“We have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school room.” –Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam
King connected war with the fight against poverty, complaining that the government, by far, spent more money on the military than on anti-poverty programs. “It is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only $53 for each person classified as poor,” King said in the speech, delivered on April 30, 1967, in Atlanta.
