"shameful corridors of time"

posted by k

Forty years ago today, the mainstream media in the United States attacked Dr Martin Luther King for a speech he had given the day before. Time magazine accused him of "demagogic slander". At the Riverside Church in New York, Dr King had called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

His speech, made in relation to the Vietnam war, called on the U.S. government to reconsider its values and alliances. It included this sentence:

"If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

More substantial extracts from the speech can be read at Adventus, which also includes links to a full text and an audio version.

Exactly one year after making that speech, Martin Luther King was killed.

(This brief item has been double-posted elsewhere.)