Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King -Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.- - I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

Audio and transcript