April 04, 2008

40 Years Later

On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

This is a speech he gave a year earlier, stating his opposition to the Vietnam War.

This was one of the speeches which infuriated his erstwhile allies in government. We forget now that the Vietnam War was not unpopular among the political classes at the time. It took several more years for the bloom to go off that particular rose.

Two minutes in he says "Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty." Does that sound familiar?

Full transcript here.

Real Audio file here.

Posted by Linkmeister at April 4, 2008 08:49 AM | TrackBack
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