from THE INTERCEPT
Zaid Jilani
...The backlash from the [white] liberal establishment that had once praised King for his civil rights campaign came as hard and fast as his allies had feared.
In all, 168 newspapers denounced him the next day. Johnson ended his formal relationship with King. “What is that goddamned nigger preacher doing to me?” Johnson reportedly remarked after the Riverside speech. “We gave him the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we gave him the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we gave him the war on poverty. What more does he want?”
The African-American establishment, fearful of Johnson’s reaction, also distanced itself from King.
The NAACP under the leadership of Roy Wilkins refused to oppose the war and explicitly condemned the effort to link the peace and civil rights movements. Whitney Young, the leader of the National Urban League, warned that “Johnson needs a consensus. If we are not with him on Vietnam, then he is not going to be with us on civil rights.” Jackie Robinson, the celebrated African-American baseball player and civil rights advocate, wrote to Johnson two weeks after King’s speech to distance himself from the civil rights leader: “While I am certain your faith has been shaken by demonstrations against the Viet Nam war, I hope the actions of any one individual does not make you feel as Vice President Humphrey does, that Dr. King’s stand will hurt the civil rights movement. It would not be fair to the thousands of our Negro fighting men who are giving their lives because they believe, in most instances, that our Viet Nam stand is just....”
I don't think I'll ever be able to evaluate any war as "good." But the decisions that led to multiple escalations of the Vietnam War over decades were just heinously self-serving, decisions that likely wouldn't have been made by white presidents if the people living in that section of the world had been white too.
The lies the government told to get support for the Vietnam War broke white people's faith in the federal government rather permanently.
Try to find a way to see Ken Burn's documentary VIETNAM on PBS and watch it over a few nights. Learning our history, even the ugly parts is part of learning who we are as Americans.
If we know the ugly parts of ourselves, we can push back against our own bad impulses and make better decisions. I believe this. I feel this is true at the individual level and at the group level, which means I think this is true at the level of nation as well.
We have to know our history. We have to know what our government has done in our name in the past in order to know what they are capable of doing in our name now.
We are our country. We have to take responsibility for what's being done in our name.
Martin Luther King understood that.
If we know the ugly parts of ourselves, we can push back against our own bad impulses and make better decisions. I believe this. I feel this is true at the individual level and at the group level, which means I think this is true at the level of nation as well.
We have to know our history. We have to know what our government has done in our name in the past in order to know what they are capable of doing in our name now.
We are our country. We have to take responsibility for what's being done in our name.
Martin Luther King understood that.
VIDEO: MLK'S OPINION ON VIETNAM
(Short)
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