On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “Beyond Vietnam” speech in Riverside Church in Manhattan, to an overflow crowd of thousands.13 It was time, he said, to “break the betrayal of my own silences.” King didn’t just condemn the United States’ war in Southeast Asia. He condemned all of it: the country’s long history of expansion, its “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism,” and a political culture where “profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people.”
