“They too are our brothers” (King), a statement that struck at the heart of the American soul when it was first preached by Influential civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., in 1967 during his controversial Beyond Vietnam speech. To the ordinary American this came as a surprise since a man who had united them was now fanning the flame of division caused by the stagnant conflict in Vietnam. As a result, leaders who once supported him in his civil rights crusade, such as Lyndon B. Johnson, now viewed him as a threat to an American mission that was on the wrong side of the moral spectrum. However, as divisive as it may have seemed to the leaders and ordinary Americans who had sacrificed so much in the campaign, the speech served to shine a light. Prominent in his speech King argues on behalf of the poor and racial minorities indicating: “So we watch them in brutal solidarity as they burn the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago” (King ). Furthermore, James Lafferty's remembrance of the war supports King's contention that the poor faced systemic racism nationwide when he recalled that "persons with legitimate ailments under the written standards established by the Selective Service system were approved for military service " due to their inability to afford military service. formal exemption from the doctor (Appy 165). More explicitly on the battlefront Yuseff Komunyakka thought back to when black people faced insults from those they would jump on a grenade to save, yet the movie industrial complex gave them no face in their representation of war heroes (Appy 259). For the most part it was perhaps his racially inferior status given to him by society that allowed him to relate to the Vietnamese, friend or foe, and consequently express an opinion that many labeled. As it unfolded, it was continually prolonged and justified by numerous US leaders as a crusade. for democracy or what Martin Luther King jr. considered a “political myth”. Instead, it was King's frame of reference, as a black spiritual preacher from the racially segregated American South, that allowed him to grasp the complexities of Vietnam that traditional orientalist views could not. Complexities that can be heard in the oral histories collected in Patriots that touch on the life-changing experiences of witnessing, supporting, or fighting in the conflict that has persisted for more than a decade. Looking back, we recognize that this wartime speech in 1967 was ahead of its time, but when it was first delivered it was greeted as a risk by his opponents and as folly by his allies. Thus, the losing situation of King's position demonstrates that Beyond Vietnam went beyond any of his political agenda and was purely a moral act to promote freedom and democracy for those who were forgotten by society and government during the period