Vietnam
From Social Justice Wiki
"Even if I believed the lies of Johnson, that we're fighting to give democracy to the people of Vietnam, as a black man living in this country I wouldn't fight to give this to anybody."
On April 4, 1967, exactly a year before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" speech. The speech, regarded by some as a symbol of King's developing radicalism, attacked America's foreign policy in Vietnam as a waste of dollars, leadership, and energy. These resources, King argued, could have been more effectively marshalled towards a progressive domestic agenda. The war, King argued, was "taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem." As for those fighting the war, however, King's speech revealed a concern for the blood shed by American GI's, a palatable mainstream notion.
Carmichael's treatment of the Vietnam war began on the same ideological foundations of wasted resources but veered a bit from King's argument. Unlike King's speech, delivered to a crowd of black and white clergy members, Carmichael's most publicly shared his commentary on Vietnam in the provocative Black Power speech and his address at the Huey Newton birthday rally. The audience for Carmichael, as it often was throughout his life, was not white media, government elites, or organized religion, but black men and women. The differences in context and ideology between King and Carmichael are revealed in three main characteristics of the latter's rhetoric: the description of the root causes of the war, the way the activist dealt with American military personnel fighting in Vietnam , and in his support for the Vietcong.
Taking the Message on the Road: The Punishment for Speaking Out and the Modern Legacy
Other Links:
AAVW.org (African-American Involvement in the Vietnam War) page
Julian Bond's "Vietnam" Comic book pamphlet
A brief account of the anti-war movement as a whole that highlights black involvement
A description of black protest movements within the armed forces and the government's reaction
What approaches and theories can today's anti-war movement take from Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael's opposition to the Vietnam war? What can a cry of "hell no, we won't go" from black Americans today contribute to the anti-war movement, and should that contribution be made? Join us in the discussion room to share your thoughts