Each year, at the time of the celebration of the life of Dr. King, little attention is focused on King’s April 1967 speech against US aggression in Vietnam.  We are exposed to remembrances concerning the 1963 March on Washington, and sometimes the events surrounding his murder in 1968, but little about his strong stand against the Vietnam War, and more generally, his insistence on the need for a different US foreign policy.

Even where there is discussion of the 1967 speech, what always struck me - but particularly strikes me in the era of Obama - were the political risks that King took in coming out against the war; as well as the ramifications for doing so.

The obvious historical fact is that King came out against a war that, while initiated by the Republican President Eisenhower in the 1950s, was systematically escalated by two Democratic Presidents - John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.   These were also the two Democratic Presidents who oversaw important favorable legislation for African Americans (and for many other sectors of the population).  That they did so as a result of mass pressure was not an insignificant point, but the fact is that they did institute certain changes.

Historical scholarship has indicated that King was deeply disturbed about the Vietnam War for quite some time but refused to speak publicly against it.  He was warned that to do so would be an act of betrayal of, in that case, a Democratic President [Johnson] who had signed into law both the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Given King’s role in the movement, taking the step of challenging a sitting Democratic President on his views on foreign policy was monumental.

From the moment that the speech was given, many backs were turned on King.  LBJ was reported to have been stunned.  Mainstream newspapers denounced King, in some cases suggesting that he did not know what he was talking about and that he should focus on domestic issues.  While many people to the Left of King were pleased with his statement - and with his continuous stand till his last day - there were many liberals (including Black liberals) who were either bewildered or felt that King had lost any sense of direction.

King made it clear that he had to speak up.  He clearly knew that in speaking up this would not help the reelection possibilities of Johnson, but remaining silent would be a betrayal of his own belief system.  He also realized that as a leader of a social movement that his principal responsibility was to stand firm against injustice, whether that injustice was being perpetrated domestically or internationally, and whether that injustice was being perpetrated by a foe or someone who claimed to be a friend.

Politics is never about absolutes but principle should always guide actions.  People, parties and organizations can be friends today on certain issues; neutrals tomorrow; and opponents the day after on yet other issues.  These are facts that King realized.  Alliances could be flexible but principle always needs to go to the core.  The critical piece, however, is to not confuse principle with real politics; they overlap but they are not identical.  Alliances, in particular, are made on shared interests.  Those shared interests may be short-term [tactical] or long-term [strategic].  But one should never assume that those alliances can be cemented by shared principles; that is a rare (though important) occurrence.

In the setting of 1967 the fight for Black Freedom in the USA was undermined to the extent to which there was silence on US aggression internationally.  Malcolm X had realized this prior to his own untimely demise.  King also realized that the domestic struggle for Black Freedom had to proceed much farther than the matter of formal legislation; it had to address real political and economic power for the masses of people who were dispossessed.  Thus, King’s speech in 1967 was not only about foreign policy but was actually about rearticulating Black politics:  it was, as with Malcolm X, a matter of a fight for human rights in the domestic and international arena.  This expansion of Black politics was an anathema to mainstream Civil Rights leaders, let alone to the system itself.

It would seem to me that there are some lessons here.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfricaForum and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.