Teaching Activities (Free)

A Revolution of Values

Teaching Activity. By Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 3 pages.
Text of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War, followed by three teaching ideas.

Time Periods: 20th Century, 1961
Themes: African American, Civil Rights Movements, Imperialism, US Foreign Policy, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements
Print
Download to Read in Full
Martin Luther King Jr. speech at UN Plaza | Zinn Education Project

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to a crowd of an estimated 400,000 people at the United Nations Plaza after an anti-Vietnam War march, New York City, April 15, 1967. Source: Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in New York City on the occasion of his becoming co-chairman of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (subsequently renamed Clergy and Laity Concerned).

Titled “Beyond Vietnam,” it was his first major speech on the war in Vietnam — what the Vietnamese aptly call the American War. In these excerpts, King links the escalating U.S. commitment to that war with its abandonment of the commitment to social justice at home. His call for a “shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society” and for us to “struggle for a new world” has acquired even greater urgency than when he issued it decades ago.

The speech concludes:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death….

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. . .

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain . . .

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world.

Full text and audio of Beyond Vietnam online at AmericanRhetoric.com.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had issued a statement against the Vietnam War the year before after the murder of Sammy Younge Jr.

Find related resources for the classroom below.

Print
Download to Read in Full
Related Resources
COINTELPRO | Zinn Education Project
Teaching Activities (Free)

COINTELPRO: Teaching the FBI’s War on the Black Freedom Movement

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 29 pages.
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Radical Vision (Teaching Activity) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History
Teaching Activities (Free)

Hidden in Plain Sight: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Radical Vision

Teaching Activity. By Craig Gordon, Urban Dreams, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project. 2003, updated in 2017.
Lesson to introduce students to the speeches and work of Dr. King beyond “I have a dream.”

Teaching the Vietnam War: Beyond the Headlines (Teaching Activity) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History
Teaching Activities (Free)

Teaching the Vietnam War: Beyond the Headlines

Teaching Activity. By the Zinn Education Project. 100 pages.
Eight lessons about the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers, and whistleblowing.

Why We Should Learn About the FBI’s War on the Civil Rights Movement (If We Knew Our History) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History
Articles

Why We Should Teach About the FBI’s War on the Civil Rights Movement

Article. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. If We Knew Our History series.
A 1971 break-in at FBI offices revealed a conspiracy—known as COINTELPRO—for the FBI to infiltrate, disrupt, and destroy a wide range of activist groups, especially civil rights organizations. Textbooks ignore this chapter in U.S. history, but it’s essential background to understand what’s happening today.

 

Teaching About the Wars (Teaching Guide) | Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History
Teaching Guides

Teaching About the Wars

Teaching Guide. Edited by Jody Sokolower. Rethinking Schools. 2013. 132 pages.
A collection of Rethinking Schools articles and lessons for K-12 on U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Film Clips

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Beyond Vietnam”

Film clip. Voices of a People’s History.
Dramatic reading of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” (1967) speech by Michael Ealy.

Books: Non-Fiction

Vietnam: An Antiwar Comic Book

Book — Non-fiction. By Julian Bond and illustrated by T. G. Lewis. 1967. 19 pages.
This “graphic novel” from the 1960s was written to provide a critical analysis of the Vietnam War in an easy to read format.

portrait of Sammy Younge
This Day in History

Jan. 3, 1966: Sammy Younge Jr. Murdered

Samuel Younge Jr., Navy vet, Tuskegee student, activist was killed in Alabama for using a “whites-only” bathroom. SNCC issued a powerful statement about his murder and in opposition to the Vietnam War.

Julian Bond 1967 | Zinn Education Project
This Day in History

Jan. 19, 1966: Georgia State House Refused to Seat Julian Bond

The Georgia State House of Representatives refused to seat elected state representative Julian Bond due to his public statements against the Vietnam War.