Answers (1)
The Vietnam war began in 1955 and at this time, black people living in the United States had very few rights or liberties. Black Americans were not even allowed to vote until 1965. But they were allowed to die "for their country" the same as any white person ... but not really the same, though, because white servicemen received all of the glory: media attention, metals, honor. The U.S. Government invested enormous resources to the war efforts that deepened the poverty of the poorest Americans, many of them black. This is how the war fit into the civil rights movement. People tend to overlook that Martin Luther King Jr was about so much more than the civil rights movement, this achievement was only his bare beginning. He wanted equality for everyone, and peace. The war itself was immoral and MLK stood up. I quote MLK: "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." Such an intensely beautiful person. Here is what he said about the war: "Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor."
would u mind telling me from which country you are?
I am located in the United States and I surely regret that the greatest purveyor in the world is my government. My grandfather was born in St. Petersburg and escaped genocide in Russia. I highly recommend "The World House" by MLK Jr. which was a lecture and a chapter reading that can easily be found by google.
thanku friend. whoever you are thanks for this answer.