The Ripple Effects of Ministry

estructuring." King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to Latin
America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King condemned
America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S.
should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than
suppressing their attempts at revolution.
King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane
Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to
persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential
election. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal on the grounds
that he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited for his morally
unambiguous role as an activist.
On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's
Central Park to the United Nations. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization
Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. At the
U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft.
I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There
are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet
see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civilrights
movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And
I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But
for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the
moral roots common to both.
Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights activists and anti-war activists, Bevel
convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort. Despite his growing
public opposition towards the Vietnam War, King was also not fond of the hippie
culture which developed from the anti-war movement. In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King
stated:
The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that
hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing
a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.
On January 13, 1968 (the day after President Johnson's State of the Union Address),
King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and
senseless wars."
We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle
and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no
longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as
the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast
Asia.
Page 60 of 201