Whereas, on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights icon and one of the greatest leaders in our Nation’s history, issued his Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence sermon to an overflow crowd at the Riverside Church in New York City regarding the participation of the United States in the War in Vietnam and the consequences of the war on the movement for civil rights and for our Nation as a whole; Whereas in the sermon, Dr. King presented a powerful case for an end to the war in Vietnam, stating We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. ; Whereas Dr. King recognized the challenges inherent in speaking out against our own Nation’s foreign policy, stating that Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.