9/12/2023 0 Comments Church usher training ppt![]() In fact, the SCLC staff had noticed that over the last three months, he had been prone to lose his temper more. In the days before King stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel at 406 Mulberry Street, he had been tired and quick to anger. “For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.” “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,” King said at Riverside. King argued that while the speech might have been politically unwise, he was “morally wise.” He absorbed the criticism quietly, but vowed to move. Black media that had chronicled his every step since the Montgomery Bus Boycott a decade earlier railed against him, leading The Washington Post to write that “King has done a grave injury to those who are his natural allies…and… an even graver injury to himself.” Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young distanced themselves from him. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin refused to talk about it in the press. The war hawks in Washington hated it, just as much as the doves in the SCLC.Ī. But as his aides predicted, the speech was a political disaster. The Riverside crowd gave King a standing ovation and he was was initially pleased with the speech, satisfied that he had finally spoken out loudly against the war. He even called for men to declare themselves conscientious objectors. Johnson - an ally who had pushed through the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act - to get out of a war that was “rooted in capitalism” and devote more resources and attention to the homefront. “I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice,” he told the 3,000 gathered.įor 22 minutes King talked about his ministerial obligations to expand his narrow American perspective into a global one and the three evils of racism, poverty and war. Observers and followers of King said the speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” liberated him and removed any constraints of political correctness, political allegiance or even popular opinion. Anti-war fervor had not yet reached its peak. He had made it clear - having enlisted Spelman College history professor Vincent Harding, to help pen his speech - that he was going to use the pulpit to denounce the Vietnam War, which was not only taking a toll on the Vietnamese, but also poor American blacks who were being drafted and dying at disproportionate rates. ![]() None of that mattered that Tuesday night in Morningside Heights. ![]() But his popularity was waning as younger, more militant black leaders challenged him for power. ![]() he had already won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as the face and spiritual embodiment of the Civil Rights Movement. stepped to the pulpit of the massive Riverside Church in New York City - a Gothic masterpiece financed by John David Rockefeller Jr. ![]()
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