SPECIAL: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words

[Jefferson23]

snip* AMY GOODMAN: Obama accepted the Democratic Party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s "I Have a Dream" speech.

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream.

AMY GOODMAN: While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.

In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated, Dr. King called the United States, quote, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post said King, quote, “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

Today, we’ll let you decide. We play an excerpt of Dr. King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam.”

REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: After 1954, they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over the united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/20/special_dr_martin_luther_king_jr