Audio1967

Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam

The sermon version of King’s anti-war position, preached to his own congregation four weeks after Riverside and answering the criticism that followed. The Motown-affiliated Black Forum label released it posthumously as an LP that won the 1971 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording.

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Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 86 recordings of Martin Luther King Jr. →

1966
Guidelines for a Constructive Church
A 24-minute Ebenezer sermon on the church’s duty to ‘preach the acceptable year of the Lord’, taking in school integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Social Gospel; it is among the sermons the King Institute lists with audio.
1966
Meet the Press 90-minute special with the civil rights leadership
An expanded Meet the Press that put King on the same panel as Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick at the height of the ‘Black Power’ controversy, two months after the Meredith March. The exchange exposed the split between the integrationist and Black Power wings of the movement in front of a national audience.
1967
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
King’s first full-dress denunciation of the Vietnam War, drafted with Vincent Harding, calling the US government ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today’ and linking the war to poverty at home.
1967
The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life
King’s signature sermon on the length, breadth and height of life – self-regard, concern for others and relationship with God – in a 41-minute Chicago version recorded five days after ‘Beyond Vietnam’. He had preached the same sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, on 6 December 1964 and at Ebenezer in 1960 and 1967.
1967
The Other America
The best-known filmed version of King’s ‘Other America’ speech, delivered at Stanford ten days after ‘Beyond Vietnam’. He describes two Americas divided by wealth, explains riots as ‘the language of the unheard’ while rejecting violence, and ties the Vietnam War to the collapse of the War on Poverty.
1967
Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam
King’s address to the largest anti-war demonstration to that date, estimated at 125,000 or more, after marching from Central Park with Harry Belafonte, Benjamin Spock and Stokely Carmichael. The speech repeated the Riverside argument in rally form and called for a halt to the bombing.
1967
Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam
The sermon version of King’s anti-war position, preached to his own congregation four weeks after Riverside and answering the criticism that followed. The Motown-affiliated Black Forum label released it posthumously as an LP that won the 1971 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording.
1967
NBC News interview with Sander Vanocur
A long, reflective color-film interview in which King tells Vanocur that the dream of 1963 has ‘in some ways turned into a nightmare’, calls the movement’s old optimism ‘a little superficial’ and says the new phase – ‘genuine equality’ – will be harder and costlier than ending legal segregation.
1967
America’s Chief Moral Dilemma
King’s address to Atlanta’s Hungry Club, the Black civic forum at the Butler Street YMCA, defending his Vietnam stand to a home-town audience and laying out poverty, racism and war as the nation’s ‘chief moral dilemma’. The King Center holds the recording, from which a 17-page audio transcript was made.
1967
A Knock at Midnight
A 38-minute version of one of King’s oldest sermons, on Luke 11’s friend who knocks at midnight, applied in 1967 to the Vietnam War, the riots and a church that has ‘often been an echo rather than a voice’. Creed Records issued it on LP in 1970, and it is one of the sermons the King Institute lists with audio.
1967
The Merv Griffin Show
A rare entertainment-television interview in which Griffin asks King about the Vietnam War, riots, Black Power and his own fear of death. King is relaxed and conversational, explaining nonviolence to a general audience.
1967
Meet the Press on Vietnam, the riots and 1968
King’s fifth and final Meet the Press, dominated by his opposition to the Vietnam War, with questions on the Newark and Detroit uprisings of July 1967 and on whether he would back a peace candidate in 1968.
1967
Where Do We Go From Here?
King’s annual report to SCLC, taking its title from his new book, in which he calls for a guaranteed annual income, questions ‘the whole society’ and ‘who owns the oil’, answers Black Power, and closes with ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’.