt Communist aggression and preserve South Vietnam’s right to self-determination. As more U.S. troops poured into South Vietnam, however, public discontent with the war increased. Administration officials maintained that U.S. forces were making progress in the war, but they also cautioned that years of hard fighting lay ahead and more troops would be necessary. By January 1967, polls showed that more Americans disapproved of the president’s war policies than supported them. Some of these critics advocated a negotiated settlement, and a few favored a unilateral American withdrawal. Many Americans, however, thought the president had not used sufficient military force to secure victory. They became impatient with the gradual buildup of U.S. strength and called for more bombing and more troops to win the war on the battlefield. By the spring of 1967, Johnson was feeling considerable pressure from this public discontent over a war that was growing larger but had no end in sight.

The president also worried about the war’s effects on his domestic reform program, the Great Society. Johnson had proclaimed his desire to build the Great Society in May 1964. During the next eighteen months, Congress approved his proposals for a War on Poverty, federal aid to education, Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson envisioned the Great Society as his legacy. After he began sending combat troops to war in Southeast Asia, he insisted that the country was sufficiently powerful and wealthy to fight a war in Vietnam and build the Great Society. By early 1967, however, such optimism had faded. The war had become so large and costly that many members of Congress concluded that the country could not increase spending—and indeed might have to reduce appropriations—for programs like the War on Poverty.

King objected to sending U.S. forces to war in Southeast Asia, but, as he later wrote, he had not taken part in any of the marches or demonstrations against the war. During 1965, he did occasionally speak out, calling on the Johnson administration to seek a negotiated settlement. The president resented even such mild criticism. The White House tried to silence King; administration officials and members of Congress told King he had no competence in foreign policy and his public statements could harm sensitive negotiations to end the war. King complained about administration efforts to muzzle dissenters, but he made only infrequent public complaints about the widening war. Some of King’s closest associates also encouraged him to refrain from antiwar activities. They worried that unpopular statements about the war could weaken public support for civil rights. King heeded their views, often confining his criticism of the war to its harmful effects on the War on Poverty.

Vietnam, however, became an urgent issue for King in early 1967 after he read a magazine article with horrifying pictures of children injured in the war. King declared that he could not ignore his conscience and felt obligated to campaign for an end to a war that was devastating Vietnamese and destroying hopes of Americans for a Great Society. He had heated arguments with other African American leaders, who warned that his antiwar activities would alienate many supporters who had contributed to his campaigns for civil rights, but King was adamantly unconcerned about the loss of financial backing. On February 25, 1967, he spoke to an antiwar conference in Los Angeles, California. In late March, in Chicago, Illinois, he participated in his first march against the war. Ten days later, he came to New York’s Riverside Church to deliver a major address on the reasons he had decided to break his silence on Vietnam.