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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Day. He was born in 1929.
Last week, he would have turned 76 years old. In the early
1960s, King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination
in the South where police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods
were used against Southern blacks seeking the right to vote
or to eat at a public lunch counter. After passage of Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King
began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He
maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human
rights" -- including economic rights.
Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line
were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried
the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for
"radical changes in the structure of our society"
to redistribute wealth and power.
By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent
opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall
U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his
"Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's
Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before
he was murdered -- King called the United States "the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that
sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington
Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness
to his cause, his country, his people."
We turn now to that speech that King gave in April 1967.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his "Beyond
Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church in New York on
April 4, 1967.
King gave his speech "Beyond Vietnam" a year to
the day before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in
Memphis, Tennessee. On the day of King's assassination, Robert
Kennedy was in Indianapolous, Indiana campaigning for president.
He announced the assassination of Martin Luther King on April
4, 1968.
- Sen. Robert Kennedy, speaking in Indianapolis, IN, April
4, 1968.
The night before he was killed, King gave his last major
address in Memphis, Tennessee. He was there to support striking
sanitation workers as he built momentum for a Poor Peoples
March on Washington.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his "I Have
Been to the Mountain Top" speech in Memphis on April
3, 1968.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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