This essay by M. Greenaway was first posted in 2016. We do so again in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. today.
In August of 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing President Johnson to take whatever steps necessary to win the Vietnam war. Three years later, even though it was not going well, the war still enjoyed popular support. However, cracks in that support were beginning to appear. Student protests erupted on college campuses around the country. (I was a philosophy professor at Rutgers University at the time and participated in a campus-wide assembly where three of us provided a critique of what had been taking place in Vietnam.)
Shortly thereafter, in April of 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King gave a historic speech highly at Riverside Church in Manhattan that was critical of the war. This was followed 11 days later by a protest march from Central Park to the United Nations, the first major Vietnam War protest march of its kind in the country. I decided to attend.
An estimated 300,000 of us assembled in Central Park. With camera in hand, I went to the front of the line and joined the press
