The actual speech begins at 1:41 in the recording. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. We have cooperated in the crushing in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. Equally unclear is why Vietnam decided to begin accepting deportees who arrived in the United States prior to 1995. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence SHEC: Resources for Teachers Did you find this entry while surfing the web? Vincent Harding and his first wife, Rosemarie, were friends and colleagues of Martin and Coretta King in the Southern Freedom Movement, directing an interracial voluntary service unit of the Mennonite Church (Mennonite House) in . And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nations history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. English "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as Riverside Church speech, is an anti-Vietnam war and pro- social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1967. Let us not join those who shout war . I say it plain, With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. Meanwhile Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., an enormously influential civil rights activist, conveys his indignant and hopeful thoughts regarding the Vietnam War, in his speech "Beyond Vietnam," by utilizing biblical allusion, anaphora, and use of diction. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. His speech appears below. Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path.