Day 7 of our Lenten Journey with Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957, when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard from Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
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From Tavis Smiley, in an interview on NPR, March 30, 2010:

I’ve always argued that Dr. King is the greatest American we’ve ever produced. That’s my own personal assessment. But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. And so I think most Americans know the “I Have A Dream” speech. A few other Americans know, of course, the “Mountaintop” speech given the night before he’s assassinated in Memphis. But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, “Beyond Vietnam.” Continue reading “To Save the Soul of America” →