Martin Luther King decided to become a vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam after reading a January 1967 article in Ramparts Magazine. Though King had made small remarks about the war as far back as 1965, he knew that coming out against the war would mean the end of the SCLC. The January 1967 issue of Ramparts featured pictures of children burned horribly by American weaponry, particularly napalm.
As he flipped through the magazine, King “froze as he looked at the pictures from Vietnam,” Bernard Lee, a King aide, told author David Garrow. “He saw a picture of a Vietnamese mother holding her dead baby, a baby killed by our military. Then Martin just pushed the plate of food away from him. I looked up and said, ‘Doesn’t it taste any good?,’ and he answered, ‘Nothing will ever taste any good for me until I do everything I can to end that war.’”
Memo to all war supporters: That’s what real bravery is.
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