Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man – of that there can be no question. However, the popular media and the Powers That Be have managed to reduce the man to a four-word catch phrase – say it with me now – “I have a dream.”

King’s immortalized “I have a dream” speech was a pivotal moment in the American civil rights movement, but King’s visionary reach stretched far beyond that one speech. However, it’s the media’s attempt to compartmentalize him, which began even before his death, that represses his views -which were – and still are critical of the increasingly militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

We are told of King’s work on the Montgomery bus boycott, of his letter from the Birmingham jail and of his march on Washington, but King’s social theory continued to develop, expanding out from civil rights for minorities to a greater understanding and disapproval of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the Vietnam War. In a little known speech at Riverside Church in 1967, exactly one year before his death, King spoke out against America’s involvement in Vietnam, specifically our actions as being counterproductive to democracy in Vietnam.

As with all of King’s speeches, his Riverside address was eloquent and moving, touching on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam prior to the war. In addition, he showed remarkable foresight in predicting the continued resistance and (gasp) failure of U.S. military action in the country. King spoke out against the blanket generalization of Viet Cong applied to the National Liberation Group and challenged the classification as communist when, according to King, less than 25 percent of their actual membership was communist.

In his speech, King sought to connect with the people with Vietnam, saying, “I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called ‘enemy.'” He questioned the effectiveness of the U.S. efforts, saying,

“Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts?”

In short, King’s speech was a moving, intelligent, critical examination of U.S. foreign policy, a speech that presented stark contradictions between past and current U.S. actions. It also attempted to see the issue, not only from the point of GI’s dying in-country, but from the voiceless citizens of the war-torn nation.

King’s well-spoken criticism of the war was met on all sides with howling rhetoric, as his previous supporters in the media, such as Time magazine, denounced his speech as “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” Critics leveled the charge the King had destroyed the power of his own civil rights movement and criticized him for moving beyond his publicly accepted work with minorities. Indeed, King had already begun to receive criticism for his anti-war stance prior to the Riverside Church speech, and in his speech he expertly connected increased military spending to a decreased domestic budget, especially for low-income and minority causes.

The media’s reversal of their previously sanguine opinion of Dr. King was troubling, as it clearly showed the limit to which the media were willing to press the government and challenge political action. The subsequent sanitization of King’s message and his compartmentalization into the “I have a dream” box has ensured that most American high school students will never know how much King believed that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

King’s critical stance on Vietnam is shockingly prophetic, and it echoes strongly with the current situation in Iraq, similar to Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex speech six years earlier. We need to understand that King was a true visionary with a sophisticated, critical view of American foreign and domestic policy. King performed the most essential act of a revolutionary: He spoke out against not only that which was socially acceptable to speak out against, but that which was not. If King dared to question the Iraq War, would President Bush have labeled him a terrorist sympathizer?

King was truly a global citizen, and we can still learn much from such a visionary individual’s life. Perhaps most presciently we can begin to question our media’s slavish adherence to the party line, and perhaps all of us can be a little bit more like King and not be afraid to question tyranny and injustice, especially when perpetrated in the name of democracy and freedom.

– Quincy Miller is a senior in English from Altoona.