4 April 1967
Civil rights / antiwar organizingBook sources
King’s Riverside address connects racism, poverty and war
New York City; Riverside Church
Martin Luther King Jr. publicly connected the Vietnam War with racial injustice and poverty in his Riverside Church address. He criticized the burdens borne by Black Americans and poor people and called for a broader change in national priorities. His position drew criticism from some civil rights allies as well as the press.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
This was not King’s first public criticism of the war. The speech occurred in 1967, a year before his assassination, and its political analysis should not be treated as a statistical measurement of every wartime disparity.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 18, pp. 484–485; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Stanford King Institute: Beyond Vietnam ↗